February is here. It came in with quite a light show, early yesterday morning.
It is warming up. There have been a few days in the 50's. Not much is stirring in the outside garden. Yesterday I started some Shirley poppies. Inside of course. The ground outside is still frozen. But the clock is ticking.
Tulips are wonderful in the spring. Of course they are deer candy. Many tulips have been hybridized so much that they do not come back every year. In this way they are very different from daffodils, snowdrops and aconite.
An exception in our garden is for these very tall tulips that just come back every year.
This pair lives in the raised bed, back by the back driveway. Remarkably the deer mostly stay on the paths in the garden, and do not climb into the raised beds.
We must have had this pair of yellow tulips for 10 years.
This is Trillium grandiflorum. Remarkably it is know as the great white trillium. White? Actually it changes colors. It starts white and fades to pink. There must be a name for that condition.
It is native to Eastern North America. (Some varities are found in in Europe and Asia.)
It grows from a rhyzome and looks a little like a hockey puck.
The name trillium refers to the fact it is all about threes. There are three petals on the flowers and the leaves come out in threes.
Apparently white tailed deer like trillium. I have not noticed that my little clump of trillium get eaten. Maybe we do not have that particular type of deer. I guess that is something else to worry about.
One of the possible diseases for trillium is smut. That has to be in the top ten garden words.
It apparently is not a flower to cut and bring inside. I read that cutting the flower prevents the next year's growth.
There is a nice little video from Plants Delight Nurery, showing trillium having been grown from seed.
For a photo gallery see
I got a few of my smaller trillium from a person named Susie Egan. That was probably 20 years ago. She has a garden in the Seattle area where she was trying to grow all 39 varities of trillium that are found in north America.
Here is a link to her facebook page.
If you are in the area it would be worth a trip.
#3 Blue Siberian Iris
May 17, 2024
This is a wonderful blue Siberian Iris.
What is there to know about Siberian Iris?
They bloom after the bearded iris, from late May into June.
They have roots, as oppose to rhyzomes. That means they like being wet.
I should corret that. They apparently have creeping rhyzomes. But they still like being wet, unlike the bearded iris.
They are like the Japanese iris in their roots.
Wikipedia says they was collected by Monks in the middle ages in....wait for it..... Siberia, and brought back to Europe.
Jan and Marty at Joe Pye Weed Garden have specialized in Siberian Iris for decades. Many varities in commerce are their plants. What a legacy.
Here is their link
Siberian iris do take sun. This limits them in my garden. Half day sun seems to work. I think the clumps should be divided every 4-5 years. Mostly I do not do that. Remember the issue of needing more time?
#4 Pink Orchid Cactus
June 12, 2024
I have grown orchid cactus for 25 years. We first met them at a now closed nursery near Chincoteague. They shipped us a few and they have done well ever since.
They are a relative of the Christmas cactus. They get big and do have to come inside for the cold half of the year. Mostly they bloom in the warm time.
#5 Fall crocus
August 31, 2024
These lovelies show up right about September 1. They are colchicums, perhaps Lilac Wonder. I have had them for years. They spread nicely, forming clumps that can be divided easily.
Chochicums put up their foliage in the Spring. It dies and then just the flowers emerge in early September. (But they are not naked ladies.)
Bonus Pictures
More Trillium pictures
They do pretty much disappear by July 1. That means you have to be careful and not plant something else on top of them. It also means you have to remember where they are, if the labels have disappeared.
Right Now
This was a week when the orchids dominated the garden news.
This is a new dedrobium.
This paph keeps going.
This phalanopsis has begin to bloom.
This is another orchid we got at Hauserman's a month ago.
Julia's Recipe
Orange Julius
Remember slurping up an Orange Julius? I was looking at a cookie tin of old recipes, which included some recipes from the Iowa City Montessori school dating from when our children were little kids and students there. I found an Orange Julius recipe, and suddenly, I wanted one. Luckily, the ingredient list is short, and all I needed was a blender.
I looked into the origins of Orange Julius. There was a guy named Julius in SoCal in the 1920s. He had an orange juice stand, but he wasn't making much money selling fresh-squeezed orange juice. So he tinkered with ingredients, and behold, the Orange Julius was born. I remember: in the 1980s, there was an Orange Julius store in the Iowa City downtown shopping mall. I don't remember if they sold anything else. Could one really support a retail operation on Orange Julius alone? Don't know. The store closed, but Orange Julius lived on. The recipe was sold to the Dairy Queen people. And I now know that Warren Buffett owns Dairy Queen. The old American story - from independent innovator to venture capitalist.
At least W. Buffett seems to be an okay venture capitalist.
The ingredients:
6 oz. can of orange juice concentrate;
1 cup milk;
1 cup water;
2 tablespoons sugar;
1 teaspoon vanilla (imitation is just fine); and
8 ice cubes.
I measured everything but the ice cubes into the blender container.
I did not have a 6 oz. can of orange juice concentrate. Hy-Vee only sold 12 oz. cans. So I cut away the can and plopped the concentrate into my sticky-ingredient measuring cup. This allowed me to be pretty accurate in dividing the juice concentrate.
Okay. So as I said, I put everything but the ice in the blender, covered it tightly and zizzed it up. Didn't take long.
After the mixture was smooth, I turned off the blender and took the little plastic thing out of the lid. I dropped in one ice cube at a time, put the little plastic thing back in the lid each time and pulsed a few times.
After all the ice was in, I pulsed some more. When I could not hear the ice crunching, it was all done.
Cheers!
Because I had more orange juice concentrate, I made a second batch. We kept the extra in a covered container in the refrigerator. Of course, we drank it up pretty quickly.
It really was good. Next, I'm going to buy some other kind of juice concentrate. Orange-pineapple? Strawberry banana? Lemonade or limeade? I think the variations will also be great.
Odds and Ends
Mitten time
Each year for a long time Julia knits mittens and sends them to the Iowa City elementary schools.
Here they are this year, before they went in the mail on Friday.
Here is one of them that has sparkles. It is difficult to take a picture of sparkles.
Here is a closeup so you sort of can see some sparkles.
The bad stuff has certainly begun. The price of eggs is going up. Surprise. Maybe people will begin to see what an idiot they have elected.
This past week there was a special election for a seat in the Iowa Senate. It was a district that had just in November voted for the idiot by 20 points. The Democrat won. It does not dent the majority in Des Moines. But it was something.
We watched a show on public television last night about Harriet Tubman. It is the start of Black History month. I guess there is some question whether the federal government will recognize that going forward. Of course who knows whether public television will survive or whether they will ban the teaching of Harriet Tubman. I doubt you can teach about her already in Texas or Florida.
How is this related to flowers? Well, gardeners live in the world, as much as we try to escape at times. It will be a long 4 years.
Pray for people who are scared.
Pray for people who are angry.
Pray for people who do not have enough to eat.
Pray for peace.
Pray that people come to their senses.
Think about making good trouble.
Philip
2 comments:
For once, I voted for the cactus orchid. Because of the colors. Second choice would have been the irises--because of their cute whiskers! I too am a huge trillium fan. I miss those (among other things!).
Wow--Orange Julius! I must make this. And the sooner the better. Yum!
I voted for the tall tulips, without much conviction. Am I going crazy, or does the path look like Baby Yoda?
I was an Orange Julius fanatic. When Orange Julius was struggling to survive, they added pineapple, raspberry, and I think some other flavors. Classic OJ was made from fresh-squeezed orange juice; when they started using frozen orange juice, I knew the end was near. Copycats proliferated -- I'm guessing Orange Bang was the only serious competition.
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