Week 11 February 4.2018

Welcome to Week 11 of the Winter Picture Contest.

Week 11 is here.  So is February. The groundhog would have seen his shadow here in Iowa if it had looked around on Thursday morning. So I guess that means no very early thaw.
It is cold again. Several days this last week were in the single digits, even down to 0. More of the same is forecast for this coming week.
I guess that is what we can expect this time of year. It can be 0. Or it can be like last weekend and be in the 50's.

I have my Iceland Poppy seeds planted. They have sprouted. They are under the bright lights in the basement. It is time to look at the seed catalogues and find other things that might be  interesting to grow.

I was looking at pictures for this week. One contestant is a Spring wildflower. I got to look at some of the pictures from walking in the woods. I really look forward to doing that soon.

Last week was week 10 in the contest

In last week's voting the winner was...well, there was a tie between the dogwood picture and Ruby Spider.

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


Pink Dogwood   11-15
Ruby Spider      10-15
Rudbeckia      5-8
Little iris pair   3-5
Orange Asiatic lily   2-2

total   31-45     

The playoffs begin in three weeks.
At this point we have had 10 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 10 ruby Spider/dogwood 33%*
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 3 Iceland Poppy/Cattleya  30%*


Runner ups that are out of the running at this point:
Week 6  Yellow Orchid Cactus 26.1%
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 Weeks 3 and 10  there was a tie for first. Both of those contestants will advance automatically.

This Week is Week 11

#1 Amaryllis
May 12, 2017

This is Apple Blossom.
I grow Amaryllis and have most of them rebloom each year. I try to keep them dormant all winter. That way they will bloom in May when they go outside in April,

It has a nice greenish throat.












                                                                                  #2 Orange Coneflower
                                                                                   June 17, 2017

What a great orange coneflower.
Coneflowers have come a long way in the time I have been gardening. Purple coneflowers have always been around. So have some of the taller yellow varieties that grow on the prairie.
But those hybridizers have been busy. There are so many exciting colors and shapes.

They have been at it long enough that I think there are newer ones that can now be pronounced vigorous. I have several on my wish list for this spring.

They make a good companion to daylilies. Just plant them in between and watch.







#3 Toad lily
September 2, 2017

This may be the favorite name for a plant in the garden.
Toad lily. How many plants have animal names in them? We have two featured this week.
I will work on a list. You can write in and tell me more.


Speckles are wonderful. I have a bunch of these toad lilies. They are like little jewels, unlike almost any other flower in the garden.
This one bloomed rather early this last year. Some will bloom until November. I received a catalog last month that was selling 6 different varieties. Actually they all looked rather alike.

One really nice thing about toad lilies is that they bloom in the fall. As you are trying to figure out how to keep your garden going after high summer toad lilies should be near the top of your list.

They are quite vigorous. They spread. So many good qualities.

I have a variegated variety as well as one that is mostly yellow. But no pictures of those. Some pictures are in the bonus section.



Here is a link to many pictures of toad lilies from the Internet:
https://www.google.com/search?q=toad+lilies&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=JCDjcrevihj75M%253A%252CStwt6UqKsSqdlM%252C_&usg=__2na95Wio94jeMYkK73E3LDGtsHs%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSnPzMhorZAhVn0YMKHTAuChsQ9QEI5AEwBg#imgrc=JCDjcrevihj75M:

Toad lilies are in the genus Tricyrtis and they are very much not from around here. They are from  various parts of Asia including they tell me the Himalayas.
Most of what we think of as toad lilies are T. hirta, which is from Japan.

So why does the word "toad" appear in the name, other than as a clever marketing idea? Well  the Internet tells me that in the Philippines there was a flower that if you crushed it you could attract and hunt toads. This apparently was complete bunk. The best I could find was that toads have speckles too. Whatever.

For more information see the Bonus section.



                                                                                          #4 Dogtooth violet
                                                                                           April 12, 2017

Here is another flower with animals in its name.
Dogtooth violets, which are also known as "trout lilies," are an Iowa wildflower. We find them in the woods in Iowa in April along with the bloodroot and the Dutchman's breeches.
This great little flower was in a patch of many of these plants under the pink crabapple trees. They all have spread from a clump or two I got from a friend many years ago. It took a long time for them to start to bloom.

There are the hybrids of course. Surprise. They are not as vigorous.

They completely disappear by June 1, like many wildflowers. They seem indestructible.



Education time:
The genus for this plant is Erythronium.
The species for the white flowered American wildflower is E. albidum.
The yellow variety that is also a wildflower (see bonus section) is E. americanum. (We do not see this yellow variety in the woods in Iowa.)
There is a hybrid sold in catalogues that is E. pagoda.
When I start reading I learn there is a pink wildflower found only in Minnesota. Who knew.



#5 Triumphator, the lilium
      July 1, 2017

This is a wonderful lilium that comes back every year. It is a hybrid, that is a cross, between a trumpet lily and a longiflorum lily. The lily we think of as the Easter lily, is a longiflorum. That is the species, while the genus is Lilium.













There you have the contestants for Week 11. Thanks for voting. Encourage a friend to vote.
I enjoy this as you probably can tell. But sometimes, when it is cold and the Iowa legislature is in session,  I need some positive reinforcement.

Bonus Section

Here is lots more about dog tooth violets.
First they are not violets. Partially for that reason they are also called "trout lilies". Why trout? That is because the leaf is mottled apparently resembling a trout.
The "tooth" part of the name apparently comes from the bulb, which I have never dug up to see. I will do that this spring. I have no idea about the "dog" part of the name.

This picture is from April 8, 2017. You can see some bluebells growing in the same area. There are not many flowers.

Here is an individual plant. If you look real hard there is a bud emerging.

Here is one of the E. americanum. I bought this plant ten years ago. It comes back each year but does not exactly spread.
I have to be careful not to plant an annual right where it is located.
I have no such concerns for the hundreds of white ones.

This is the picture from which the contestant came. You can see the mottled leaf quite well in this picture. Does it look like a trout?












In this April 13 picture you can see how the plants have jumped the bricks into the path. There are a few flowers but the flowers are not exactly all over.

Here are toad lily pictures.

Here is an article about toad lilies in Better Homes and gardens.
https://www.bhg.com/gardening/plant-dictionary/perennial/toad-lily/
It mentions one variety that is all white. I think I would like to try that.









Here are some marvelous closeup pictures:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan10/bj-toadlily.html



This picture was going to be in last week's contest featuring wide pictures. I made the change at the last minute.  Maybe it should have been a contestant.  It is rather nice,

This is actually a different lily, one called Silk Road. It really gets tall after all these years. It might get to six feet tall.
It is an Orientpet. That means it is a cross between an Oriental lily and a Trumpet lily.

I love the patterns that coneflower heads can make.

Here you see how coneflowers and daylilies work together.

Julia's recipe

Cranberry Orange Marmalade

I think we would all be better off if we ate more toast. Our collective existence would be more leisurely with more time for contemplation. Toast invites introspection. Plus toast tastes good, especially when topped with some high quality jam or jelly or, in this case, marmalade. I have made cranberry orange marmalade from time to time for many years. It was a favorite of our dear friend Stewart, and I would send him a jar at Christmas or other special occasions. And marmalade is pretty easy to make, requiring no special equipment.  It does require cranberries, which we always have on hand, buying a bunch at the end of the winter holiday season and freezing them for use during the non-cranberry part of the year.

I started by rinsing 2 pounds of frozen cranberries in a colander and picking out any that looked particularly squished or oddly colored (say, orange). I then dumped the remaining cranberries in the big pot shown.

I used a vegetable peeler to take the peel off 2 oranges, leaving the white pithy part on the oranges.

Next I stacked up the orange peel ribbons and sliced across so I had little shreds of orange peel. I ended up with about 1/2 cup.

Next I peeled the white pith (orange-ish really) off the oranges, cut off the ends (and ate them) and cut the rest into small segments. I ended up with about 3/4 cup of orange pieces.

I added both the peel and oranges to the pot. Then I added 4 cups of water, put the pot on the stove and brought the mixture to a boil. I turned down the heat, covered the pot and let the mixture cook for 10 minutes.

While the mixture was cooking, I measured 5-1/2 cups of sugar into a big bowl. I also got out one pouch of Certo pectin, cut the top off and set the open pouch upright in a cup.

After 10 minutes, I took the lid off the pot and poured in the sugar. I mixed the sugar in and turned the heat up.

When the mixture came to a serious boil, I poured in the pectin and started stirring. When the mixture came to a boil again, I timed it for 1 minute, stirring like mad because it was boiling away - the proverbial boil which cannot be stirred down. When the 1 minute was up, I took the pot off the heat and moved the pot over to the counter to can the marmalade.

Prior to starting out, I had washed and steamed a bunch of 1/2 pint canning jars and put the same number of new canning lids in a little pan covered with water. When the lids came to a boil, I turned them off.

I ladled marmalade into the jars; Philip wiped off the tops of the jars with a clean damp paper towel (in case I had dribbled), put on a clean jar lid and screwed on a screw band. Then he put the jars upside down on the attractive tea towel.

Here they are. Actually, we ended up with 10 1/2 pints plus a pint jar that went into the refrigerator for immediate consumption, as shown on the toast.

If you are the kind of person who broods about food safety, the jars can be frozen. Or the marmalade can be ladled into some other kind of freezer container. I have never had problems with jam or jelly or marmalade but others worry.

A couple of options - instead of all or some of the water at the beginning, you might use orange juice. I supposed you could substitute a bit of lemon juice for some of the juice or water. If you prefer a smoother texture, you could mash some of the cranberries after the 10 minute cooking period. And of course, cranberry marmalade need not be reserved for toast. It is terrific on plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

Odds and ends

It has been a tiring week, following a tiring month. Last weekend was so nice and warm. Particularly after that weekend these last few days just drag along being so cold. The ground is frozen solid again. All those green things that were coming up are rethinking that plan.
When it happens it will be good to get outside and get my hands in the dirt.

Sometimes after 40 years of being a lawyer it can be hard to keep going, every day. I may have to motivate myself with rewards for the garden. Maybe if I can just do this one brief I can get myself 3 new bright red coneflowers. That might work.

I hope you can find the motivation to keep going.
Here are some of the countdown points to remember.

February 2 (Groundhog day) - Done
February 13 (First day for pitchers and catchers report to baseball spring training) - 9 days
March 20- first day of spring- 44 days
April 15 - 70 days
November 6 (Election day) - 275 days

Here is the link to all of Julia's recipes.
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/
If you try and like one of the recipes let us know. There is a comment section on the blog with her recipes.

Drive safely and stay warm.

Philip and Julia