March 8, 2020 Week #2 of the playoffs

It is Spring in Iowa. 

This weekend it is to be in the 60's both days. After it got down to 31 degrees Friday night, there is not even another frost in the forecast for the next ten days.  Everything in the garden should be on fast forward for a while.
There will still be a cold night or two in the future. My goodness, but we are still almost two months from the frost free date. (The time to put out tomato plants if one did that sort of thing.)
But for now...
the aconite are wonderful. I tried to order more this week, for delivery in the fall. I was told to wait until the end of May. But inspiration is now. When you see them is when they should be available for ordering. Of course I would like to order a thousand. A thousand? Well, I would mass plant them in all the places that do not have them. Right now they are mostly in the backyard. They should be everywhere. They should be on all the elevated beds along Fairview Street.

It occurs to me that in October I may not know where I do not have them. I will have to document with my pictures the potential placement.

And the crocuses are coming.



Here was the first crocus this year. It bloomed on Tuesday, March 3.


















Here was one of the first bees to discover that there were flowers. I imagine it went back to the hive and loudly announced it was time to get up.














These yellow crocuses bloomed Friday.
This time of year you get such wonderful brown background pictures. It really is a little splash of color, in with all that brown.

Actually the crocus count was up to 11 by yesterday, mid-afternoon.

I think it is likely to increase exponentially the next few days.
The little purple tommasinianas crocuses have not even begun.
Is that not a great name. They can be called 'tommies' for short.



But then there is work to do.
There is much garden work.
This is at a time when there is much work to do at the office.



Let me get to the picture contest, just at a time when last year begins to be overwhelmed by the present.

Picture Contest

In last week's first playoff round, the winner was the top seed, the clivia. The leucojum came second, hanging in there to the end.





The full vote was:
Clivia            15
Leucojum      11
Pink Poppy     8
Yellow lily     3
Bluebells        4

Week 2 of the picture contest playoffs

Let me start out this week by giving you the slideshow of the contestants for this week.

#1  Monsella Tulip 

April 29, 2019

Not much needs to be said about this splashy tulip.
It is the #2 seed in the finals having easily won in Week 3, way back when.
Think about color in the garden. By the end of April there will be color everywhere.
At the moment there are little splashes of white and yellow in a sea of brown.
There is very little green.
Actually yesterday the first purple showed up. It was a little crocus. Many will follow.

I did see the very first tips of some tulips coming up this past week.
In the next week there will be many plants waking up.

#2 The pink dogwood 

May 14, 2019

I really like the way this picture is put together.
The curves. The background.
The dogwoods in my yard are special. This big pink one must be twenty feet tall at this point, having been planted maybe 25 years ago.
There are 2 little ones now, planted in 2017 and 2018. The one from 2019 mostly died, even though a piece lived. That meant I just couldn't just pull it up.
I must find a space to put a new one this Spring. I think about one that is variegated.

#3 Red Peony

 June 1, 2019

This lovely little peony is the one peony to make the finals.
It has that wonderful color, set in the bed of green.
My peonies would all love a little more sun.
I must make a point of fertilizing them all this month, as they emerge.

#4 Orchid cactus

 June 7, 2019

The orchid cactus are all in the house at the moment. More than many plants, they really want to be outside.
And like many plants that have spent the winter inside, they have to wait for shade. Put right into the sun would burn the leaves.

#5 Annuals, over the top 

August 24, 2019

I discovered this wonderful combination last summer, almost by accident. I have been playing with coleus the last few years.
For one thing they root from cuttings quite easily.
For another, many do well in semi shade.
This great orange coleus was introduced a few years ago.
Last year I put it together with the Persian shield, which has been a favorite of mine for a long time.
There are not many vibrant purples that last a long time.
The combination worked.
I brought cuttings inside from both plants in October. I now have enormous orange coleus plants and many (maybe a dozen) smaller Persian shield plants.
They will be ready to go outside in May. They may have to wait for the bluebells to get out of the way. They will do that by June 1.
Perhaps some could go into pots, sprinkled around the garden for extra color.

#6 White Japanese Anemone 

September 28, 2019

I love these anemones. They brighten up the garden in the fall. They bloom for weeks.
They have that wonderful center.
I like this picture, complete with those pollen drips.



Vote away. Encourage your friends. Just one time this year I would like to break the 50 vote mark. If there are two of you and only one computer, you can both vote. All you have to do is refresh the site after voting. It will then let the other person vote.

Right now

Rather than a bonus section at the moment it is all about the 'right now.'

I give you this picture so you can see the many generations of the aconite. There are of course the ones that are big enough to bloom. But if you look closely you can see the little ones coming along.

Here is a further enlargement of that picture.





Here is the first purple in the garden this year. This little crocus opened yesterday afternoon when Julia and I were both out, doing yard cleanup. All those things around it will be other purple crocuses.







Enjoy this little walk through the backyard yesterday.

Here are some of the plants in the basement at the moment.



You can see the coleus which have gotten particularly large this winter.

More indoor pictures

Julia's recipe 

Maine dish (Pasta with Kale sauce)

By the way, all of Julia's recipes appear in one place at

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

Katie gave me a cookbook for Christmas - Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden. This is not Betty Crocker or Joy of Cooking, but rather a cookbook of imaginative ways to use vegetables that are in season, of which McFadden counts 6 - spring, early summer, midsummer, late summer, fall and winter. This recipe is from fall, when all of the kales appear in the farmer's market, but it can be made year-round really.  I visited Maine a few weeks ago, and we made this kale-sauced noodle dish.



The ingredients: 2 bunches of lacinato (aka dino) kale; 4 or 5 whole garlic cloves; about 1/3 cup of olive oil;16 oz. of some kind of pasta; 3/4 cup parmesan cheese; salt and pepper.

We started by cutting the ribs out of the kale (fold each leaf in half, cut out the rib), then rinsing them. We cut the kale in half - no need to chop as it will go into the blender.

Next we peeled the garlic and smashed the cloves - no need to chop or mince, just flatten.




We put a pot of water with about 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt in it on the stove to boil.

When it came to a boil, we dumped in the kale and set the timer for 5 minutes.






















While the kale was cooking, we put 1/4 cup of olive oil into a little pan and added the garlic pieces. We cooked them over low heat for about 5 minutes. The goal is soft and slightly golden garlic bits.

After the garlic got fragrant, we turned off the heat and let it cool a bit.









Next the blender. We fished the kale out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon - not draining it in a colander. Left the water on the stove boiling away until needed a few minutes later.

We put all of the kale (which was a little wet from cooking) into the blender with the oil and garlic and ran the blender until the contents were smooth. I don't think we added any pasta cooking water at that stage, but one certainly could if the mixture was too thick to blend properly.

Meanwhile, we added pasta to the pot of water (yes, slightly green water but that is fine) on the stove and cooked the pasta as per instructions.











Here is the oil and garlic going into the blender.
























We drained the pasta, reserving some of the pasta cooking water for the sauce. We put the pasta into a nice bowl and poured the sauce over it, followed by gentle mixing. Then we added about 1/2 cup of the parmesan cheese and a bit (maybe 1/4 cup) of the pasta cooking water to thin the sauce a bit.

















After stirring, we tasted and added some more salt and also some pepper and the rest of the cheese and the rest of the olive oil.

The dish really is a beautiful vibrant green. Feel free to pass more parmesan at the table and be aware than it may need more salt and pepper.

















Here it is on the plate with roasted asparagus and baked salmon. A nice healthy meal with family in Maine.

We put the salmon and the asparagus in the oven while the kale was cooking and everything was ready at more or less the same time.

A few thoughts: you could use 1 bunch of kale and 5 oz. of fresh spinach instead of all kale. If so, cook the vegetables separately, first cooking the kale and fishing it out and putting it in the blender. Then cooking the spinach for like 30 seconds and fishing it out and into the blender. The sauce made with both kinds of greens will be a bit milder. And although we made the recipe in Maine with 8 oz. of penne, we think the sauce to noodle ratio would be better with more noodles. And of course, who doesn't like leftover noodles for lunch?




These pictures came from dinner at our house yesterday. I made salmon and roast asparagus and the noodles with kale and spinach sauce, with salad. I used 1 bunch of kale plus a 5 oz. box of fresh spinach and 1 lb. of cellentani (fat squiggly pasta). As you see, the noodle to sauce ratio is just fine.









And on the plate. There were leftovers, which will be tasty for lunch later in the week.

Odds and Ends

I took this picture of the flower on the very nice croton called Lauren's Rainbow.
It is in our living room, where it has spend the winter.
There happened to be some windup toys in the background.
This particular croton makes these interesting little flowers on a stalk about 5 inches long.
This is a mature plant that must be 4 years old at this point and is maybe 3-4 feet tall.
For the moment it has hit the stage where it is comfortable where it is. It is putting up nice new growth.
As I think about it I fertilized this plant about a month ago.
Do you think...




















The garden work just went up with the arrival of our spring wood chips.



I will refresh all the garden pathsm which have wood chips.
Before I can do that I need to dig up those paths where the chips from the last few years have broken down.
I will use those composted chips to top off some of the beds, the ones that do not have aconite or other spring bulbs growing at the moment.
This keeps the paths from getting much higher that the beds.
This gives the beds some nutrients.
This raises those beds a little.

There is no denying that this work involves shoveling, giving my back a good workout.



I took the first plants out for some sun yesterday afternoon. The selected few were lupine seedlings. I put them in a sheltered area, away from the 20 mph wind we have had this week.

That is it this week from this tired gardener.
Philip