July 15, 2018 High summer continues

It has been hot and dry. It was so hot and dry that some of the weeds were dying.
A week ago I got out the front yard hose. Friday I hooked up the backyard hose. And just like that, it rained. We had a very nice rain early Saturday morning, which was more than a half an inch. After the rain it was uncomfortably humid. I just couldn't push myself to go out and weed.

But there were some good pictures.
Here is a single flower from that yellow clivia.

Last Monday night the night blooming cereus bloomed. I pretty much knew last Sunday that it was likely to bloom Monday. Sometimes the plant will bloom several times during the summer. Some blossoms will be as late as mid September.
What I figured out after Monday's bloom is that the flowers will be fully open about two hours after dark. In mid-July that did not occur until between 11-11:30. In mid-September that will be maybe two hours earlier. I had suggested that people come over about 9:30. Several came and saw only partially opened flowers. In the bonus section there are pictures over the course of that evening.

It is still one amazing flower, that hardly anyone sees.

Here is the lantana that is starting to bloom nicely. Actually I had been thinking that it was not getting enough sun where I had put them. Since the one crabapple tree came down there is more sun, and here they come.
I love the patterns.

The Silk Road annual Asclepias that I overwintered is doing nicely. It was leggy so I topped it, rooting the cuttings. I have just started planting those cuttings.

One of the most recognized lilies is Stargazer. Here is the one I have left.

Many of these Oriental lilies and their hybrid cousins are blooming.

Here is another. They do hang down, making photographs a challenge at times.

I really like this orange.

After the rain this morning you can get some great water effects in pictures.

It has been a good year for daylilies. This one gets points for what it looks like and its name. It is called Jaunty Julie.

The blackberry lilies are putting on a show. This variety will finish this week and then the yellow ones will start.I really like this one. I will collect its seed and have many more next year.
You can see Sycamore bark in this picture.

Bonus Pictures

Here are pictures of the night blooming cereus.
These first two pictures were taken about 6:15 p.m. Monday.

The flower had curved up and had white showing by that time.

This was about 9:30. Julia had come out to see what wasn't much to see at that point.

This was about all you could see that that point. You could see into the open end of the flower.

This was at 11:00.

This was the group of three from earlier pictures. About six flowers bloomed.

The picture at the beginning of the post was about 30 minutes later.

This is a picture of a different plant that is a different variety of night blooming cereus. I think it is called Mark Twain.
Remarkably, every year, it blooms at the same time as the other variety featured this week.

Julia's Recipe

Zorba's Pasta Salad

Here is  the link to the other blog with all of Julia's recipes.

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/


This recipe is pretty much a straight steal from the New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City, which published it in a member newsletter some years ago. I made one substitution among the ingredients and tinkered with the proportions of others, but otherwise it's as the deli cooks at the New Pi imagined and executed it. The recipe below is about 1/2 of the original, which would feed everybody at a good-sized family reunion. Even the 1/2 version makes a lot.

This is a good mid-summer pasta salad, lighter and less gloppy than the mayonnaise ones and more flavorful. It is vaguely Greek (hence Zorba) but the ingredients are readily available in the regular grocery store.

Here is the line-up: 1/2 box (that is, 8 oz.) of rotini pasta, red pepper, red onion, cucumber, fresh spinach, sliced black olives, feta, kalamata (Greek) olives with no pits (I am never sure whether "pitted" means with pits or without).

And the salad dressing ingredients: olive oil, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, dried oregano, garlic, salt and pepper.

I cooked and drained the rotini according to package instructions, stopping at al dente so the pasta would hold up when mixed with the other ingredients. I cooled the pasta under cool running water and set it aside.

Then I prepped all the vegetables. I peeled the cucumber, cut it in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds (using a grapefruit spoon which is a handy tool) and cut the resulting hollowed out cucumber shells into half-moon slices. I had 1 cup of cucumber pieces. I cut some red onion into thin half moon slices and then cut those pieces in half so I had 1/2 cup of 1/4 moon slices. And I cut up a red pepper into about a 1/4" dice, again ending up with about 1/2 cup. I rinsed the spinach and spun it dry in a salad spinner. I used store-bought baby spinach (as it is no longer fresh spinach season here in Iowa), which was already in bite-sized pieces, so no need to do anything more except snip off a few biggish stems. I used about 4 cups of spinach (loose, not packed). This was about 1/2 of the spinach in the pre-packed spinach box. The amount of spinach you use is up to you. I like spinach. 

I put the pasta and the vegetables (cucumber, onion, and pepper) into a big bowl to mix. I added a 4 oz. can of sliced black olives. I cut 12 kalamata olives in half and added them. Then I cut up some feta cheese into little pieces (1/3 cup) and added that. The spinach was waiting in the nearby bowl to be added at the end.

Next I made the dressing, measuring the ingredients into a small (1 cup) jar with a tight-fitting lid: 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (or red wine or cider or sherry - not balsamic), 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper and 1 smushed clove of garlic. I forgot to measure the garlic - probably about 1/2 teaspoon. I shook the jar to combine the ingredients, and poured about 1/2 of the dressing on the pasta plus vegetables, tossing everything around. Then I added several big handfuls of spinach (4 cups, I am guessing) and added the rest of the dressing and tossed again. Make sure you taste at this point - add more salt or pepper if you like.

And here it is. The salad tastes best at room temperature, so if you make it early, take it out of the refrigerator an hour before you want to eat it.

Gluten-phobes can use one of the nice corn pastas - DeBoles is good. Vegetarians will note that this is a vegetarian dish, and vegans can make it work by leaving out the feta, which is a shame but by no means fatal to the resulting dish.

Odds and Ends

Here is my 3 year old ghost pepper plant. I have overwintered it the last two winters. If you ever want some really hot peppers let me know. There will be quite a few coming, and we are mostly scared of them.
I had forgotten to water this in the last two weeks and was afraid I had killed it. I didn't. Plants can be tough.

This is the time of year for the big Sycamore tree to shed its skin. Bark has been coming down in big pieces for several weeks.

This is also the time of year to think about next year. I am planning on moving some daylilies around. Here is a bed all prepared for some of them. Judging from the daylilies around that area it gets enough sun.

Here are my zinnias planted from seed. I am counting on them to put on a show in September and October.













It is time to order fall-blooming crocuses. These can be ordered now, and they will bloom this fall.
That's it for this week.
Find a nice breeze.
Philip