Week 6- December 31, 2017

Brrr

Now we remember what really cold is like.
We are in the middle of one of those bitterly cold stretches that comes along every few winters. The highs for several days will be about 0. The lows are 10-20 degrees, below zero.
You have to go back to January, 2014 to find temperatures this cold. Starting yesterday, we are to have 3 days in a row where the days do not get to 0 and the nights are below -10. That is longer than the last very cold spell which was in 2014.
As I have said before there is this website from Iowa State University that retrieves this kind of data for you.
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/sites/hist.phtml?network=IA_COOP&station=ICYI4
Last December, in 2016, it was 51 on the day after Christmas and 40 on New Year's Eve Day.

But we live in the moment.
The heavy winter comforter is now on the bed. The garden gloves I wear in winter have been replaced with those big black mitten-like gloves that make it hard to do stuff but are warm.
Worrying about bad road conditions is taking up more and more of my time.
The windows in the bedroom have begun to make wonderful frost patterns.

So what else is new, as my mother always asks?
Having Christmas and New Years on a Monday makes for nice 3 day weekends. At the same time by compressing the work week into 4 days, it can make for a more frantic time when you have projects that are due.

During this cold and sometime frantic season I need this picture therapy even more than ever.

Last week in the contest

The winner in Week 5 was  Epimedium Domino.

I was a little surprised by the voting. I thought the Poppy would do better.
Here is the final vote, including some daily splits. The epimedium took an lead on the first day, and maintained that for the rest of the week.
The  tulip trio and the purple zinnia tied for second.


Epimedium        8- 8-  14
Tulips                3- 6-  10
Zinnia                5- 6-  10
Poppy                2- 4-   5
Lupine               4- 4-   4
Total                22-28- 43


At this point we have had 5 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 4- tie for second between Anemone Blandas and Allium 25%

out of the running at this point
week 5- tulip trio and zinnia  23%
Week 2  Multi colored Zinnia 20%

* In Week 3 there was a tie for first. Both of those will advance automatically. Only two actual second place finishers will advance.

Week 6

#1 Morning Glory-Venice Blue
August 5, 2017

I really like morning glories.
This wonderful variety was a volunteer in 2017. I had grown it in 2016. It came back as a volunteer.
There is a red/pink version that is also good.

I actually find some morning glories hard to grow. What?
These annuals should be easy to grow. My problem is that I try to grow them on a trellis by the front porch on the east side of the house. They gets good morning sun, which seems right for morning glories.

But growing anything right next to the house can be tricky. That is particularly the case where the roof hangs out a bit. It is all about adequate water. Most people do not want a lot of water next to their foundations. Houses are designed with down spouts and roofs that stick out a bit from the wall.
This means that the area 1-2 feet next to the house is particularly dry. The rain does not always reach that area. Morning glories or anything on a trellis on a porch has to rely on personal watering.

One solution is to plant the morning glories in pots. I have found bigger pots retain moisture longer than the ground by the foundation. But you still have to do the watering at least once a week, whether it rains or not.

The other problem with that particular trellis is that I just do not pay attention to that area enough. When I walk around the garden noting things to do, I often stay in the backyard. We all have forgotten or neglected areas of the garden. That can be true in other areas of our lives as well. I just do not pay enough attention the part of the garden by the trelllis. Each year we need to pick out a neglected area and resolve to work on that area this year. I now make that resolution with this trellis and the bed it sits in.


                                         #2 Daylily Kyoto Swan
                                                              June 28, 2017

This spider-like daylily presents a nice color combination of pink and light purple. I sometimes think that there is no such thing as a bad color combination. 2017 was a good year for my daylilies. They play a big role in garden high summer. I made an effort to clean up their beds, moving a few around. That can become necessary as sun patterns change as trees grow or die back.










#3 Yellow Orchid Cactus
June 21, 2017

This is one of the orchid cactus I have had the longest. I do not know the name. As you might guess it is a cousin of the Night Blooming Cereus.

We found the orchid cactus for the first time in a greenhouse near Chincoteague, Virginia, I think in the 90's. We brought one plant back under our seats on the airplane. I then called the greenhouse and they agreed to send me 4-5 more. (They were not normally in the mail order business.) I got this one and a lovely red one. The pictures on my computer go back to 2001. That was when I got my first digital camera. A picture of this cactus, or one like it, from 2002, is in the bonus section.

After I got those first plants I started looking a pictures of epiphyllum (the correct name of these plants) on the internet. They come in such marvelous shapes and colors. I was hooked.

Did I mention that they do have to come inside for the winter? I grow them mostly in hanging baskets, hung from the trees. They grow well in partial shade.


                                                              #4 Lantana closeup
                                                               August 12, 2017

I rediscovered lantana 3-4 years ago. It is an annual where the flowers have these marvelous geometric designs. We first encountered them in Chincoteague, where my Aunt Elsie grew them in her yard. We thought of them as a Southern thing. No, they grow just fine in Iowa.

Please see the bonus section for other pictures.

For the best result you should give lantana full sun. They can really bush up with more sun than I can give them.









#5 Monsella tulip with bluebells
April 16, 2017

There are tulips that are very organized. Their shirts are tucked in. Their hair is combed and freshly cut.
Then there are the Monsella tulips.
We love them. Since they bloom at the same time as the bluebells the combination can be stunning.

Some years back, we planted about 6 or 8 Monsellas along the sidewalk in front of the house, where the kids walk by on their way to the high school 4 blocks further east. A pack of high school boys stopped in their tracks to admire the tulips. A testimonial to floral star power.

I planted a group of 20 Monsella tulips two months ago. It is on that list of things to anticipate.

This variety of tulip does not do so well after the first season. Sometimes they will bloom the second year. It can be best to treat some tulips, like the Monsellas, just as annuals.



That is it for this week.
Enjoy the pictures from warmer times.
Vote for your favorite. I do appreciate everyone who takes the time to vote.
I also appreciate your comments, in one form or another.

Bonus pictures

Monsella tulips

The more I look at this picture the more I think this picture could have been in the contest.

What a great color combination.
Sometime I should have a color combination contest.
Red and Yellow would certainly be near the top.

Here is the clump in the front parkway.
There is actually a picture of this same group in the bluebell slideshow a little ways down. In that picture the bluebells are bigger.

This is another one of those nice morning glories.

Morning glories are mostly vines. They can grow on a trellis. They can climb on almost anything. I saw some grown in with an autumn clematis one time. That combination was lovely. I think about growing them up the stalks of lilium.
Both of those ideas should go on the good idea list.
Do you have one of those lists?


Here are some more Lantana

The little round guys are the seeds. They turn black eventually.

This almost begins to look like embroidery.
















Let me take this opportunity to talk about the color blue and the spring garden.

In the spring there are two waves of blue in the garden. First, starting in March, after the snowdrops and aconite, there is a blue wave of the little scilla, or squill.

The squill make a wonderful carpet, which is mostly indestructible.

Everything looks good with  a little blue sprinkled around it.
This of course is a trillium.









Enjoy this slide show of bluebells, which are the second wave of blue.




Here is one of the oldest pictures on my computer. It is from June 2002.
You can also see the trellis on the front porch where I try to grow morning glories.

Julia's recipe

Apricot Cake

My grandmother always had cans of Solo filling in her pantry - poppy seed for sure and sometimes apricot and prune and nut filling as well. My grandmother used the poppy seed filling to make poppyseed strudel. My grandmother made, once in a rare while, the kind of strudel with paper thin dough, and she filled that kind of strudel with little apple slices or slivers of winter squash. The poppyseed strudel was different, made with a yeast dough and rolled up into a log shape sort of like the middle stage of making cinnamon rolls. Unlike cinnamon rolls, this kind of strudel is baked in the rolled shape and cut into slices after baking to serve. My grandmother also used the fillings to make kolaches, again different than one might expect (at least in Eastern Iowa where all Czech grandmas make puffy yeast dough kolaches about two inches across with fruit filling in the indented place in the middle). My grandmother's kolaches were made of a sturdy cookie dough, rolled out and cut into 2-3" squares. A dab of filling was place in the middle and then two corners folded into the middle so the cookie had an oblong shape with pointed ends on the long sides. But I digress. These fillings were also used to make a cake, sort of like pound cake with the addition of sour cream and Solo filling, and that's what I made recently, using a old family recipe which turns out to be the same as the recipe on the Solo poppy seed filling can! By the way, Solo fillings are to be found in the grocery store (including HyVee for the Iowa readers) in the baking section near the canned pie fillings.

I started by creaming 2 sticks (that's 1 cup or 1/2 lb.) of butter in the stand mixer. The butter had been out on the counter, but it's winter so it did not soften much. I mixed it until it was broken up and then added 1-1/2 cups of white sugar and mixed some more. While the butter and sugar were mixing it up, I separated 4 eggs, placing the whites in a bowl for later in the recipe. Then I added the egg yolks to the butter/sugar mixture one at a time. I ran the mixture on low and then up to medium.

Next I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 1 cup of sour cream, and mixed that in too.

Here is the butter-sugar-egg yolk-sour cream mixture, looking all rich and bright yellow.

Next I added a can (lurking in the background) of Solo apricot filling, mixing it in on low to medium.

Then I sifted (really) 2-1/2 cups of regular white flour with 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt (because I used salted butter. If you use unsalted butter, make it 3/4 teaspoon of salt). I don't own a sifter, which Alton Brown would call a uni-tasker. I used a sieve, measuring out a bit less than 2-1/2 cups into the sieve which I set over a 4 cup measuring cup. I jiggled the sieve and the flour drifted down into the cup. I added the dry ingredients in 1/2 cup increments to the mixture in the bowl, stirring it in on low speed so the flour mixture would not fly out of the bowl all over the room (which is what happens if you add flour to a heavy batter on any speed faster than low).

After the flour (and baking soda and salt) were mixed in, I turned my attention to the 4 egg whites in the separate bowl. I have a hand-held mixer, and I used it to beat the egg whites. I started by adding a pinch of salt to the egg whites plus 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar. This helps the egg whites attain better volume. I believe that this is science. I beat the egg whites until they formed peaks when I lifted the beaters out of the mixture.

Next, I folded the egg whites into the batter, about 1/3 at a time, as at right.

We had turned the oven on to 350 degrees, and Philip prepped an angel food cake pan by spraying it with no-stick spray and coating it with flour. This is something of a feat. The flour goes nicely around the outside of the pan, but you have to get flour onto the center post thing as well and that can take some ingenuity and a spoon to fling flour at the center post. The excess flour went into the sink for disposal.

I spooned the batter into the pan, being careful not to get it up high on the sides or the center post. The batter is too thick to pour. Use a spoon or a spatula or both. When the batter was all in, the cake went into the oven for about 1 hour. I used a bamboo skewer inserted about an inch in from the outside (which is also about an inch in from the center tube) to adjudge doneness: not goopy, it's done. Do not overbake!

I cooled the cake by setting the pan on a wire rack. After 10 - 15 minutes, I ran a knife around both the outside and the post, hoping to ensure that nothing would stick to the pan. Then I flipped the cake pan over onto the wire rack, so it was (momentarily) upside down. I immediately flipped it again onto an attractive plate and there it was.

It is a very nice cake, surprisingly light considering how thick the batter is, with a good crumb. And you can use almost any kind of Solo filling - poppyseed, nut, raspberry, cherry. Do not use blueberry. I once made this cake with Solo blueberry filling, and the filling turned the inside of the cake a uniform shade of gray. Kind of dark gray. No matter how good a cake might taste, it will not be well-received if it is gunmetal gray. This is called experiential learning.

Odds and Ends

When it is so bitterly cold, the garden seems so far away.  It takes some effort to find the connection to growing things. Indoor plants help. Orchids help.
Here is a picture of one of the orchids just acquired.

Stay warm.
Drive safely.
Philip