Week 10- January 28, 2018

Welcome to Week 10 of the Winter Picture Contest.

We are near the end of January. Groundhog day is around the corner. The days are getting noticeably longer.

Right after December 21, the days were getting longer by just a few minutes each week.  All of that was at the end of the day. Now we are picking up 15 minutes a week. It is being added about equally to each end of the day. During this coming week, we will reach and pass the 10 hours of daylight mark. (On December 21, the length of the day in Iowa City was 9 hours and 9 minutes.)

We had another couple of sunny days above freezing. You can see signs of the early bulbs waking up. I should add in the interest of being fair and balanced, you might have to stoop down close to the ground to see those signs. The snowdrops are just emerging. I saw some little shoots of a new lupine leaf or two. At church, some pansies I planted in the fall are waking up.

I actually put myself to sleep Friday night thinking about things to do right now in the garden. It is time to cut down the fall clematis. For some reason you do that in the late winter.
The old hellebore foliage should be cut down. There are epimedium that should be cut back.

It is not a long list. But it is a longer list than it would have been if there were 5 inches of snow on the ground.

I went out and did a few of those things in the garden yesterday. I know to take it easy early in the season. Many of the aforementioned tasks involve stooping and bending. Some of those muscles have not been used in a while. But it was wonderful to get out and just do something outside.

And there are all those little bulbs that are poking up, by the thousands.

Last week was week 9 in the contest

In last week's voting the winner was... the Silk Road asclepias. It had been in a tie with the red zinnia for several days, until Saturday afternoon. That last vote came in, breaking the tie, and giving it a 14-13 win. Amazing. I had to change the text last night.

Did you see the bug?

Here is the full vote, showing the first day's totals and then the weekly totals.


Silk Road Aslepias   8-14
Red Zinnia  9-13
Banned in Boston  5-10
Orchid cactus  6-9
Tulip  3-4
total   31-50             

The playoffs begin in about a month.
At this point we have had 9 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 6  Yellow Orchid Cactus 26.1%


Runner ups that are out of the running at this point:
Week 9 Red Zinnia  26.0%
Week 4- tie for second between anemone blanda and allium 25%
week 7- hardy orchid and pink poppy 23%
week 5- tulip trio and zinnia  23%
week 8- yellow hellebore  22%
Week 2  multi-colored zinnia 20%

* In Week 3  there was a tie for first. Both of those contestants will advance automatically. For that reason only two actual second place finishers will advance.

Week 10

I have a special group of pictures this week. They are all big and cropped wide. There is nothing like big pictures with good colors.

#1 Rudbeckia
July 8, 2017

Red and yellow, and in patterns.
I grow a few of these Rudbeckia. They like sun so the competition for the space is fierce. They are in the category of not so hardy perennials. They will maybe come back a second year. They may self seed. I am always struck by how each flower on the same plant is a little different from the next one.



#2 Ruby Spider-the daylily
July 8, 2017

It is big. It is red. It is yellow.
Ruby Spider has always been one of my favorite daylilies. I have given it the point position right there on Fairview Street. They sometimes refer to certain plants at a particular location as being a focal point. This is one of those plants.

Each flower on any daylily plant only blooms for one day. Hence the name. A mature plant however can have 150 flowers. In 2017 Ruby Spider bloomed for almost a month, going from at least June 25 to the last flower on July 22.
By putting it out front, on the very edge of the garden, as a focal point plant, it is also right there for the occasional deer. They do not even have to enter the garden. Deer love daylilies. I think in either 2015 or 2016 a deer ate most of the stalks of Ruby Spider, early in the season. Those stalks do not grow back that year.
In 2017 I did give it in particular, some bad smelling deer repellant.

#3 Pink Dogwood
April 20, 2017

We have a pink dogwood tree. It must be going on 20 years old. I got it for Julia, for her birthday. There is nothing that says Happy Birthday like a small tree.
It is sheltered, next the the south side of the house. It must be almost 20 feet tall at this point.
One year a family of cardinals built a next in it, while it was outside our kitchen window. At this point it reaches to the next floor.
This picture, and the ones in the bonus section, are taken looking down at the tree from the kitchen steps. The bluebells are in the background.

We got a second dogwood this past year. It is budding up now. April will be wonderful.


#4 Little bearded iris
April 21, 2017

I have said I love little bearded iris.
I really like the color accents on this particular little iris pair. There is that nice little blue beard. That is what they call that thing that looks like a caterpillar. There is also that yellow that looks like it was added, almost as an afterthought. I got some more of these little guys this past fall. I am looking forward to seeing how they will do. The little iris foliage is starting to grow now.

#5 Orange Asiatic lily
June 16, 2017

Asiatic lilies are the first of the lilium to bloom. Lilium are not related to daylilies. Whenever it rains you can get some great pictures.
Orange is good.



There you have it for Week 10. Voting was strong last week. Find someone you know and have them vote this week. Maybe we can break through that 50 vote mark.

Bonus Section

Here are more Asiatic lilies

Here is the single flower.

The group photo.

I really like the color on this ones. I also like the freckles.

If the proportions were a little better on this picture, it would have been in the contest.
Actually it is the same picture as the contestant, only cropped differently.

How about this single flower?

Here is a single Ruby Spider.
It is actually not a real "spider" daylily." Spiders have longer petals.













More dogwood pictures.

Julia's recipe

I say this in the email but let me say it again. Katie has put together all of Julia's recipes in one location. It is found at
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/
There are places on that blog for comments with each recipe. Maybe if you use one and like it you could mention that in the comments.pm

                                   Indonesian Squash Soup


This recipe is a modified version of a recipe put out by the New Pioneer Coop, our local long-time natural food store. The recipe is gluten-free, dairy-free and easily vegan. It also tastes good for something so thoroughly free of things. I like to make soup in the winter, and so I made this soup last week.

I started with a medium-sized butternut squash, which I washed, split lengthwise
and cleaned of seeds.

On the counter, you will see the most of the rest of the ingredients: onion, fresh ginger, garlic, salt, ground coriander, ground turmeric, curry powder, ground cumin, black pepper, coconut milk, broth (in this case chicken) and macadamia nuts.

Not present but also important are vegetable oil and kale.

I started the cooking by roasting the butternut squash in the oven at 350 degrees for a little more than an hour on a rimmed baking sheet with a silicon baking mat. I started the squash cut-side down and then flipped them partway through. The squash is done when you can pierce it easily with a fork or knife.

If you don't have a silicon baking mat, brush a little oil on the cut side so it won't stick.

After the squash was baked, I scraped all of the pulp out of the shells and put it in a measuring cup. I had about 2 cups of squash pulp.

Next I chopped the onion (about 1 cup), smushed the garlic (about 1 tablespoon), grated some ginger (about 2 teaspoons) and put all of them in a pot with 3 tablespoons of oil. I cooked them gently (no brown bits!) until the onion had given up. Then I added 1 teaspoon each: ground coriander, ground cumin, turmeric, and salt and 1/2  teaspoon each grocery store curry powder and ground black pepper. When the spices began to smell good, I added the squash pulp, 4 cups of chicken stock and 1 can of coconut milk (14 oz.). I have made this recipe with vegetable stock, either home-made or store-bought. The resulting soup is delicious. And vegan for those of you who care about that.

After the soup had simmered for about 20-30 minutes, I whirred it up with my stick blender, which is a very useful appliance and I highly recommend it. If you don't have one, blend the soup in batches in a blender.

I left the soup to simmer gently and prepared some kale. We used a whole bunch of green curly kale. I mean this as a measure: one entire bunch. I used green kale because the red kale at the store looked tired. We like curly kale better than lacinto kale.

I folded each leaf in half and cut out the center stem, then cut the leaf into medium-sized pieces.

Here is the blended soup awaiting the arrival of the kale.

I added the kale, put a lid on the pot and let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the kale was cooked.

Then I added some dry roasted macadamia nuts (because I had dry roasted macadamia nuts), and it was ready. I had a little bowl of macadamia nuts for those who wished to add  more at the table.

Alternatives: You could use chard or spinach instead of kale. Prepare the chard as the kale: cut out the center ribs. It will take less time than kale to cook. Fresh spinach only needs to be washed and will take zero time to cook. Put it in; stir it around: it wilts immediately.

You could use almonds if you like. I would not use walnuts or peanuts. Maybe pecans. Or leave the nuts out altogether. I think roasted sunflower seeds might be nice.

I used butternut squash. Acorn squash or pumpkin or other winter squash (turban, Hubbard. Not spaghetti squash!) would work too with the same method. I have never tried it, but I imagine canned pumpkin would also work. I would use more than 1 can - maybe 1-1/2 cans or even 2.

Here it is, in the bowl, with some nuts sprinkled on top. Serve with a salad! Leftovers warm up nicely - this is a sturdy soup.

Odds and Ends

Here are the pansies at church. It will not stay above freezing soon. Maybe we will have blooming pansies by late February. We will see what happens on Groundhog day.











Here is the update on how long it is until:
February 2 (Groundhog day) - 5 days
February 13 (First day for pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training) - 16 days
March 20- first day of spring- 51 days
April 15 - 77 days
November 6 (Election day) - 282 days

Remember our Halloween pumpkins?
Here are two of them this weekend.

The orchid show continues in the sunshine in the living room.














Have a quiet week.
Philip and Julia