Week #1 Winter Garden Picture contest- December 2, 2018

Welcome to the Mears Garden Winter Picture contest.

We do this every winter
and winter has come to Iowa. Last Sunday it snowed 7 inches in Iowa City. That snow is still with us. Actually there were several days above freezing much of the snow is gone. And yesterday there was rain. Rain and 35 degrees is not my idea of fun.

Last Sunday we participated in the familiar Midwest tradition of trying to travel in the winter. Monday, very early, Julia was going to go visit our grandson Christopher in Maine for the week. I pick my verb tense carefully. She made it...but not without several cancellations, hours on hold with United, misadvise from United, and finally a car rental drive to Chicago. But she made it and has now come home with on slight delays.


But let me introduce the contest for 2018-2019.
It helps us get through the winter, particularly when the winter seems like it will be long.
I do this because it also helps me get through the winter.


The history of the contest:
The contest started in 2006. That first year it was done entirely by email. In 2007 the blog began and electronic voting began. There has been this contest each winter since then. Well, I took one winter off.  But that means that this is contest #12.  That is a lot of winters. That is a lot of pictures.
The archives of this blog go back to 2007. That is when the blog started. You should be able to find most of those contests in the archives.

Here is how it works.
Each Sunday for 13 weeks, I will put up five pictures which are contestants. (There will also be other pictures as the story requires.) They are all pictures from garden year 2018. You then can vote for the one picture you like best. There should be a voting poll on the right side of the blog. Voting lasts until Saturday night at midnight.
The weekly winners will advance to a playoff round, along with several runner ups to fill up the bracket. That will be the semifinals. Then one last week, when the days are warmer, we will have the final vote. There will be one winner. More importantly winter should be about done.

I really like to hear back from you each week. I think about that line from Peter Pan, where Peter asks if you believe in fairies. Too obscure? Maybe.
But I put this out there and like to know you are enjoying it.
I like to know why you liked a particular picture. Was it the color? Was it the particular flower? Did you just like the name of the plant?
You can tell me these things in an email, if you have received an email notice. You can also use the comment section at the bottom of each post. That way other readers can know why other people liked particular pictures.


So...


On to the contest.
Here are the contestants for Week #1. You can vote for one picture.



Picture #1- Red/pink tulip (May 6, 2018)
(The date is the date of the picture. You probably figured that out.)

What a great way to start. Pink.
Sometime I should just put up a poll of flower colors. I do not know which color would win. I am not even sure which would be my favorite.

I wonder if tulips are the most recognizable flower? It is these kinds of random thoughts that fill up the winter, here at the contest.

Tulips have such a wonderful back story.
From the Ottomans to Dutch tulip mania I know about their history more than almost any plant.
Here is the wikopedia link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip

I do not have a large number of tulips each year. But tulips can make a remarkable color splash when combined with the many other spring bulbs.




Picture #2  Blue chiondoxa (April 24, 2018)

Blue
Blue is so wonderful in the garden. In the early spring it is such a contrast with the brown of the background.
In our spring garden we have blue as a repeating feature. First there is silla or squill, which blooms quite early, followed by the bluebells.
In there, sort of in the middle, are these lovely flowers.

This little spring bulb is not as well known as the tulip, daffodil or crocus. Those are sort of the big three in the spring bulb world.
This is chiondoxa.
Chiondoxa come in blue and pink. They spread over time.



Picture #3- Winter aconite, in the snow (March 25, 2018)

Early spring flowers are tough.
The two very early spring flowers are snowdrops and these little yellow winter aconite. This picture shows two of the early winter aconite, after the late March snow.
Sometimes those early bulbs, aconite and snowdrops, will even come up in January. Several years ago they were blooming like crazy, at the beginning of February.






Picture #4- San Ignacio-the daylily (July 1, 2018)

I have had this daylily for twenty years. It is one of the most photogenic.
There is the pink, fading to yellow, and then some green in the middle.
The little water drops are always an attractive enhancement.

I have rediscovered my daylilies these last 2 years. I had my daylily phase from about 1995-2005. I would add about a dozen each year. Then I ran out of room.
I have been moving some around as sun patterns have changed with trees coming and going and growing. It always takes a few years for daylilies to recover after being moved around.
San Ignacio has stayed where it has always been, getting not quite full sun but at least a half day.

Since Spring was late this year,  most of the rest of the garden was later than usual. The peak time for the daylilies this year was pretty much July. That means when Project Green was here on June 23, all those people mostly missed the daylilies.




Picture #5 Red/yellow zinnia (August 12, 2018)

Zinnias.
I started growing zinnias about 3 years ago. I actually planted them late, intentionally. (Well mostly intentionally.) I did that so the would be fresh and new In September and October. So I plant these larger ones from seed about mid June.
This was one of the first ones to bloom in mid August.
I should add that this one little patch is along the front sidewalk, at the east end. In that location they get maybe 5-6 hours of sun. They get a little leggy but are mostly fine. This variety got to maybe 30 inches tall.
In the bonus section I will show you zinnias from previous years.

Bonus Pictures

In this regular part of the winter contest  I give you extra pictures. Some are related to the contestants. Some are just more of my garden thoughts as I stare at the computer and look through pictures of warmer times.

Let me reflect for a moment on the early Spring of 2018.

January, 2018

It was cold early in the month. It was once a decade cold. Then we had the January melt that is not that unusual. These pansies were almost waking up on January 20.

Here is a screen shot from this weather data page for January in Iowa city. We got down to -22  as a low temperature early in the month. It was down there for most of a week. Then we had those days in the 50's. The ground was thawing. When this had happened in the past there would be spring flowers in February.

February, 2018

In early February it snowed 8 inches.

With that snow,  these snowdrops were not emerging until February 18.
It was clear at that point we were not going to have an early spring.






Here is the screen shot for February. Think about 64 degrees.  That is what it got to at the end of the month. Spring was certainly on the way.

This gives you an idea of how frozen things were on February 24, even after it had started to warm up. I think the pond looks like the Stargate on that TV series.

March, 2018

About the first of March the first aconite emerged. This picture was taken on March 3.

These pictures were taken on March 10. Yes, that is the first crocus.



Here is the screen shot for March. I think those dots in lines are the "normal" highs and lows.

These pictures were taken on March 19.




By the first day of spring, March 21, the little blue silla (or squill) had even started here and there.
In this one picture you can see aconite, snowdrops and squill.



I love how you can see the different generations of the aconite in this picture. The babies are the little ones, that are way too small to bloom.

Then as was seen from Contestant #3, it snowed on March 23.
This sort of set Spring back a little.
But these early spring flowers do not mind the snow and the cold. You see on the screen shot that it was getting down below 20 degrees.

Here are more snow pictures, from that snow.

The backyard in the snow looks pretty much the same, as any other time it snows.

Here is a snowdrop. I guess it is appropriately named.

This is the picture from which Contestant #3 was taken.

You get an appreciation for how lonely the flower must be.

But it is also hopeful. Despite the snow and the cold the flower endures. And will be better than ever when the snow goes away.

By the end of the month the snow had melted and the sun came out. Those early spring bulbs, joined by a few crocuses opened up taking in that sunshine.

Then there was April

You can really see the up and down, with mostly the down.

It snowed again, on April 7. It was only a few inches. But that was enough to set spring back some more.

This picture, from April 8 almost made it into the contest. If I had a way to give it a black edge it would have gone in. Here you have the the little squill or scilla, with its tiny blue color adding to the white world.
I would be interested in which of the snow pictures you like best.



Here are two pictures of San Ignacio from 2006 and 2008.




Here are more zinnias from previous years.



I expect you understand why I will continue to grow these nice big flowers where there is enough sun.

Julia's recipe

Ginger Snaps 

Julia has been contributing to the blog since the fall of 2016. Our daughter Katie made her a blog of own to put the recipes she writes about about a year ago. It is located at
https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/
Since she has been in Maine and did not get back until late last night, here is a repeat of her Ginger Snaps recipe from 8 months ago.


We make cookies for the holidays. Actually we make cookies throughout the year, but cookie production ramps up in December-January. For many years, we have delivered cookies and other treats to various neighbors and friends. Years ago we made the cookies to be delivered at Christmas, but more recently, with one thing and another, cookie delivery is on New Year's Day or even Epiphany. The cookies still are appreciated, perhaps the more for arriving after all of the other treats are gone. One of the mainstays of the holiday cookie bake is ginger snaps. This recipe is from my most tattered copy of the Joy of Cooking.

I started with 3/4 cup of butter. That's 1-1/2 sticks. I always use salted butter, but feel free to use unsalted. I mixed it (in the stand mixer) with 2 cups of white sugar until thoroughly blended.

Then I added 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of cider vinegar (any vinegar will do, but don't waste your balsamic on cookies), and 1/2 cup molasses. I use dark tough guy molasses but not blackstrap which is too tough guy for me. I mixed those things in.

Next I added the spices. Philip took a picture at this point partly because he likes the look of the big glob of dough on the beater. I added 3 teaspoons (aka 1 tablespoon) ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of cloves. Also 1-1/2 teaspoons of baking soda.

I beat the spices in and then started adding flour, a total of 3-3/4 cups of all purpose flour. I added it slowly and with the mixer on low after each addition to avoid the flour blizzard that ensues when one adds flour too fast or at too high a speed.

And that's it. Here is another picture of the finished dough blob on the beater. I scraped the dough back into the bowl and took the bowl off the mixer stand.

I used a 1 tablespoon disher (aka tiny ice cream scoop) to make the cookies. Before we learned about dishers, we would scoop the dough out with a teaspoon and roll all of the cookies into balls by hand. The disher is easier, and one does not end up with ginger snap cookie dough under one's fingernails.

Using the small disher, I placed 12 cookie dough blobs per cookie baking sheet. No need to use parchment or to spray the pan if you pay attention. If your attention wanders, parchment or spray is advised. See below.

The cookies bake in a 325 degree preheated oven for about 10 minutes. I baked 2 cookie sheets at a time. I set the timer for 5 minutes and rotated the pans (top to bottom, back to front) when the timer went off, and then reset it for another 5 minutes. I set the sheets of baked cookies on trivets when they came out of the oven. Here is a sheet of baked cookies, cooling on the cookie sheet.

I have a lot of cookie sheets so I had 2 more pans ready to go when the first ones came out. Then when the 5 minutes timer went off, I rotated the pans AND I used a metal spatula to slide the baked cookies off the cookie sheets and onto wire racks. The cookies need to cool a bit on the baking sheets, but not too long or they will stick. This is the paying-attention part. Don't leave the baked cookies on the cookie sheets too long.

If you don't have a lot of cookie sheets, you might use parchment to prepare sets of cookies to bake. Slide the parchment with baked cookies on it off onto the counter or a wire rack to cool; slide the parchment with unbaked cookies on it onto the cookie sheets. This recipe makes a lot of cookies - about 9 or 10 dozen. The math to make one-half of the recipe is not very hard - the eggs come out even!

This recipe is made with all purpose flour. I have not tried it with gluten-free flour. I expect it would require more flour and that the cookies would turn out flatter and crisper.


Odds and Ends

As I write these final words, it is so dark. Dark is certainly a winter feature.
There is dark and its companion cold.
But at some point the days will start getting longer.
Then at some point it will begin to warm up.
I am  so ready for that first snowdrop.
And it is only December 2.

I hope you enjoy the contest.
Stay warm.
Philip and Julia