June 10, 2018 work work work

Welcome

I was, once again, up with the early birds on Saturday morning. Actually I was up a little before the early birds. The quiet time of the night ends before five in the morning these days. The full bird shift is out by 4:50, as the dawn begins to break in the east.
There is so much to do.

The garden walk is in two weeks. Our garden is one of a number of gardens in the neighborhood on the Iowa City Project Green Garden Walk. That is Saturday June 23, from 10-3. Please come.

Katie and family, including Christopher, arrive next weekend. We are having to get the house ready for a little person, who now can walk around.

In the garden, I am spending even more time watering. The rain that has been all around Iowa the last few days, has not made it to Iowa City this week. The hot sun can bake plants quickly.

The promising bits of red and yellow on the radar this week just seemed to always dry up before they arrived in Iowa City. Yesterday morning about 7:15, there was actually thunder. As I fully expected the rain to be mostly elsewhere, I could not avoid thinking of the thunder as cosmic laughter.

So here was the radar at 7:18 yesterday morning. It looked promising.

I have in fact been reduced to taking pictures of promising storms on the radar.
As a result of all that red,  we did get a light rain for maybe an hour. I do not think it was more than a tenth of an inch. But as Julia pointed out, it was something, and there were puddles.

Did I mention I now have the front yard hose hooked up too? There were a few years this decade when we never got that hose out all year.

Actually with the garden walk coming in two weeks, I have been planting annuals all around. They can be nice. At the same time they need watering more than the perennials.
They do look nice, particularly after they have a nice mulch added.

All the plants are now getting in their respective places. Here you see the cactus.

The cactus have migrated home from the office and how pretty much take over the one shelf that gets afternoon sun.

I think it will be some time before they begin to bloom. Who knows.  I might even have to figure out what kind of fertilizer they would like.

The caladium are underperforming. The white variety, called Candidum, is up. I am sprinkling it around the garden. I think it needs a good downpour to really take off.












The  orchid cactus have been blooming, even though it is at a somewhat slow pace. There is maybe 1-2 flowers per day.
I have yet to see that riot of buds on particular plants that sometimes appears. They did get outside rather late this year.

The waterlily foliage in the pond is growing so fast that it leaves little room for the flowers.
Maybe they were taking shelter from the hot sun.

This was yesterday, when there were three flowers at one time.

The peonies are mostly over. But this one provided dramatic color this week.

The lilium are coming. Here is another Asiatic lily, this one called Lolly Pop.

Bonus pictures

This is what greets you as you walk west on the sidewalk approaching out house.

This is hosta Victory. It took a few years to get going. Now it is enormous.
It is one of those statement plants that just creates a focal point.

Julia's recipe

Mocha Panna Cotta

This is a recipe for a cold custard, and it is pretty much straight from Jacques Pepin. Philip was watching JP on public television, and he made this dessert. Philip thought it looked good and pretty easy, and he was right. No baking, very little stove action, cold and smooth and creamy, as a summer dessert should be.  Panna cotta, according to wikipedia, is Italian for cooked cream, except it isn't cooked so I don't get it.

Here are the players, plus a very pretty peony in a vase: unflavored gelatin, instant coffee, sugar and 1/2-1/2. Not shown: water!

Philip started by putting on the teakettle to heat up some water. He put 1/4 cup boiling water in a mug. He sprinkled one envelope of gelatin over the water and stirred a bit so that the gelatin would dissolve.

JP advised dissolving the gelatin by sprinkling it over 1/4 cup of tepid water and then putting the cup with the water and gelatin in a microwave for 30 seconds. Philip says that he thinks if you have a microwave, you should use it to dissolve the gelatin.

We do not have a microwave. There are so many things I don't understand - breathing, airplanes, mean people, television or telephones or computers - that I decided I did not want a machine in my kitchen that I did not understand. Hence, no microwave.

Gelatin softening in one mug; in the other, he put 1 teaspoon (the kind you eat cereal with, not a measuring spoon) of instant coffee and added 1/2 cup hot (does not have to be boiling) water.

He poured the coffee into a bowl and added 1/3 cup of white sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolved. Then he added the gelatin, stirring to make sure that the gelatin was mixed in and not sitting at the bottom of the bowl in a lump.

Then he added 1-1/2 cups of 1/2-1/2.  More stirring.

After the mixture was thoroughly stirred up, he ladled it into 4 little bowls and put them in the refrigerator for about 2 hours. That's it!

As I said at the outset, the dessert is silky smooth, and creamy and kind of coffee flavored. If a person had a few shortbread cookies on hand, they would be the perfect accompaniment.

Here it is, set, spoonable and ready to eat.

There are many variations, to accommodate all food issues and taste preferences. Although we have not tried it, I understand that agar (a seaweed derived gelatin-type thickener) works instead of gelatin. You could leave out the coffee and use more cream, with a teaspoon or so of vanilla. Or add some finely chopped chocolate to the hot coffee (actually in order to melt the chocolate, you might want to make the coffee with boiling water). Or use coconut milk instead of cream. Or almond milk or rice milk with vanilla or a little almond extract. I think the sugar may be the only ingredient for which there is not a substitute.

Odds and Ends

I have labels for most of the plants in my garden. Not everything is labeled. Most things were labeled at one point.
I get the lebels made in New Orleans. I have gotten them since before Katrina.
I just got my order of new labels this week. Now I have one more thing on the garden to do list. I have to put out the labels, which of course requires finding the plants, which at the moment..wait for it...do not have labels.


What will be blooming in two weeks? Well maybe some daylilies. The daylily stalks or scapes are emerging.

This is Elijah. Some how it is fitting that one of the earliest dayliles is named after a prophet.

While these will not be blooming in two weeks, here are the big zinnia seedlings. These will be blooming in August, giving color when color is fading.










That is about it for the week.
It will be another early morning tomorrow, as I start going from bed to bed, trying to make it just right.
Several beds will need to be gone over more than once, in the next 13 days.

What is going on in your garden at the moment?
Philip