August 26, 2019- It took me a while to figure out the date

Hello Iowa and everywhere else
We have been on the road all week, in Maine. We come home today. We have not watched TV or looked at a newspaper for a week. (Does watching Netflix for two hours count? We did that one night.)
Lest you think we are way too advanced, we did have the computer with us, and I read a newspaper each day on-line. The technology is not the best for  giving you pictures this week so this may be a little disjointed. Mostly we followed the schedule of a 19 month old lovely child, and enjoyed a really lovely place.

We played with Christopher. Julia was recruited for slide duty while I took the picture.

Lest you think Julia had all the fun she did take this picture of Christopher and me on the bouncy bee. I do not know which of the two of us had more difficulty getting off the darn thing.














We did visit some gardens, which showed us the wonderful color there is in August.

We learned about agastache (aka hyssop), which does well in full sun.

In fact agastache, when combined with rudbeckia and coneflowers can form a backbone for the August garden that gives up nothing to June and July.

Full sun helps.











We did get to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which is about an hour north of Portland. We have been going there every year since we have been coming to visit Katie and family.
It is growing in size which is fun to watch. They are out in the middle of nowhere, which gives them lots of space to expand.

It was a trip that put Christopher to sleep. This was not the best for his "schedule", but it was entirely predictable.

Any Botanical Gardens gives you an opportunity to see lots of annuals that you have never heard of before.

Coleus is certainly popular, for good reasons. This was a very new coleus called Black Patent Leather. It is one worth looking at for next year. I think it is one of the coleus that likes sun.

As I have mentioned before taking a picture of the label is easier than remembering a name.

Here is that Black coleus; very striking.

This is a variegated comfrey, not a new hosta.

Any good garden these days has shiny spinney things. This garden was no exception.

There were also swinging benches to sit upon.



There were wonderful combinations of flowers. The white and green flower is icicle euphorbia. I
have seen this several times in the last month combined with big zinnias. It does well in Iowa and

reseeds a lot.
















Julia's recipe

We made zucchini bread when we got here to the house in Maine. There was much help. We also made the recipe below, and we had some help with that recipe too.

Broccoli Vichyssoise

This is a fancy name for a very nice soup which can be prepared and served vegetarian or not, with or without dairy, chunky or smooth, hot or warm or cold. Versatile. Lately, I have made this soup in the chicken-stock-based, smooth, cold and dairy version.  The recipe is derived from Bert Greene's cookbook, Greene on Greens, from the mid-1980s, which has a lot of good vegetable-forward recipes.

Here's what you'll need by way of ingredients: 3-4 largish russet potatoes, 1 big bunch of broccoli, 1 medium to large onion, garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, butter (or oil), 4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable), 2 cups of water, and 2 cups of half and half (or not).

Use russets as they are starchy and break down when they cook. When blended (or just mashed with a potato masher), they thicken the soup in an agreeable way.

I started by washing and prepping all the vegetables. I ended up with 4 cups of peeled and cubed russet potatoes, 4 cups of broccoli top pieces, 1-1/2 cups of chopped onion and 1-1/2 teaspoons of smushed garlic.

I melted 3 tablespoons of butter in a big enamelware pot and added the onions first and cooked them over medium heat. After the onions had softened up (4-5 minutes), I added the garlic. And also 1 teaspoon of salt (kosher is fine), 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper and 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes. I cooked the mixture for another minute.

Then I added the potato cubes and the broccoli bits and cooked them with the onions and garlic and salt and peppers for about 2-3 minutes.

Then I added 4 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of water. I brought the mixture to a boil, turned it down and cooked it for about 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes, the potatoes and broccoli were completely soft and I zizzed the mixture up with a stick blender until it was pretty much completely smooth.

I tasted the soup at this point to decide if it needed more salt. You should do the same.

When I made the soup recently, I zizzed it up and then refrigerated it overnight. The next day, just before dinner, I whisked in 2 cups of half and half and served it cold.

As I said at the beginning, this is a versatile soup. You can use olive or vegetable oil instead of butter and veggie broth instead of chicken stock and leave out the dairy and it's vegan. Use butter and veggie stock and dairy and it's vegetarian.

Forego the stick blender in favor of a potato masher and you have chunky soup. Serve it warm or hot in the winter and cold in the summer.

If you like to decorate, sprinkle each serving of the soup with chopped chives or scallions.

Soup! It's a very pale green and is very nice with a sandwich. We had egg salad sandwiches on this occasion.

As should go without saying with respect to a soup that can be served at any temperature, the leftovers are tasty.








Odds and Ends

Maine is lovely at this time of year.

Since it is getting to be the end of the season here, there were end of the year sales at the garden centers.
Really nice coneflowers were on sale for half what you might pay in Iowa City.








I want to say a particular thanks to the people who have written back to us in the last few weeks.
It is so good to hear from friends, many who we have not seen in a while.
When I get home I will try to be better about writing back.

And for everybody else, let us hear from you from time to time.
Tell us about your gardens or what good things you have had to eat, or if you have tried some of the  recipes Julia writes about.
You can do that in the "comments" section of the blog, or reply to the email notice, if you get one, or just send along a hello in any old method that comes to mind.

From the road, but coming home,
Philip and Julia