December 10, 2017- Week 3 of the contest

Welcome to week 3 of the Winter Picture Contest.

The cold time has begun. It arrived in Iowa City on Monday evening. It was 67 for a high on Monday. It had been in the 50's and 60's for several weeks. Tuesday's high temperature was 36, with a wind. It had to happen. It also got down to 16 degrees several nights this week. The ground is well on its way to being frozen.

There are so many ways that we know it is finally cold. At our house one measure is that we get the space heater out for our bedroom, which is more exposed to the wind as it is on the northwest corner of the house. (We live in a big old house which was built before they invented insulation.)

Another measure is that we start really bundling up before we go outside. Of course then I feel like a wimp. If 15 feels cold, what will -15 be like?

However...
we are  only 11 days from the Winter Solstice. From that point on, the days will get longer. Remember that good feeling when you realize there is more daylight? You can leave work and it is not pitch black out.

In addition I am officially done with the outside garden for the season. I will order and plant no more bulbs. The garage still has a few plants going dormant. That includes the amaryllis and the elephant ears. But there is plenty of room in the garage for our small red car.

On those positive notes let me move right to pictures from warmer times.

Last week

Last week the winner was this wonderful anemone.
I have already circled the place in the catalogue where I can get the bulbs.
Red is certainly a good color.

Here is the vote totals this last week over several days. It is interesting to see how voting changes during the week. Apparently the hosta fanciers voted during the week, not on Sunday.
Anemone   11-14-18
Zinnia         7-10-10
Trillium       5-6-8
Daylily        6-7-8
Hosta          1-6-6

total          30-43-50

In the contest,  3 wild cards will advance based on percentage of votes. Here are those wild card candidates so far:
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 2  Multi colored Zinnia 20%

This week's contest-Week 3

#1 White Iceland Poppy
May 16, 2017

Iceland Poppies are about the best. I grow them from seed. I will start them in January. I should actually think about getting some seed soon.

This year I had close to 50 plants to put out in late April. I have a little garden spot at church where they let me put in and take care of the plants.
I took maybe a dozen of those poppies there, where they had good sun. They bloomed until August.

Iceland Poppies come in a variety of colors. This particular white flower picture had such depth.You can even see the shadows from some of the stamen.

#2 Cattleya orchid
October 21, 2017

I grow orchids. I have maybe 30 plants. Most bloom during the winter. That is one of their attractions.

This orchid, the one sometimes used for corsages,  is called a cattleya orchid. It actually started blooming outside in late October, before the freeze came about a week later.

I hang many orchids in the trees  in the back yard during the spring-summer-fall. The cattleyas are quite reliable. They set their buds in the fall, and then bloom over the next several months. This is one of two pink/purple plants I have had for the last 4-5 years. They both bloom about November, giving us wonderful color just when the outside has shut down.

#3 White Tree Peony
May 4, 2017

This peony has a wonderful story. It is important to have those stories in your garden.

I should start by saying that tree peonies, unlike the ones many people have, do not die all the way back to the ground in the fall. Over the years they form a woody-stemmed bush that can get to be 4-5 feet tall (given ideal conditions which I do not have.)

I have had a few tree peonies for 15 years.  Most have struggled since they do not get enough sun.

About 2010 I brought some peony seeds back from a visit to the east coast. I planted some very carefully and waited. Nothing happened. Finally I just threw a few seeds in one part of the garden which gets a fair amount of sun and forgot about them.

       There is a blog post from April 20, 2014 where I wrote about a tiny plant that looked like a peony. It had survived a hard winter. (You can find this post in the "archive" section of the blog.) I observed at the time that this was the second spring I had seen that plant. I also said at the time it would likely be ten years before it would bloom.
       It turned out to be only two more years. In 2016 one of the plants had its first flower. The blog post for that date is May 8, 2016. By that point there were also 4 little plants.
       This year, 2017, that original plant had 3 flowers. This contestant is a picture of that plant.  In 2017 two of the three other plants also bloomed. They were all the same nice white.
        One thing about tree peonies is that you can see the buds for the next year forming in the fall. Let me just say there could be many flowers in 2018, on several plants.

#4 Yellow and Red Tulip
April 19, 2017

Red does work well with yellow.
It helps that there are bluebells in the background.
The variety might be Banja Luka.
In this case it is a rather controlled combination. (I will come back to  that reference in a few weeks.)

#5 Purple Siberian Iris
May 14, 2017

I think the variety is Jeweled Crown. It is a wonderful deep purple.

I dug and separated one large clump of Jeweled Crown in the fall of 2016. I look forward to this coming spring to see that bed in full bloom. Usually it takes two years for them to get really going after the shock of division.






Winter time is when you look backward and forward at the same time. Part of that is because you do not want to spend that much time in the present.

There you have it folks. At least one of these pictures I had placed in the knocks-my-socks off category. Tell me which you like this week. I always appreciate you comments and email responses.

Bonus pictures

Here is the tree peony that gave you Picture #3.
It actually shares the spotlight with the Liberty hosta that was in the contest last week.

Here is a closer picture of one of the flowers.

The center of the flower is really interesting, albeit in rather muted colors.










Did you know that tree peonies do not attract ants? The peonies that are called "herbaceous" do. (They die all the way back to the ground each winter.)

Here is the other tree peony of mine that seems to get enough sun.



Between the two purple cattleya plants I had constant bloom in the living room for the last six weeks. It makes the inside time better, when the outside is shutting down.

Let me show you more of the whitish Iceland Poppies.

I look at this picture and I do not understand why it is not in the contest itself. It certainly made the selection process difficult.

Here is a closeup of that picture.

Here there is just  a little bit of color added.

Here is the picture from the contest, before it was cropped. Sometimes I like this view, showing all that darkness, better.











Which of these Iceland poppy pictures do you like best?

Julia's recipe

Fruit salad

Sometimes we have breakfast for supper. We like pancakes and waffles and French toast, not to mention bacon and breakfast sausage. So once a month or so we make one item from list A and sometimes, but not always, one item from list B for supper.  On such occasions, green salad would be out of place so we have fruit salad with a tart vinaigrette dressing.

I started out with pink grapefruit, oranges, bananas and kiwi fruit, as at left.

I find grapefruit to be the hardest to prepare because of the inedible membrane. This time I followed the advice of Jacques Pepin and cut the membrane off along with the rind, working over a bowl. It was faster, if a bit messier. After the skin and membrane were removed, I used a paring knife to cut out the sections which I dropped straight into the waiting bowl. I peeled and cut up the oranges (no need to worry about the membrane) and peeled and cut up the bananas and the kiwis. I am told the skin of kiwi fruit is edible but I do not believe it.

The ingredients at right comprise the salad dressing. Kind of a lot of ingredients but nothing exotic (depending on how you feel about celery seed): olive oil, lime juice, sugar, cayenne pepper, regular (not kosher) salt, black pepper, Tabasco sauce and the aforementioned celery seed.

Here's the fruit. I ended up using 2 small red grapefruit (small is how grapefruit come in the grocery stores of the Midwest), 2 navel oranges, 2 bananas and 2 kiwis. The Noah's Ark of fruit. I used 2 bananas because they were small. Sometimes bananas are so big as to be daunting to eat without a friend. Use only one if you have giant bananas. You will observe these are all soft fruits, which is important. Don't use apples or firm pears which have the wrong texture. The addition of berries would be fine or berries for kiwi. Some pineapple would be fine as well, a nice flavor addition. I had about 4 cups of fruit when I finished peeling and chopping.

For the dressing, I started with 1/4 cup of olive oil, then added: 2 tablespoons lime juice, a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce, 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of regular salt (which dissolves better than kosher), 2 teaspoons of white sugar and 1 teaspoon of celery seed. I mixed it up with a fork in the measuring cup. Instead, you could measure everything into a small jar with a good lid and shake it up to combine.

This dressing recipe is taken from an old version of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. I do note the presence of small amounts of several kinds of pepper. I don't know why, but I have always followed Fannie's advice and used them all.

Here are the components, waiting to be combined.

I gently mixed the dressing with fruit, and there you have it. I would recommend starting with about 1/2 of the dressing and then tasting the salad to ascertain whether you need more or all of the dressing. Obviously more fruit requires more dressing.The fruit salad should be a bit soupy but not really soupy. We serve fruit salad in separate little bowls so that it does not get mixed up with the maple syrup or jam or jelly on the plates. You might not feel the need to do so.

The dressing keeps well in the refrigerator. The salad will keep for a day or two - the bananas do not discolor because of the lime juice. And tangy fruit salad is especially good for breakfast.

Odds and Ends

Two weekends ago it was so great outside that I ordered more bulbs. I knew the warm weather was going to hold all the following week. I figured that if I ordered them on a Friday, they would ship on Monday. I would get them on Thursday so could plant them this last weekend. Well, the bulbs got stuck in transit. The tracking number showed them in Illinois by Thursday where they remained. They finally arrived this past Monday, the day the weather turned. It was 65 on Monday and 35 on Tuesday.

I got off work a little early on Monday and started planting. I got the tulips and daffodils planted. But I only got started on the 100 crocus bulbs. As I was planting in the near dark, the thunder was rumbling in the west, ominously heralding the arrival of winter. It rained and the the wind started.

On Tuesday, by mid afternoon the temperatures had risen to the mid 30's. That was just enough to get the last of the crocuses planted. They do not have to go down quite so deep.
Now we just have to wait.

I get a lot of my tulips from the Scheepers Bulb Company. I read this on their home page about the founder of the company. It was rather interesting.
https://www.johnscheepers.com/about.html


So now we settle in for the winter. It is almost time to start thinking about seeds. It is also time to find the plants that have not been watered for a month. Every last corner of the house has to be checked. It seems like there are so many jade plants.

I hope you enjoy this little diversion from the cold that is settling in around us.
While you are at it please give a little prayer in the direction of Alabama.
Philip