November 18, 2018 more of the same

I think what I find difficult about winter is that.......

 it is all the same. 

I say that as I write on Saturday morning and it is dark and it is snowing again. This time we might have 2-3 inches before it is done.
We did this last weekend.


This weekend it stuck around, at least all day Saturday.

I know it really is not all the same. At this time of year (early winter),  the snow will melt and the sun will come out.

There will even be the occasional day when you can play outside.
Last Sunday I even raked some leaves. The long dead hosta foliage rakes right up now.

Raking can be quite productive. I can rake up an entire trash can full of leaves in no time at all. Then I realize I have picked up the debris from maybe 30 square feet. The term postage stamp comes to mind. I mean by this that the raking seems to be endless. I hardly make a dent in what remains.

But the cold has been good so far for the hanging pumpkins. They are holding up, slowly drying, as the temperatures mostly stay close to or below freezing.

In fact I think I will get a few more pumpkins today, at the winter farmer's market at the Fairgrounds.
It just may be about time to carve some more pumpkins  and set them out over Thanksgiving.





But each day when I get up, at some point it is no longer dark. I then look out the window and the garden is the same.
It is sleeping. And it will not wake for a long time.

So yesterday was another inside Saturday.

News from the winter picture contest:

It is coming soon.

I hit another dead end early in the week, trying to find an easy fix for the poll problem. So I just hired someone. He is going to build me a poll, from scratch. Hopefully it will be ready next weekend. (When that task is finished maybe I will have him take a shot at the Daffodil Map.)
With that poll being available I plan on starting the contest by the first weekend in December, if not earlier.

Even though I read that the winter will be mild in our part of the country, I think I can say, judging from the beginning, it will be long.
I certainly need the color from past pictures.

Think about what you see many places right now. There is brown and grey and white.
Look at this:

Remember color.
Remember daylilies.
Remember all those spring bulbs.


I am going through all my pictures from 2018, looking for the 50-60 best ones for the contest.
I look for perfect pictures. I look for pictures that will knock your socks off.
Most pictures do not qualify. Sometimes there was just a little something that put it in the other column.

For example look at this:

If there were a week just for "almost" pictures this picture could participate.
Maybe I will create such a group, for fun.

Pumpkin Bread

by Julia Mears

Pumpkin bread is a quick bread (that is, leavened with baking powder and/or baking soda, not yeast) and therefore a bit faster from bowl to loaf. This recipe is pretty much a straight steal from my late 1960s Betty Crocker cookbook, except she suggests adding nuts and raisins, which I find distracting and unnecessary. I don't like raisins in baked goods (only exception - oatmeal raisin cookies), and I think nuts mess up the texture of this bread. Pumpkin bread is very much about late fall and early winter, so this is a good time to buy an extra can of cooked pumpkin and make a couple of loaves.

Here are the ingredients: 2/3 cup of shortening (in the bowl), 2-2/3 cups of white sugar, 4 eggs, 1 15 oz. can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, which is also sold in the grocery store. Just pumpkin.), 3-1/3 cups of white flour, 2/3 cup of water plus 2 teaspoons of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of ground cloves.

I have never made this bread with butter (instead of shortening). I expect the substitution would affect the texture, but I don't know. I would not use oil of any kind. This is shortening territory.

I started by beating the sugar into the shortening. The recipe said until fluffy. This does not happen. But the two ingredients do combine thoroughly, and that's good enough.

Then I added the 4 eggs and beat them in too, followed by the can of pumpkin and 2/3 cup of cool tap water. At that point, I had a loose-ish batter.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

Next I added the little things: the cinnamon, cloves, salt, baking soda, baking powder and the 1/3 cup of flour. I mixed that in with the mixer, and then all I had to do was add the other 3 cups of flour.

I switched to a wooden spoon when it was too hard on the mixer.

I ended up with a big bowl of pretty stiff batter.

I lubed up 2 more-or-less 8" x 4" pans. I do not find bread pans to be reliably the same size, just more or less. I apportioned the batter so that the 3 pans were full to about the same level.

The pans west into the now pre-heated oven for about 45 minutes for the little pan and about 60 minutes for the bigger pans.

If you bake it in 9" x 5" pans, you will get 2 loaves and they will need about 70 minutes to bake. Of course, you should test for doneness with a bamboo skewer or toothpick or broomstraw or whatever comes to hand. The bread is done when the tester comes out clean: no glops of dough cling to the tester when the tester is inserted into the middle of the loaf.

I cooled the bread in the pans (set on their sides in a cooling rack) for about 10 minutes, then turned the loaves out of the pans onto the cooling rack to cool completely.

Here is the finished product, or 2 of 3 loaves. We forgot to take the out-of-the-oven picture, and by the time we remembered, one loaf was gone. I see that the loaves look dark around the edges, but that is not an indication of the bread itself. More a matter of lighting on a gray day. This bread is tasty and soft and moist.

Odds and Ends

My gardening efforts yesterday were devoted to inside plants. I am trying to work out a watering schedule. There are so many variables. Mostly the size of the pot matters. Little pots dry out so much more quickly.
With orchids for example, they can be potted in different mediums. Some are in a bark medium. Some are in sphagnum moss. The moss retains water, while bark, not so much. I will only water the ones in the moss every other week.

I watered the big crotons yesteray. They are way too big to go to the kitchen sink. You need to water crotons until the water runs out the bottom. That is why the kitchen sink is ideal. But some plants are too heavy so I improvised a rig with big plastic containers - dish pans or storage containers.
It can also be discouraging to grow crotons this time of year. This is the time for the dreaded "leaf drop." It is a combination of having moved them inside and now the heat is turned on.
It is interesting to see which varieties do better.

I also have to carefully water the plants that are hanging from the hooks in the ceiling. They do not have under liners. So I hold a saucer under the plant with one hand while I water with the other.

The one really nice white cattleya is coming along. Last year it started blooming on December 10. It could be a little earlier this year. It has two sets of buds this year.

Have a safe week, and enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend.
I will try to get you some pictures soon.
Warmer days are coming...at some point.
Philip