Week 15- March 4, 2018

The garden is waking up. Say it again, but louder.

The garden is waking up.

Snowdrops are now open. I have two basic kinds. There are the solitary plants. Then there are the groups. Both are in this picture.

So many other plants are waking up. You can go around and find something new almost every day. There are peonies poking up, looking almost bright red. The monkshood is up about an inch. Daffodils are showing about the same. And the hellebores are virtually exploding.

After the snowdrops,  the next flower to bloom in the spring is the little yellow winter aconite. They emerged during this last week, thinking about blooming. Before they bloom they look like little yellow light bulbs, all scattered around.
They want sun to actually open. It was sunny Friday, but not quite warm enough-upper 40's. On Saturday we just got to the 50's, so the first ones opened.

This first picture is from Friday. In this enlarged picture you can see some little round seeds, some with sprouts. Those are the seeds of the little squill, or scilla. The squill will bloom blue in a few weeks.

This weekend was the first time this year where I really worked in the garden. I did some garden cleanup. There is always garden cleanup. By the end of Saturday I had filled almost all of my trash can containers with yard waste. (There are 6 of them.)  I really don't know what I will do today. Pickup is not until Wednesday.
I started thinking about potting up little hellebore seedlings, that are growing all over the place.

Week 1 of the playoffs

In last week's first week of the playoffs the winner was the red anemone. It was no contest. It will advance to the finals in 3 weeks.

The only drama in the voting was whether the anemone would get to 50% of the vote. It reached 46% by the end of the week. That actually was the largest percentage by a winner of any week this year. (Several winners reached 45%.)
The epimedium edged out the white poppy for second place.
The full voting, including the count after day 1, was:

Red Anemone  13-20
Epimedium domino    7-11
White Iceland poppy    8-10
Ruby Spider    2-3
total 30-45

Week 2 of the playoffs

My goodness, what a great group of pictures this week. I have no clue at the moment which one will get my vote. I can make a strong case for each of them.


Yellow tulips
Week 1
April 15, 2017

Tulips are good.
Some are perennial.
They do not have to be planted in large numbers.
They can be sprinkled around to add color contrast to so many other wonderful flowers that make April the best month.
The deer really like tulips.
I had the first deer tracks in my garden this week.
I  sprinkled deer repellent around yesterday, hopefully before patterns get established.




#2 Pink Dogwood
Week 10
April 20, 2017

Blooming at the same time as those tulips in April, was/is this wonderful pink dogwood. Isn't it interesting how, when describing gardens, verb tenses can get mixed up?

All the dogwoods in town were so good last year.
This tree was a birthday present for Julia many years ago.
This tree is now perhaps  20 feet tall. It reaches right past out kitchen window all the way to the second floor.
One year a family of cardinals built a nest in the dogwood, right outside the kitchen window, by the sink. I could wash dishes and watch the nest. It was amazing how quickly those baby cardinals grew up and went away.

As you can tell the dogwood blooms at the same time as the bluebells.

We got a second dogwood tree in 2017. It seems to have come through the winter in good shape. I could imagine getting a few more. Our pink crabapple trees are nearing the end of their time. We look for replacements.With the big trees everywhere, we apparently do not have enough sun for replacement crabapple trees. Dogwoods, which are understory trees, might be just what we should get.



#3 Night Blooming Cereus
Week  4
August 16, 2017

The night blooming cereus is the drama queen of the garden. It has a good name. It has the unique trick of only blooming at night. It not only opens at night, but will be done by morning.
Sometimes in the fall, as I prepare to bring the plant inside,  I will trim the main plant. I then root the cuttings. The plant started two winters ago looks big enough to bloom this year.

I think this picture is certainly the most dramatic picture of the year. I guess you will let me know how that drama competes with color.


#4  Purple cattleya orchid
Week 3
October 21, 2017

Speaking of color here is one of two orchids that were in the contest this winter. This cattleya blooms reliably, using in the fall. This bloomed before it had to come in for the winter.

Orchids are now an established part of the garden. Some will bloom over the summer. Some bloom over the winter which is good.

Bonus Pictures

Tulips



Dogwood bonus pictures

The dogwood tree is so tall (for a dogwood tree) that photographing individual flowers is difficult.
This is an enlargement of the previous picture. The picture was taken looking down at the tree from the steps going up to the kitchen door.






Orchids throughout the year.

Julia's Recipe

Cauliflower curry

Please remember that all of Julia's recipes are in one place now:
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

During the time we lived among vegetarians, we became acquainted with cuisines with meatless cooking, especially Indian. As far as we can tell, Indian cuisine is not engaged finding substitutes for meat but rather in cooking tasty dishes in which there is no thought of meat. Vegetable curries fit that category. This recipe is adapted from our old stand-by, The Vegetarian Epicure.

Appropriately, I began with a head of cauliflower. I rinsed it off, cut out the core (which makes a very nice snack for the cook), and cut the head into pieces. I ended up with about 8 cups of cauliflower chunks.

Here we have the heap of chunks, and the rest of the ingredients: vegetable oil (use ghee if you have it or butter. Do not use olive oil. Maybe coconut oil.) and the little bowl of spices. The spices were: 1/2 teaspoon each of ground ginger, turmeric, cayenne, ground coriander and salt. Plus 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Plus 1/2 teaspoon of mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Plus 1 smushed clove of garlic.

I heated 3 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet. When the oil was warmed up (but not crazy hot or smoking), I added all of spices and stirred them around until they were fragrant, which did not take very long at all.

Then I added the cauliflower and 1/2 cut of water. I turned the heat down to medium and covered the skillet. After about 20-25 minutes, the cauliflower was soft and the water had evaporated.

And here it is. Soft, cauliflower-ish and mildly spicy. Serve with basmati rice and a nice dal and a salad and you have supper.

The Vegetarian Epicure suggests adding peas, diced tomatoes and cilantro at the end. We do not like peas so no peas, thanks. Some of us have feelings about cilantro so no cilantro either. We have added diced tomatoes now and then, but prefer the dish to be just  cauliflower.


Notes: if you use vegetable oil, this dish is not only vegetarian but also vegan. If you like your cauliflower al dente, check on it after 15 minutes and keep checking until you have the texture you like.

Odds and Ends
In the last week there were 0 page views from Russia.

On the other hand there were over 100 "viewers" from Italy. What is that?

I do like hard scape. I like spinny things.
They are particularly interesting in the winter.
Here is a video of one of them.

As gardeners sometime say, I could imagine having....more.
Guess what. I just got another one. Now we just have to put it together.


I had some tree trimming done this past week. While they were at it,  they replaced the ropes in the Walnut tree that I use to hang some of the bigger plants. After 4-5 years the ropes were fraying a little. Those ropes hang from branches that are 25 feet up. They used a cherry picker. People sometimes see those ropes and wonder how they got up there. Now you know.

The garden has been selected to be on the Project Green garden walk this summer. June 23, a Saturday, is the date. I had to write up a little description of the garden for some publicity. They wanted a few pictures. What a task that was.
Here is one of the pictures I sent them. I thought you might appreciate it.




After months of grey and brown one forgets a little what the place looks like the rest of the year.


That's it for this week.
I think this mild weather is not here to stay.
But we have turned the corner.
There will still be some hard freezes.
I will then worry about plants that have emerged.
But those plants have done this before.

Philip