November 5, 2017- It is a rather gloomy time.

Greetings to all.
November is here and the garden is quiet.
It is rather gloomy. There is some drizzle.
But at 45 degrees, with no wind, it was rather pleasant outside yesterday.
The squirrels were chattering away.
The leaves are beginning to pile up.
Last weekend the hard freeze finished the annuals.
The glorious zinnias are toast.
The hosta are well on their way to being mush.
Two little blue fall crocuses held up throughout the week. I covered them last weekend.
All the perennials that don't mind the cold still look good.
That includes the pulmonaria, the epimedium, the lupine, the hellebores and the columbine.
There are no flowers however. No flowers for months to come.
The garage is still full of plants. The house is full of plants. As I think about it the bathrooms are the only rooms where there are no plants.
The plants in the house are jostling for position in the limited light.
The artificial lights are on timers.
This give us dawn long before the sun comes to light up the outside (when it comes out at all.)

So what must the gardener do?
PLANT BULBS
They have begun to arrive. Crocuses and windflowers and fritillarias.
I even found someone who had a supply of big white trillium. They went in yesterday.
I think I can plant bulbs until Thanksgiving. The trick is not to have the ground freeze.

I have continued my jade plant sale this weekend. All proceeds go to Puerto Rico relief. There are even a few other succulents. Today, Sunday, will be the last day. (If you still want a jade plant I will still have some left.) More freezes are in the forecast.
We have raised almost $150. Come get a plant, if you are in town. Everyone always has room for one  plant.


In last week's voting there was a tie for the most votes. What a great pair. The particular flowers are still in glass jars on our windowsill, where they have been for the last week.



Here was the full voting:
Red Zinnia 11
BiColor Zinnia 11
Pink Zinnia 1
White Zinnia 8
Cyclamen Leaves 3
Saffron Crocus 6

This week's pictures

The winter picture contest is coming soon. I intend to start it on November 26. Check your watch. Oh wait. That is not so reliable today what with springing ahead or falling behind. Well, check your watch once you figure out what time it really is. The contest will start in 3 weeks.
There will be 13 weeks of glorious pictures, followed by run offs with the winners. That means I have to pick out 52 pictures for the contest. At the moment I have narrowed it down to 73. What is the expression? Not even close.

I would like for you all to help me out on selection for several of the contestant slots. I just cannot make up my mind. I have posted three groups of pictures. I would like you to pick one of each. That picture will then go into the contest. Since the groups are all of the same basic flower, selecting this week gives you a chance to think about what is it that you like in a flower picture.

First up is the choice between these two pink poppy pictures. I really can not make up my mind.

#1- the single flower filling the image

#2 A group of 3, with lots of background. I find the green background to be a nice contrast with the pink.

Having more than one flower in a picture lets you think about symmetry.











Gingerland Caladium is now one of my favorite caladium.
The first two of these were clumps were right next to each other this year.

#1  Clump - with bigger leaves

#2 Clump- This has more leaves

#3  Single leaf






















Finally I have these two red poppies. This may give you a chance to think about how you feel about closeups

#1 Full flower

#2 Closeup- showing the wonderful seed pod to be













That is it for voting this week. You have to select one picture from each group. I will put up 3 polls.

Bonus pictures

Here are pictures of the plants for sale to raise money for Puerto Rico.
The sale is through today, Sunday. With freezes in the forecast, they will all have to come inside, this evening.

Julia's Recipe

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

One day some years ago, we were having guests for dinner, and I had planned to make pineapple upside down cake for dessert, using the recipe from my ancient copy of Joy of Cooking, where it appears (oddly, I think) in the pie chapter. When it came time to make the cake, I had everything I needed except the canned pineapple rings. Shopping oversight. For some reason, we decided not to drive to the store to buy a can of pineapple rings, and instead I improvised, substituting a bag of fresh cranberries for the pineapple. It worked beautifully in all ways: ease of substitution, visually and taste-wise. I have not made a pineapple upside-down cake since, but I do make cranberry upside-down cake for festive occasions or simply when the mood strikes.  As it did recently.

Here are the assembled ingredients: butter, brown sugar, 12 oz. of fresh (or frozen) cranberries, white flour, white sugar, vanilla, baking powder.  (I also needed cream of tartar and a bit of salt.)

I started by melting 1/3 cup of butter (I use salted butter, but you could certainly use unsalted) in a 10" oven safe skillet. When the butter was melted, I turned off the skillet and did three things: 1) brushed the melted butter up the sides of the skillet so the surface was lubed up; 2) removed 1 tablespoon of the melted butter and put it in a glass 1 cup measuring cup and 3) added 1 cup of packed brown sugar to the skillet. Then I turned the heat back on to medium low and let the sugar melt. No vigorous stirring or you will disturb the buttery coating on the bottom of the skillet.

Here is the brown sugar, nearly melted. I used a wooden spoon to moosh the sugar around gently as it melted.

Here is the skillet with the brown sugar melted.  At this point, I turned the oven on the 325 degrees.

Next I added the 12 oz. bag of cranberries (mine were frozen) and spread them gingerly in the skillet until there were more or less in an even layer.

I turned off the skillet, put it on a trivet and turned my attention to the cake portion of the program.

I separated 4 eggs, putting the 4 whites in a big bowl and the 4 yolks in the glass measuring cup with the 1 tablespoon of melted butter.

I added a pinch of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat them with a hand mixer until they were stiff. I measure "stiff" by turning off the mixer and lifting the beaters out of the bowl. When the egg whites hold little peaks where the beaters were removed, that's it. Then I added 1 cup of white sugar gradually, and I continued to beat the egg whites. This is making a meringue, actually.

When the white sugar was all beaten into the egg whites, I turned my attention to the cup with the egg yolks and melted butter. I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla and beat the egg yolk mixture with a fork.

Then I drizzled it into the egg whites beating the mixture with the hand mixer. One needs to be on careful not to over-beat at this stage. If there are still streaks of yellow (egg yolk mixture), that's fine. 

Lastly, I measured one cup of white flour (I believe gluten free flour would work fine) and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. I was feeling fancy so I used a small sieve to sift the flour/baking powder over the egg mixture 1/4 cup at the time. After sifting the flour on top, I used a rubber spatula to fold the flour in. Folding, as you will recall, is pushing the spatula straight down into the bowl, across the bottom of the bowl and then sweeping it up. It is an under and over maneuver rather than stirring around in a circle.

After the flour was all folded in, I poured the batter on top of the cranberries and smoothed it out so that all of the cranberries were covered.

Then I baked it in the 325 oven until a toothpick/skewer poked into the center of the cake came out clean. This took about 45 minutes in my oven. Don't poke too deep or you'll hit cranberries which will not be a reliable indicator of anything really.

When the cake was done, I put the skillet on a trivet for about 5 minutes. Then I ran a table knife around the edge of the pan to deal with any stuck spots. And I got out a big flat-ish platter, took a deep breath and flipped the cake onto the platter. If the cake is not centered (often the case), you can ootch it into place.

Even in the feeble light of late afternoon in my kitchen, it is a pretty cake.

And a pretty, sweet-tart cake deserves slightly sweetened whipped cream, as below. I am partial to pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving (and other pie as well), but I do think that cranberry upside-down would make a lovely Thanksgiving dessert as well.

Odds and Ends

It is pumpkin time.

Maggie, Julia and I each carved a pumpkin for Halloween. As you may remember I hang carved pumpkins in the trees during the winter.  I have to wait to hang them, however, until the temperature reliably stays below freezing.  If I hung them now, they would just rot. (That can be interesting too I suppose.) Those consistently freezing temperatures might not be here until mid December.
But we are prepared. I have another 15 pumpkins just waiting. If they are not carved, they will be fine for months.

Here were several pumpkins with candles.

This one was mine.












Because of the freeze I cut some of the zinnias and they are now in our kitchen.
Here is the bicolor zinnia after a week inside.
It hasn't lost a lot in a week.

It has been gloomy all week. When we are in one of those weather patterns it is even more special when the sun shines. Friday was one of those days. All day I would tell the person on the other end of the phone call that the sun was shining. They all understood how that was good.

Today will probably be both gloomy and an early evening. It will get dark so very early.
But we move ever so slowly towards April.
I see the buds forming on the tree peonies. That includes all four that I have grown from a seed. There really is something special about plants, particularly perennials, that you grew from a seed.

Stay warm.
Philip