Week 4- December 17, 2017

Welcome to week 4 of the Mears Garden Winter picture contest.

We have already come quite a ways through this dark time. We are figuring out how to get through this time. And there are rays of hope that show up time and time again. Just this week there was one that showed up in a place (I mean Alabama) where no one could have imagined.

December is more than half over. We are now less than 60 days from Valentine's day.
By then we could have early spring flowers. Winter still proves elusive in Iowa, even as it is set to officially begin. It was 50 degrees yesterday, which we celebrated by going to Terry Trueblood Park. There were eagles.

The last of the fallen leaves were picked up by the City on Tuesday. It was a really big pile. The outside garden is quiet. Inside, the orchids are blooming. That is one reason to grow orchids.


Last week was week 3
The winner was...
well, we had a tie. We can deal with this. Both contestants will advance in 9 more weeks.

Here was the Iceland Poppy.

Here was the cattleya orchid.

The vote was close all week. Here were some of the end of the day totals.

Iceland Poppy  9-11-11-13
Cattleya            7-11-12-13
Tulip                 5- 6- 8-  8
Purple Iris         2- 4- 4-  5
Tree peony        1- 3- 3-  3
total                 24-35-38-42

At this point we have had 3 weeks to look at the second place finishers. 3 "wild cards" will make it through to the next round.
So far:
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 3 Iceland Poppy/Cattleya  30%*
Week 2  Multi colored Zinnia 20%

*tie so automatic advancement

This week's contestants

#1 Allium
May 13, 2017

Allium are great. Any flower that makes you think about fireworks has to be nurtured.

I have found these bulbs, which are in the onion family, not only come back every year, but will divide, allowing you to have more. The only catch is that you have to remember where they are in the fall, so you can dig them up and replant them.

Since they are onion relatives, the deer do not like them.


This variety is Globemaster. This bulb must be 15 years old at this point. This year the City of Iowa City bought hundreds of these allium bulbs for the downtown gardens. They were wonderful, mostly surviving the aimlessly wandering drunks after dark.

#2 Dwarf Bearded Iris
April 17, 2017

I love these little guys. They come in so many great color combinations.

Iris do form a special place in my garden. They will bloom from March to July. They have a wonderful sequence of varieties. There are the little reticulata iris that are some of the very early spring bulbs. Then there are all the bearded types. There are Miniature Dwarfs, and Standard Dwarfs. There are Intermediate ones. Finally there are Miniature Tall (I kid you not) and Tall. The smaller ones start first, which only makes sense. The tall ones will bloom well into May. While I find the tall ones lovely, I only grow a few. They can require staking, which I tend to avoid. They need staking in part due to the fact that they like lots of sun, which by May is starting to diminish in the garden as the trees leaf out.

Just to finish the sequence, after the Bearded Iris are done, there are the Louisiana Iris, the Siberian Iris and the finale, the Japanese Iris.

One could keep a garden going for a long time just with Iris. I was going to say there are none after July, but then the iris breeders are working on expanding the varieties that rebloom in the fall.

#3 Night Blooming Cereus
August 16, 2017

This is one of the true garden gems in my garden. Remarkably very few people see it bloom. It does only bloom at night, not really opening up until a few hours after dark. By morning it is done.

I should put a big sign out when the particular night arrives. Sometimes I do invite the neighbors.





What a joy this plant has provided these last few years. It has bloomed now for 6 years. It hangs in the walnut tree in the front yard. It is a cousin of the more colorful orchid cactus that I also grow. You will see more of them as the contest goes along. The plant is also remarkable for having all the flowers bloom at the same time. It will set sometimes as many as a dozen buds, that will then develop over maybe 3 weeks. Then they will all bloom on the same night. (Actually there may be one or two that will maybe be a day or so off.)

#4 Anemone Blanda
April 9, 2017

Last week you had the red anemone de Caen. These are the little anemone blandas. I love how they clump up over the years.
They have a hard black bulb, where it is difficult to tell which end is up. I know this because I planted 100 of these this fall. (Mostly they tell you not to worry about which end is up.)

As I pick out pictures for the contest I have to choose sometimes between single flowers and clumps. They can both have their attractions. One year I limited the contest to only single flowers. I have thrown out that rule. In the bonus section I do show you one picture of a single anemone blanda.

These anemones bloom in the second wave of spring bulbs, after the aconite, snowdrops and early crocuses. By the time they come along they are sharing attention with with bloodroot, trillium, and the hellebores. In this picture you can see some of the scilla or squill that are blooming about that time. In the lower right corner you can see a bluebell thinking about blooming.

#5 Hardy Cyclamen
August 4, 2017

I have always liked cyclamen. The ones from the grocery store always brighten the winter. I find the ones from the store very hard to keep going, and are next to impossible to get to rebloom.
Well there are hardy versions of that house plant we all know. This is a little clump that has reliably come back for me for 3-4 years. I wish it had more friends. Like so many plants it needs just the right location.

This fall I did get another half dozen little corms to provide some companionship to this little guy.
The leaves make wonderful patterns.

There you have this week's contest. I hope you enjoy it.
Vote for the picture you like best.

Bonus pictures

Here are more anemone blandas.

















Here is another established clump.

This gives you an idea of how the anemones sometimes have to share space with the bluebells. The bluebells are much taller when they grow up.  As such they can crowd out other flowers, such as the anemone blandas.









Now for more orchid cactus pictures.
The second picture is a variety of NBC that is wilder than the one in the front yard. (To view these pictures one at at time, you can click on the picture for a slide show.)
I should add that all these pictures are taken at night. Sometimes I use a flash. This year I played with using just a flashlight. That is how the picture was taken that is contestant #3 along with some of the pictures in this group.





Here are more cyclamen pictures.

These are several new plants this fall. We shall see how they survive the cold in the next few months. I would love to get more clumps established.

The plant on the right is my one established plant. The ones on the left are more new plants this fall.

Here is a picture showing the wonderful pattern on some of the leaves.

A more direct view.

Julia's recipe

Beef Goulash

Although this dish is called beef goulash, I do not believe my grandmother would recognize it as Hungarian. That's okay, as we are not purists here. It is one of several dishes I make with the cut of beef called top sirloin (at least here in Iowa), which is not terribly expensive but which cooks in an hour or so, making it a good choice for supper. This is modified from a recipe in my ancient Betty Crocker cookbook. Betty knows what's what with respect to basic cookery. 

I started with about 1 1/2 pounds of top sirloin and some regular oil, an onion and the assorted elements of the sauce.

I chopped the onion and had 1 1/2 cups. I trimmed the meat of all visible fat and then cut it into pieces roughly 1" square but not exactly, and I had 2 1/2 cups of meat cubes.

I put 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet and cooked the meat and onions until the meat stopped being red and the onions were softened, probably about 5-7 minutes, with occasional stirring.

While the meat and onions were cooking, I mixed the sauce in a 2 cup measuring cup: 3/4 cup of ketchup; 1 large smushed clove of garlic; 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce; 1 tablespoon brown sugar; 2 teaspoons salt (kosher or not); 1 tablespoon paprika (probably the source of the goulash name); 1/2 teaspoon of dry mustard and 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. I whisked the ingredients together and added 1 cup of water and whisked some more, being careful to get all of the ketchup-y stuff out of the bottom of the cup. The ingredients list is a little like a basic BBQ sauce, and indeed the sauce is tasty and tangy.

I poured the sauce over the meat and stirred it in; brought to mixture to a boil; covered it and turned it down to a simmer. After about 1 hour (maybe 1 hour and 15 minutes), the meat was tender and the sauce agreeably thickened.

We served the beef goulash over noodles with a side of green beans and then a nice green salad. This dish is fast enough to make after work or even better over the weekend and reheated. Stay warm!

Odds and Ends

Since a purple flower finished at the top this past week, I thought I would share this story that was in the paper this month about the color purple.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/style/purple-pantone-color-year.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=16&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F12%2F09%2Fstyle%2Fpurple-pantone-color-year.html&eventName=Watching-article-click


Here are some of the blooming orchids in our house at the moment.

This orchid is called the coconut orchid. You can imagine why. It smells like a coconut, if you do not have a cold that seems to have been around forever.

This is its second year blooming. It has about 7 flowers at the moment.

This is a new plant for me that looks like a little cattleya. It is actually a Potinara, which is a cross between four different genus of orchids,
Brassavola x Cattleya x Laelia x Sophronitis.
This will not be on the test.

This lovely collection of flowers is probably Oncidium White Twinkle. It blooms just about this time of year. The flower stems, called spikes, actually started to emerge this summer.

This phalanopsis has been blooming for 3 weeks at this point. I expect it will bloom most of the winter. We have it on our dining room table. It has gotten lots of sun this last month.








Last week I suggested prayers directed at the state of Alabama. This week we should send our thanks. We may in fact be only 11 months from showing many of the scoundrels in Washington and Des Moines the door. Now we just have to make sure we can survive that long.

Philip