Week #1 of the playoffs- February 27, 2022

Welcome to the playoffs.

I hope you have enjoyed the ride. The 2021-2022 winter picture contest moves on to the next step. You have picked the pictures you liked. Now those pictures will compete with each other.

Winter is almost over. For perhaps the first time in months, the ten day forecast does not contain any single digits. In Iowa City we did have our end of the week 2 inch snowfall again. This time it was on Thursday. Then the sun came out and there was melting. Sunshine so helps the mood. The days, as they get warmer, also get longer. That is good.

The snow has mostly disappeared from the garden. There should be much activity this week as the temperatures get well above freezing.

There were signs of activity yesterday.

I love when the snowdrops poke through the remaining snow. 

That is correct. The last picture is 2 early aconite. With some temperatures in the 50's they should be in bloom by next weekend.

Let me get right to the contest.

Last Week

The final winner, in the 13th week, was the Bougainvillea. It really has been blooming for most of the winter.

It was a spirited contest, with strong support for 4 of the 5 entries. I appreciated the support for both the daylily and the hosta. Those are two groups that for whatever reason,  do not do well in the contest. In fact the daylily almost caught the winner, cutting the final margin in half on the last day.

The full vote was 

So now the playoffs

There will be 3 playoff rounds.  The winners of those three weeks will then compete in the finals.

In this round the winning 13 pictures, along with 3  wildcards compete. There are 3 wildcards, up from 2, since there was a tie for the second spot. 

I seeded the 3 top vote getters so they are not in the same round. Here are the top seeds.

Week 12 Lantana                       51%

Week 9 Pink Shirley poppy       49%

Week 8 Slipper Orchid             46%

------------these were next--------------

Week 7 White Shirley poppy    41%

Week 1 Red Iceland poppy      41%

Wild card standings (3 advanced since there was a tie.)

Week 7 Pink orchid cactus.    34%

Week 3- Phlox and daylilies combo   29% out of 49 votes which was 14 votes 

Week 10- Blackberry lily   29% out of 49 which was 14 votes

--------cut off-------

Week 4 Lilium fiamma 28%

Week 2  Red Double tulip 27%

Week 6- Brunnera 26%

A slideshow with all 16 playoff bound pictures is in the bonus section.

There are 5 poppy pictures in the playoffs. For the first time this season poppies will have to compete with each other.

The month with the most pictures in the playoffs was June, with 4.

Week #1 of the playoffs

Good luck. I have absolutely no idea what the results will be this week. I have no idea at this point who I will vote for.

#1 Pink Shirley poppy

 June 21, 2021

Shirley poppies are wonderful. That is all that needs to be said.

#2 Yellow cattleya orchid

 January 1, 2021

Orchids really are a part of the garden. Most of them bloom inside.

#3 White Iceland poppy 

April 3, 2021

There still is something grand about the Iceland poppies.

#4 Blue Pulmonaria

 April 17, 2021

Blue is rather grand. There will be a lot of blue in the garden in the early spring. 

#5 Daylily combo July 26, 2021

Phlox and daylilies are a good combination.

Bonus Section

Here is a slideshow of all the pictures than made the playoffs

Right Now

This past week I  had my first "oh wow" moment of the garden year, at least that I can remember.

I grow clivia. I have maybe 10 of them in various sizes. They have to come inside for the half a year when it is too cold. (Saying "winter" sort of minimizes the time.) Last fall I was pleased to read that winter care consists of leaving them alone for months on end. I read  that you should completely ignore them until February. No water at all. So they lived in the basemen, with nothing but some  bright lights (LED's).

Well that advice worked. They do not look the worse for being ignored. In fact I mostly paid no attention to them. They are in the basement and I do not go in there all that often. 

I think it was Monday of this last week I went in there for something when look what I found. 

This bloom stalk grew to almost 18 inches with 0 water since October. It broke dormancy all by itself.

So the plant got some water and some fertilizer and came upstairs.

It has been opening all week.

Beautiful

It will be in full bloom in maybe a week.

I checked all the other bloom sized clivia and none of them had anything new.  As a control this past week,  I took one and gave it water and more light. We will see what happens.

This pretty little phalaenopsis just opened. I really like the little ones.

We also have edible lettuce at this point. It was planted on January 6. 

It is time for a second planting.

Julia's recipe

Chicken and pasta and mushrooms

The link to the website with all of Julia's recipes is

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

What's not to love about a recipe including mushrooms, chicken and pasta? This is from the NYT, and it is sort of a pasta-risotto mash-up, at least as to method. Not as time-consuming as risotto (at least as risotto is reputed to be). And it is comforting and tasty.  

The ingredients:

3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil;

about 1/3 cup diced onion;

1 tablespoon smushed garlic;

2-1/2 to 3 cups sliced mushrooms;

1/2 lb. (2 cups) shape pasta;

1/2 cup white wine;

3 to 4 cups of chicken stock or a combination of chicken stock and water;

about 1/2 to 3/4 lb. skinless, boneless  chicken (about 1 to 1-1/2 cups cut into small pieces);

salt, pepper, parmesan cheese.

A few notes on ingredients: 1) I used cremini mushrooms. Button mushrooms would be good too; 2) I used penne but some other shape (as opposed to long) pasta would be just as good - shells, big macaroni, bow-ties; 3) I used skinless boneless chicken breast, but skinless, boneless chicken thighs would be fine;

4) I had about 3 cups of home-made chicken stock on hand. I ended up using about 3-1/2 cups of liquid, so the last bit was water. Perfectly okay. If you don't have chicken stock on hand, use better-than-bouillon and stir it into the onions and garlic and mushrooms at the beginning of the recipe which I will get to in a minute.  

           

I started, as usual, by prepping the vegetables. I cleaned and diced the onion; cleaned and smushed the garlic and cleaned and sliced the mushrooms. 

When the vegetables were ready, I heated 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a big kind of deep skillet. When the oil was warmed up (but not smoking hot), I added the onions followed closely by the garlic and mushrooms. 

I let this cook over medium heat for maybe 8 or 9 minutes. 

While the vegetables were cooking, I cut the chicken breast into little pieces, by slicing the breast lengthwise and then cutting across. Little pieces - maybe 1/2" by 1".

I did keep an eye on the vegetables, and I stirred them from time to time. 

When the vegetables were done (that is, the onion was soft and the mushrooms had shrunk down some and the garlic had kind of disappeared), I added 2 cups of uncooked penne. 

And here it is. Still on medium heat.

I stirred the penne around and it looked a little dry to me so I added a bit more oil. Not an entire tablespoon but a bit. And maybe 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Then I added the wine and did some more stirring as the wine evaporated. This stage took maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

Next I started pouring the chicken stock into the skillet 1/2 cup at a time. That came to 6 installments, if that's the right word. 

After each addition of chicken stock, I stirred for a minute or two. Then I turned around and worked on other things. No need for constant stirring. But after 2 or 3 minutes, the skillet would be dryer (I could scrape the spoon along the bottom of the pan and leave a trail). So I would add the next installment of stock. 

Maybe 15 - 18 minutes total. After about 10 minutes, I tasted one of the penne pieces. It was partly but not entirely done. I decided I needed a little more liquid, so I added 1/2 cup of water.

After 15 minutes, the penne was mostly done.  

So it was time to add the chicken bits. 

Cooking the whole dish, stirring the chicken bits in. It only took about 3 or 4 minutes for the chicken to cook. I was surprised, although I don't know why, so I took a piece of chicken out and cut it open and it was white all the way through. No pink. 

In hindsight, this would have been a good time to add maybe another 1/2 teaspoon of salt. We needed to salt the dish at the table.  

I poured it out into a nice serving piece.

Then I sprinkled parmesan on top, and dinner was ready, with the usual green salad and berries with yogurt. 

One of the benefits of middle-class life is being able to buy out of season organic berries. 

I like the look of this dish - white to beige to brown. I think with button mushrooms, the overall effect would be paler. But this way it's pretty as well as tasty. 

Odds and Ends and what is not so funny

On June 21, 2009, the blog turned green. That became its background color for a while. That was a time of mass protests in Iran. The protesters had adopted green as its color. You can find the post in the archives, even though the green is now gone.

It is difficult to write about flowers when an actual war is going on. Of course there has been war someplace for it seems like forever, often with U.S. troops.

Maybe it is even more important to think about flowers when war happens. But thinking of gardens should not be to the point where we forget about that event so far from Iowa City.  We need to pause every so often to think about how fortunate we are in Iowa and this country, to not have tanks coming to our neighborhood. 

So let me pause and think for a short moment about people in Ukraine, huddled in shelters, or facing down tanks that will show no mercy. Please pray for peace, even though I do not quite know what that means.

I understand that the sunflower is the national flower of the Ukraine. This picture was taken in the community garden this past summer.

I do wish to close on a slightly different note. This appeared in the January, 2008 blog.

Philip