September 17, 2017 Summer is still here

I do not usually wake up on Sunday morning and need to add anything to the blog post, which I usually finish Saturday night. This morning I have to tell you

It is raining.

The sound is just so wonderful. The last rain of any kind was on August 25. That was .05 of an inch. There was an inch at the beginning of that week. We had a total of about 1.5 inches in August. There has been none this month and it has gotten warm. A lot of grass in town is brown, except I think for the one bank we drive by, which has automatic sprinklers. 

When I am not at the office today working on my argument on Wednesday before the Iowa Supreme Court, there will be some much need weeding.

Here is what I wrote earlier:

September 17. It really is time to accept that the garden year is winding down. That means fall garden preparation is in full swing. What does that mean?

This should not mean that the first frost is next week, or that it is time to bring plants inside. Indeed the 90 degree weather these last two days has made clear that summer lingers.

I am cleaning up the garden in a way that enhances the color for the next 6 weeks. We really can plan on a frost free time until Halloween. Indeed last year the first frost was not until the end of November.
I have cleaned up the daylilies in the front yard. I cut them back, weed around them and then mulch them. This time of the year, since it is so dry, each plant gets a special watering every 4-5 days.
There is space between the plants, which wasn't there before they were cut back. I fill those spaces with houseplants.
I have moved the four big hibiscus plants to the front yard to fill in those spaces. The hibiscus actually have quite a bit of buds coming now. They should provide nice color, assuming I keep them watered and fertilized.

The crotons are also gathering in the front yard. Crotons are amazing, even if they do not particularly photograph easily.

By herding them all together I can also make it a lot easier to water them. There really can be corners of the garden that get forgotten, even more so at this time of year. In these dry times that can be really bad. The term "plant abuse" does come to mind.

So what is blooming? The zinnias and lantana provide annual color. The toad lilies are starting. I have one particular yellow toad lily I am waiting for. It even has a path right to it this year. I really am pleased with the additional paths added this year. I am trying to make most of the garden accessible to weeding and watering and just plain observation. A good way to do that is by putting in paths.

There was a later waterlily yesterday. It is in the bonus section.
Then there are the fall crocuses. There are more pictures this week in the bonus section.

What about pictures?


In last week's voting the picture with the most votes was the purple zinnia.
Aren't zinnias wonderful?

The full voting was
Purple zinnia  9
Fall crocus 8
Peach Zinnia 8
Orange Zinnia 7
Red Zinnia 6
Asclepias going to seed 5
Mystery white flowers 5
White anemone 4
yellow ghost peppers 3





This week's pictures

#1     Here is the center of the white Japanese anemone.
It always is one of the best closeup pictures.


















#2  Overview of the anemones.
You can see the different colors, along with flowers both in bloom, in bud, and having gone to seed.

#3   Pink and Yellow lantana

#4 Yellow and white lantana

#5 Yellow, orange and pink lantana

#6 Double pink Japanese anemone

I like this one as it is so very disorganized.

#7 Single fall crocus

#8 Lighter toad lily

This toad lily is a litt;e different from the one from two weeks ago. They are both pictured for comparison down below in the bonus section.















There you have it for this week. Many lantana. No zinnias.
You can vote for two.

Bonus section

Here is this late waterlily. The water level of the pond is probably down 4 inches or so with the dry weather.

Here is the group of lantana, variety petra. It is perhaps the most well know.

Observe how the toad lilies grow. They are all up and down the stem. They bloom from the end back to the ground.

There was this nice zinnia.

I thought I would show you the toad lily from this week next to the one your saw two weeks ago. This one is lighter and the center is more yellow.

















This one you saw before had much more pronounced spots.

Here are the seeds from the Blackberry lily. You can see why they get their name.

Here is the fall blooming clematis. If you drive around you can see all sorts of ways that the plant grows. Some people have it on a pillar. I kind of like that method. I saw someone who was growing it on an arch. Then there the places where it just grows all over the ground.





Here are fall crocuses.

I did get a few more cyclamen. Time will tell how hardy they will be.

Here is a recently acquired elephant ear, variety mojito. It was rather sad in the greenhouse, so it was on sale. It has perked up with lots of water.

Fall plant sales at the greenhouses and garden centers is another wonderful part of fall.

Fall is about thinking of the spring, about the garden for next year. This elephant ear will join its friends in storage for the winter.

Julia's recipe

Chicken Marengo

Chicken Marengo is supposed to have been created in 1800 by a chef traveling with Napoleon to celebrate the emperor's victory in battle. Part of the battle, wikipedia tells us, took place on a farm called Marengo in Northern Italy. We have our own Marengo in Iowa, right down the road in Iowa County. Also our own Waterloo and Moscow and Paris, all sites of significance in Napoleon's story. This led me to wonder how many Iowa town/city names came out of the Napoleonic wars, hence my resort to wikipedia. I can tell you that there were a great many battles, which is not surprising as there was more or less continual fighting all over Europe, land and sea, for more than15 years. I found a few more Iowa-Napoleon connections: Hamburg, Tabor (short for Mount Tabor) and Ulmer (long for Ulm).

Back to Chicken Marengo. The recipe below is a slightly simplified version of a recipe in one of my older Joy of Cooking cookbooks. This is a good dish to prepare over the weekend as it benefits from sitting overnight(s) in the refrigerator and then being reheated.

I started with 8 chicken thighs, an onion, 8 oz. of pearl onions, 1 lb. of white button mushrooms, a 15 oz can of black olives, a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes, some olive oil and some white wine, as at right.

I cut up 1/2 of the big onion, so that I had about 1 cup of half-moon slices. I sauteed the onions gently in 1/3 cup of olive oil until the onions gave up.

Then I pushed the onions aside and browned the chicken thighs in batches, not very brown really, but enough so that the chicken pieces looked tan rather than pink.  I put the browned chicken pieces on a plate while I cooked the rest. Then I put all of the pieces back in the pot with the juices that had accumulated on the plate.

Next I added things to the chicken/onion mixture: the can of diced tomatoes, 1 cup of white wine, 2 smushed cloves of garlic (or one big clove would be fine), 2 bay leaves, 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme, 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, 1/2 cup of water (I would have used chicken stock but only had frozen quarts), and a few sprigs of parsley. I brought the pot to a simmer, put the lid on the pot and let it simmer on the stove for about two hours.

This is the pot at the end of the two hours. At that point, I took out the parsley and the bay leaves and discarded them. I took out the chicken and took the skin off the pieces as the skin would not be palatable. I put the chicken pieces on a clean plate to wait for further developments.

The pot on the left is the cooking liquid, minus the chicken and herbage that I removed. I let this sauce simmer while I attended to the skillet on the right.

During the last 30 minutes of the chicken cooking period, I cleaned and sliced the 1 lb. of mushrooms - not too thin, about 4 slices per mushroom. And Philip peeled the pearl onions, as he is a pal. The easiest way to peel pearl onions is to treat them like tomatoes that you want to peel: fill a medium pot half full of water. When it boils, drop in the onions and let them boil for a couple of minutes (which is longer than one would need to boil tomatoes). Then drain, cut off the root ends and slip the skins right off.

I melted about 1-2 tablespoons of butter in the skillet, added 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and then gently cooked the pearl onions and mushrooms until they were soft but not brown. 

Then I assembled. First, I poured the sauce into another container. I put the chicken pieces (with their small amount of accumulated juices) in the bottom of the enamelware casserole, added the mushroom/onion mixture and then a can of black olives and then the sauce. At that point, I put the casserole in the refrigerator so that all of the ingredients would have a chance to get acquainted.

The next day, I put the casserole, still covered, in a 350 degree oven until it was heated through (maybe 30 - 45 minutes), and then it was time for dinner.

We served the Chicken Marengo with rice in shallow soup plates. We use soup plates because there is sauce and it would be messy to chase the elements of the dish around a dinner plate. Small pasta (like orzo or acini de pepe) would be good as would big or small cous cous. You will note that the recipe itself, although decidedly not vegetarian, is gluten free. It would be easy enough to eliminate dairy by cooking the mushrooms and onions in a bit of olive oil.  As should go without saying, the leftovers are terrific.

Odds and Ends

I did not mention falling leaves once.
I will now.
They have started to fall. The Buckeye tree is first. Then the Walnut. Then the Linden. Then the Elm. The last tree will be the Sycamore.
Leaves are just a part of fall, for a long time.

So is darkness. I get up early. I am usually up by 5. I do the equivalent of reading the paper and having some coffee. I then like to go out and garden, before I have to go to work. Only it is so dark. I have been going out and greeting the dawn while I water certain parts of the garden. 

Another thing about fall. It seems I am always tired. I think that relates to getting up a 5, which actually was closer to 4 on Saturday.

My job as a lawyer is difficult at times. My clients have done bad things. I try to make it better for them. Mostly I do not discuss my work.
But this coming week we are getting away from it. We fly off to Maine to see Christopher Philip on Thursday. Our plane leaves at 5:30 in the morning. (I guess I will start my trip still tired.) We will then go see some shorebirds and eat some good seafood in Chincoteague.
We will be gone 12 days. I have many books to read. At the moment I hardly have time for reading.
The blog for those 2 weekends is still up the air. It may get a vacation along with the rest of us.
I will certainly find some pictures to bring home, which I can share at that time.

Slow down everyone.
I will try to slow down.
Fall is a great time of the year.
We all need to find the time to enjoy it.
Philip