September 25, 2016- The garden and cucumber salad

Right here at the top of the post I want to introduce a new feature. Julia has agreed to add a recipe  to my floral musings. I will do what I can to add pictures.

Julia's cucumber salad

So let me tell you how to make cucumber salad with sour cream.
You will need some cucumbers, of the kind called "slicing cucumbers", although English (or burpless) are fine too. No yellowish cucumbers, and not so big around as they will be way seedy. I used four cucumbers from the farmer's market which, with the ends cut off, totaled 36 cucumber inches. Peel them, cut the ends off, run the tines of a fork lengthwise down the outside of each cucumber all the way around. I do not know why my grandmother (who made this dish) did the fork thing, but she did and so it is forevermore. Next slice the cucumbers across (lots of little slightly scallopy circles), between 1/8" and 1/4" wide. I ended up with about 8 cups of cucumber circles.
Put them in a colander, along with a bit of even more thinly sliced onion. I used 1/4 cup of very thinly sliced onion. Sprinkle the cucumbers and onions with kosher salt - I used 1-1/2 tsp. or so. Mix the salt around. Now place the colander on the rimmed baking sheet or something else (9"x13" pan, big shallow bowl).

Put a flat plate on the cucumbers, choosing a plate that is both flat and slightly smaller than the colander. (If your plates are too big, you can use a plastic yogurt container lid or I suppose a cut-to-fit paper plate or piece of parchment.) Next put something wide and heavy on the plate. I use one of my canisters full of flour or sugar or rice. Or maybe a big bottle of olive oil. The idea is heavy; we're pressing the cucumbers.


Now walk away for an hour, leaving your tower on the kitchen counter. At the end of an hour, the cucumbers will have exuded a bunch of liquid.
Take your little tower down, throw the exuded liquid down the drain, stir the cucumbers with a fork, and reassemble your tower. Repeat twice, so that the cucumbers sit around for about 3 hours. Now disassemble your tower for the last time and put the cucumbers/onions (which will have reduced volume by about 1/2) in a mixing bowl. Add sour cream - today I used about 3/4 cup. Taste. Add a bit of salt if you like; add a bit of freshly ground pepper. Sometimes I add a teaspoon of lemon juice or cider vinegar. Sometimes not.

Put the mixture into a pretty bowl and if you are feeling festive, sprinkle with paprika as my grandmother did.







There are plenty of cucumbers still at the farmer's market in Iowa City, one of the best markets we have ever been too.

Now you get me again. (Philip)
Here in Iowa it is raining. We have been here before. There was June, 2008. In fact you can look at the blog archive for that month. There are no pictures of flooding, but there is narrative. We had a vacation that month. We drove to the airport in Cedar Rapids with the water lapping at the edges of the interstate and the median strip too. The road was actually closed later that day. My recollection is that to get to Cedar Rapids after that (about 30 miles north of Iowa City), you pretty much had to go to Des Moines (100 miles west) and then double back. You learn a lot about watersheds in this kind of water event.

So in Iowa City, the Iowa River runs through the University, down the hill from downtown. In Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River through the downtown district. In 2008, both rivers flooded big time. Right now the major flooding will be in Cedar Rapids, early this coming week. That is one of the odd things about flooding. There can be a prediction of when the worst will happen. And that can be days away. Another odd thing is how little it affects some people. We are not near the river. We are sort of on high ground.There is a local creek, but that is really local.
There was also the flood of 1993, during which our nearby creek flooded (and the river as well) but not our house. I sound like an old timer. Wait - I am an old timer. 1993 was the first 100 year flood; 2008 was the first 500 year flood. I don't think we have heard what we're going to call this one.

Let me talk about the garden and flowers.
First of all the cactus finally bloomed. There were pictures last week leading up to the flowering. It just did not make the deadline for this post. Bloom was Monday.
Here was that bloom.

This was about 7 p.m. on Sunday evening. There were 9 flowers on the one cactus. As a bonus a single flower bloomed on the smaller plant next to the big plant.

I have commented before about the wonderful mystery of why all the flowers bloom at the very same time. That happened with the Night Blooming Cereus too.

This was an hour later. It was pretty much dark then. The flowers looked a little bit like light bulbs at that point.

This was about 9 p.m. The flowers were fully open. They would last almost 24 hours.









                                                         These were the same flowers in daylight.

How about the rest of the garden.

Here is another Japanese anemone. I like the colors.

I decided to defy convention and planted zinna seeds about August 1. If you wondered if that was too late,  here is one of the first flowers. The plants look great.

Imagine  this covering a wall.

Here is a clump of toad lilies. I have a number of these plants around the garden.

Come in close.

Closer still. It is an amazing flower.














Garden cleanup continues. The days get shorter. Leaves are coming down. Pleasant, wonderfully cooling breezes, just start up sometime.
Any time you are in the neighborhood please come by. If you have never seen a toad lily it is a treat.
Philip

September 18, 2016- a new garden bed and many exciting things

It must be fall. Iowa City just sent out the leaf sucking schedule. Each fall the City will suck up your leaves on a schedule. They give you a map putting your house into a zone based on certain streets. It always takes us a while to figure our where we are. It actually is a good program, as is the City's compost program. They just opened up the compost pile this past week. They sell it for $20/ton at the landfill. Bob and I went out there on Thursday. We filled up many containers. The bill came to $3.65. They have said the program loses money-Duh.

It has been an exciting week. They weather has been great. The last flower on the orchid cactus bloomed yesterday. We have also been waiting for the regular cactus to put on a great show. Cool weather has delayed most of the flowering until tomorrow.

Here is the second flower from 'Unforgettable", the orchid cactus that surprisingly bloomed in September. My how a single flower can be wonderful. The sun hit it from behind in an unforgettable way. This first picture begins to resemble a water lily.

How about a closeup.

I thought this beauty was really only the warm up act to the real cactus.
The final show will come on Monday.
Here is the sequence of pictures over time.



These first two pictures were taken on August 18. You can see the little fuzzy things that are the start of buds. I now know that it takes about a month for the bud to develop all the way to flower.









This biggest cactus had three flowers at one time on July 1, 2016. I think that was the last time it bloomed.
There had been 5 flowers at once on August 31, 2015. If you go to the blog archive for September, 2015 you will find a picture presentation of the cactus and the big flowering event at that time.

Well... that was nothing,......, nothing.

This was Thursday, September 15.

I knew then it was going to be special.

These were from September 17, Saturday.

Here is the shelf they live on in the summer. They biggest one has the most flowers. The other ones have an occasional flower. There is actually one to the right of the big one. It has a single flower. It may flower at the same time as the big one.





So here is this morning, Sunday. Only one of ten buds opened. You will have to wait until next Sunday for the full bloom. I have been doing a Facebook thing lately. Old dogs with new tricks. You can look for pictures there if you have the interest.

Amidst the splendor/excitement of the cacti of one sort or another, other stuff was going on.

This is a Japanese anemone. They bloom in the fall.

This is another one.

Do you know what this is? It is a toad lily. It gets points just for the name. Some variety of these jewels bloom all the way to November.

I got this little orchid about 5 years ago at the Orchid Society's Christmas party. It has bloomed almost constantly ever since.

Here is one of the many seedpods on the yellow orchid cactus. Growing cactus from seed is a challenge, but I am doing it. One of these days I will feature those seedlings.

Here is another fall crocus. They pop up from nowhere in September or later to add much needed color.

Here is the phalanopsis in the backyard. It now has 7 flowers. None have faded yet. They do last a long time.









Then there was the reset of this one bed along Fairview Street. Ron, my new garden helper, and I, reset the bed last week. First we removed all the soil and weeds down to about 12 inches.

Here was the beginning of the week, after we had stripped everything out of the bed.

We then layered professional dirt (from the box store), peat moss, cow manure, more dirt and Iowa City compost throughout. Then it all got mixed up.

Now I have a blank canvass, the gardener's dream.

Here is another view. Imagine what could go there. How about 50 tulips, of several colors.











That's it for this week.
Philip

September 11, 2016 in the garden

There was an exclamation moment in the garden on Wednesday. This orchid cactus, which I think is named "Unforgetable", bloomed. I had not even seen the bud coming. It had bloomed in in early June, with just a few flowers. I suppose some combination of rain and temperature triggered something.
The flower lasted all day. There is one more bud. With the temperature falling into the fifties I do not know when that bud will bloom. It should be in a few days. The plant is by the back garage if you can come by.

On our trip to Chicago last weekend we stopped at two nurseries. One should always have a nursery to visit when you travel, particularly when you are driving home and have room in the car for a few acquisitions.
Coming home on a plane does not work so well. I am sure however my children will remember a few plane trips with plants stuffed under the seats.  I think I brought home my first orchid cacti from Virginia that way 20 years ago.

From Chicago here were two acquisitions.

Here is coneflower Hot Papaya.

This is a tropical milkweed. I think it is Asclepias currassavica. The variety I do not remember and it is too dark to go read right now. As a tropical plant it is not hardy. I just was reading that it could be brought inside. Maybe...
Or I could just get seeds.

The fall croci continue.

This is what I was looking at when I saw the "unforgetable" orchid cactus. This is cymbidium Yellow Elf.

Here is a closeup.














Garden cleanup continues. This week I cleared a little bed to place some hosta that needed to be moved. We worked it up when it was too wet. Garden hint of the week- Don't do that. I do not know when or how this can be fixed. It is now a clumpy mess.

The regular big cactus has ten buds. The buds have moved past the one inch point. I think they may all bloom in about a week. There are exclamation moments. Then there are "call the neighbor" moments. This will be one of those moment.

Have a good week.
Philip

September 5, 2016- September is here

September is here. Sometimes you are hot. Sometimes a jacket feels so nice. There was a wonderful cool breeze most of the weekend while we visited Julia's family in Chicago.
Today is Labor Day. I will celebrate that with a work day in the garden. Even with help, there is much to do.
I will get this blog post to you while it is dark. It is dark so much now in the morning.


First of all there was voting last week. The winner was the Night Blooming Cereus, an early favorite with the odds makers, for the contest this winter. The waterlily gave it a good contest, and I will not forget the one person who liked pink. Here was the final voting.
Night Blooming Cereus 22
Waterlily  16
Pink Hibiscus 1

What I particularly liked were the comments. Many people wrote in to explain why they liked a particular picture.
Comments tell you what other people actually think. In picking the waterlily picture I actually thought about whether the picture would be better as a cropped close up or with the background of the black water and different color leaves.

While I am not going to have a voting opportunity this week, you can certainly make a comment and tell me what comes to mind when you see a particular picture. Do you grow vegetables? What is the prettiest one? Have you ever grown okra? It looks a little like a mallow.

----------------------------------

So what's new in the garden.

The jack in the pulpit seed heads have gone all red. Here are pictures so you can see the change over time. The picture on the left is from August 25. The picture on the right is a week later.

This strange waterlily was pointed at me one day this week. Mostly they point at the sky. I have no idea what caused this one to be different.

Here is the close up of the same flower.

Vegetables can be beautiful. I do not have the sun to grow most vegetables. I do grow a few peppers on the steps up to our kitchen.














I continue resetting some of the iris beds. This week I reset the Louisiana bed. This is what one of the plants looks like. The root is designed to grow in wet conditions.









The problem with resetting a bed is that you wind up with twice as many plants that seemed to be in the ground.




The pictures below are a reminder of what Louisiana Iris will look like in June.

Brown is an interesting color in flowers. I like it as long as it is not the only color.

Here is the first fall blooming crocus.

The orchid is up to five flowers. I do not know why they can't all look the same direction.

I will close with this lantana. As I have said the color combinations seem infinite.
Have a good week.
Enjoy the cool breezes.
Philip