Happy New Year- Week 7- January 7, 2018

Happy New Year everyone

Welcome to week 7 of the Winter Picture Contest. With the four contestants this week, you will have seen 28 of the 52 entries in this year's contest.
That is past the half way point.

The days are getting longer. This coming week will have about 5 more minutes of daylight than last. Did you know that most of that early additional daylight occurs at the end of the day? Sunrise is now staying about the same. At this point sunset gets later by almost a minute each day. That is the kind of science that makes our heads hurt.

The cold weather seems to have dominated our existence at this point for a long time.
And it has been very cold.
I remember a month ago when I was cold, and it was 20 degrees outside. I wondered at the time what I would do when it got much colder. Well, you wear more clothes and stay inside.

On New Years Day in Iowa City, the high was -7. That is 7 degrees below zero. For the high! The low was negative 21. I did not even go outside to get the newspaper. Our daughter Maggie came over that morning. I just waited for her to bring it in. Please understand that the newspaper was right there on the porch.

A few other weather observations:
Each day this week the lows have been at least -9.
Three nights in a row it got down to below -20.
On Thursday I found myself feeling comfortable outside when the temperature was 10 above.

But the worst of this cold may be over. They say there are no days below zero this coming week. There are 30's in the forecast. This Wednesday and Thursday it might even get to 40.

And time marches on.
In only 53 days, it will be March.  Here will be that wonderful time when things start melting.
As the snow cover pulls back, snowdrops will not be far behind.

Last week in the contest

In  last week's voting the Morning Glory ran away with the contest.

Here is the full vote, showing the first day totals and then the weekly totals.
Morning Glory            15-21
Yellow Orchid cactus   9-12 (26%)
Lantana                         7-9
Daylily Kyota Swan     2-2
Monsella tulips             1-2
total                           34-46

The second place picture, the yellow orchid cactus, actually moves into wild card contention.
At this point we have had 6 weeks to look at the second place finishers.  3 "wild cards" will make it through to the next round.
So far here are the top three:
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 3 Iceland Poppy/Cattleya  30%*
Week 5  Yellow Orchid Cactus 26%


Runner ups that out of the running at this point:
Week 4- tie for second between Anemone Blandas and Allium 25%
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. For that reason only two actual second place finishers will advance.

Pictures for Week 6

#1  Magic Amethyst-daylily
July 9, 2017

I love daylilies. It seems like they do not do so well in this contest.

Well how about this daylily? What frills. A closeups of just the frills is in the bonus section.

The color combination is less dramatic than flowers with reds or blues. I do really like the pink, white and yellow, particularly in the middle of all that green.

Green.  How we miss you at this time of year.









                                                             #2 Hoya-the Hindu Rope plant
                                                              October 14, 2017

I really like to have contestants in the very late months.
This hoya plant is actually in the room with me as I type this. It is another plant that comes inside for the winter.
The plant is a vine that puts out these flower clusters from time to time.
I love the flowers inside the flower. A picture of an individual segment appears in the bonus section.

This particular plant is known as the Hindu Rope plant, or hoya compacta.

Hoya is the genus. "Compacta" is the species. There are as many as 200-300 species in the genus. The bigger grouping, or family is...wait for it...Dogbane. I do not make this stuff up. It is also called Apocynaceae. Dogbane might be easier to remember.
Hoyas are native to someplace very much not here. Actually they are found in South and Southeast Asia.
Here are some pictures of other hoya plants.
https://www.google.com/search?q=common+hoya+plant&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=g3mHr6RGQVTgxM%253A%252CYHj58JNgbVVmvM%252C_&usg=__w92SrbfE96EbegSGYikY1CzbUdU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTi8XztsLYAhWG6oMKHZykBh4Q9QEIlAEwEw#imgrc=g3mHr6RGQVTgxM:

I could imagine getting more of these lovely plants.
They do seem to thrive as houseplants. My mother has had several hanging over her kitchen sink for decades. They seem always to have some bloom somewhere.



#3 Purple Pasque Flower
April 9, 2017

This beautiful flower comes with its own bee.
I also like the little purple fluff right in the center.

Pasque flowers come in reds and whites. The purple ones seem the most hardy. A picture of the red one is in the bonus section.

Pasque flowers are native to North America as well as other places. They got around.

The genus is Pulsatilla.
The species is probably vulgaris.

Pulsatilla patens is the state flower of South Dakota.






                                                           #4 Cypripedium Giesel
                                                             May 2, 2017

This is a terrestrial orchid.
Terrestrial means it grows in the ground, as opposed to in the trees.
It grows in the ground in my garden.
The genus is Cypripedium.
These are known as lady's slipper orchids. Some are native to north America.

Giesel is a hybrid. That means it is a cross between two species. It is said to be the easiest to grow of all the Cypripedium. I would certainly attest to the fact that I have not killed it. It has outlasted several other varieties I have tried over the years. Giesel has be a regular in my garden since its purchase in 2008. In 2017, for the first time, it had three flowers. You can actually see the other two in the background.

The state flower of Minnesota is the showy lady's slipper, C. reginae. The pink lady's slipper, C. acaule, is the official flower of the Canadian province Prince Edward Island.


When we were in Maine in June there were lady slippers all over the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. They were the "acaule" species. Pictures are in the bonus section.


#5 Pink Oriental Poppy
May 25, 2017

Oriental Poppies are about the best. Unfortunately they are here for such a short time.
You saw the red one in Week 5.
They are so delicate. They are like crepe paper.















There you have the contestants for week 7.
Vote and if you can find the time, get back to me.
I do enjoy hearing from you.

Bonus Pictures

I enjoy this section of the blog. I get to go back and find related pictures, once again reviewing warmer times.

You can sort of see in this picture that the hoya plant is sort of a vine. The flowers might occur more often if I paid attention to things like fertilizer.
With potted plants that is more important.

Here is a single segment of the hoya clusters.

How about those frilly edges.

















The Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens is really special. It is about an hour by car north of Portland. We visited Katie, Elisabeth, and Christopher in Portland in early June in 2017. It was still cool. There were even some daffodils still blooming. And we went to the Gardens.
The pink orchids were putting on a show. This protected area is known for its slippers. There were hundreds. The rhododendrons were also blooming. We could not have timed the visit any better.
In this picture you can also see two tall fancy jack in the pulpits. It really was a magical time.

How about this pair?

This was about the biggest clump we saw.

Also blooming at the same time were the primroses.

Here was one very nice primrose.

More poppy pictures.

Here is the same trio, the next day.

The center of the oriental poppy is so photogenic.

Here is the red pasque flower.

Julia's Recipe

Peanut Brittle

I once read that alligator handling is not so much a skill as a willingness. The same can be said of making peanut brittle. Both endeavors require a firm resolve; peanut brittle making also requires a good candy thermometer. Mine, pictured below, is made by Taylor and is widely available in hardware stores. I like it because the glass tube (the temperature gauging part) is enclosed in a metal frame, which extends below the tube. Sturdy, not fragile. And it has a handle.

We make peanut brittle for the holidays, and we hand it out to folks in the neighborhood along with various cookies, as we have for many years. When we started, the children were small and would do the delivering, walking around the neighborhood pulling a red wagon stacked with labelled plates of cookies and treats. The children grew up and got grown-up jobs, and in one case, moved a thousand miles away. But we persist, using the recipe from our old standby, Betty Crocker.

I started by mixing 1-1/2 teaspoons of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of water and 1 teaspoon of vanilla in a little bowl. Then I put the contents of a 1 pound bag of raw peanuts and 3 tablespoons of butter in a one quart yogurt container. Both of these sets of ingredients come into play later, but at that point one cannot stop and get them ready. So I prepared them first, and you should too.

As a final prep step, I lubed up 2 cookie sheets and put them in an oven turned to 200 degrees to keep warm.

Next I measured 1 cup of light (or dark if that's what you have) corn syrup into a good-sized saucepan with a handle. I added 1 cup of water and 1-1/2 cups of regular sugar and attached the thermometer to the side of the pan (it has a kind of clippy fastener), making sure that the bulb at the end of the thermometer was in the goop.

Then I turned the heat to medium-high and let the mixture cook to 240 degrees on the candy thermometer. This takes some time - about 20-25 minutes. I kept an eye on the mixture and stirred it from time to time with a wooden spoon. You should use one too, or else a stiff (not bendy) silicone spatula. No need to stir constantly. That comes later. I also kept an eye on the candy thermometer, wondering, as I always do, why it takes so long. It's science, that's why.

When the mixture gets close to 240 degrees, the appearance of the bubbles changes, as at left.

When the mixture reached 240 degrees, I dumped in the peanuts and butter. The temperature of the mixture dropped, as to be expected when cold (or at least room temperature) things were added.

I turned the heat down a little and stirred much of the time. After some dawdling, the temperature of the mixture began to rise again. It needs to get to 300 degrees, which takes about 20 minutes. I kept stirring so that the peanuts would not burn. The pan handle is very useful at this stage as the mixture is very hot and very thick. One hand on the handle, one hand holding the spoon. When the temperature got close to 280 degrees, the mixture began to smell like roasted peanuts (the peanuts were in fact cooking in the syrup), and the whole enterprise began to feel a bit urgent. It always does.

At 280 or 290 degrees, I called Philip and had him take the cookie sheets out of the oven and put them on the counter, on trivets because they were a little bit hot.

At 300 degrees, I took the thermometer out quickly and put it (hot end forward) on a spoon rest (a plate would be fine if you remember to set one out for that purpose) and quickly stirred in mixture from the little bowl. It made the mixture sizzle and foam a bit. In fact, it is the baking soda that makes the peanut brittle take on the typical opaque appearance. Without baking soda, the final product would be translucent and called peanut glaze.

After I stirred for just a moment or two, I poured the molten mess out in roughly equal amounts onto the 2 cookie sheets and used the spoon to spread it out a bit. Philip had armed himself with a silicone spatula to help with the spreading.

That's it. A bit nerve-wracking but very good, which could be said of a number of nice things actually. This recipe makes about 2 pounds of peanut brittle. And just so you know, peanut brittle, once cooled off and broken into nice pieces, freezes well if you want to plan ahead for the 4th of July or another festive occasion.

Odds and Ends

You have seen these little air plants if you follow the blog through out the year. They were new this summer. They came inside and live above the kitchen sink. They are completing their life cycle right now,

July 1, 2017

July 12, 2017

October 14, 2017
The seed pods have formed. There is new growth at the base of the plant.

January 1, 2018
Look at the latest development.

Maggie said that they looked like dandelions. You can see the seeds and their air distribution system.


But wait.
Where do air plants grow from seed? Think about it.
Do they just find a tree trunk and hang out long enough to sprout?

I have taken a bunch of the seed and put in on the surface of one of the crotons.
We will see what happens.










Here is this week's great orchid shot.

While looking for bonus pictures I saw this picture of the backyard in April. This is what we have to look forward to. We just have to survive this between time.

Stay warm.
Listen to the sound of the melting show.
Hear the birds early in the morning.
Enjoy that extra daylight.
Better times are coming.
Philip