Week 12- February 13, 2022

 It was a pretty day yesterday. When I went out to get the paper a little before 7, the sun was up and there was a cardinal singing. It felt a little like spring. It certainly sounded like spring.

Of course it was 6 degrees. By the afternoon it had maybe reached 14 degrees. February tends to have swings like that. Earlier this week it was in the 40's and I found a few crocuses coming up.

So yesterday was an inside day. I planted a few seeds and moved other seedlings to bigger pots. The coneflowers are coming up. The lettuce is almost big enough to cut off a few leaves.

Last Week

The winner by quite a bit was the purple pansy. What a great color.

The full vote was

This Week

The contest features plants that are all from the second half of the garden year.

#1 Orange lilium Elise

 July 10, 2021

This lovely lily is named Elise. She has been in the garden for at least 6 years. She is an Orienpet. That means she is a cross between an Oriental lily and a Trumpet lily.

On some cold weekend, with nothing else to do, I will try to do a complete inventory of my lilium. Oh, wait. There really is never such a time. Not even close.

I have some lists. Some are even accompanied by pictures. (That is the recommended type of list.) When I want to find a name for a lilium I have a folder within my 38,000 pictures of just lilium pictures. Some of them are labeled. Find-a-name means I look for a flower that is about the right color that has a name.

In this case it worked.

#2 Toad lily 

September 5, 2021

What a perfect plant.

It blooms in the fall, when you are looking for garden interest.

Then there are the spots. If there is another flower in the garden with more spots I cannot think of it.

I love to grown plants that people do not know about. The toad lily is certainly one of those.

Tricyrtis is the genus. They came from someplace else, with many varieties coming from Japan.

They like shade. They bloom in the fall. That is about the perfect combination for our garden, and so many gardens which have a lot of shade.

Here is the Plants Delight discussion of the toad lily. It will debunk one story of how they got their name.

https://www.plantdelights.com/blogs/articles/tricyrtis-toad-lily-bulbs-hirta

#3 Epiphyllum hookeri 

October 3, 2021

This is one of the best epiphyllum. For one reason it blooms throughout the year. It will keep setting buds all the way up to frost. 

Epiphyllum is the genus.

Hookeri is the species.

#4 Pink lantana trio 

October 1, 2021

Here is another lantana group. They make such wonderful shapes.

#5 Cattleya Orchid Arctic Star "Snow Queen"

November 27, 2021

I have found that cattleya orchids are easier to care for than you might think. I have had this lovely white orchid for 5-6 years at this point. I put it out in May and bring it inside in October. Sometimes it blooms in the summer. It also blooms late in the year.

It does get big and a little unwieldy.  See the bonus section.

Bonus Section

Let me show you more toad lilies.

Toad lilies get rather big, covered with their lovely little spotted flowers.

They bloom for almost two months.

This picture begins to show their size. They might get to about 30 inches tall, and that amount wide.

The plants in the picture were actually trimmed in July by a wandering deer. It just ate the top 2-3 inches of the entire plant. Now I know.

The blooming habit varies among varieties. This one is more linear. 

This one has a yellow flower. I have had it for at least 10 years. It stays small. I may move it to a different location to see if that makes it get bigger.

Arctic Star pictures

This gives you an idea of the size of the plant.

The roots and branches get all tangled. This picture was taken yesterday. You can see some new growth just starting.

I think about dividing it. But if I took the plant apart I might have 5-6 plants.

So instead, last year at this time, I surgically removed 2 pieces from the edge, not disturbing the main plant.

They lived. And guess what.

This is blooming now.

The flower is fragrant. It reaches out to you as you walk by particularly during a sunny day.

Maybe today I will tackle the big plant again. The high is only going to be 15 degrees. Probably another inside day.

Here is a Lilium slideshow with some Dave Brubeck. 

Julia's recipe

Cabbage and pasta and leeks and walnuts

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

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

I was intrigued and also a bit dubious when I read this recipe on the New York Times website. Cabbage is a salad thing or a side dish thing (think red cabbage with apples) or a fermented thing (think sauerkraut or kimchi) or rarely the base layer of a casserole (think Copenhagen cabbage casserole, for which you can find a recipe here in the archive).  But not cabbage and noodles. So I made it, and it was great - flavorful, easy, soft but with some texture, even vegetarian. On further reflection, I thought that there must be Slavic or German or Hungarian cabbage-and-noodle dishes that I had somehow never encountered at home.  And I am guessing that there are cabbage-noodle dishes in Asian cooking too, the cabbage being ubiquitous and easy to store through the winter. So here you go.

The ingredients:

12 cups of shredded cabbage;

2 leeks (about 1 cup sliced);

1 tablespoon smushed garlic;

1 lb. spaghetti;

1/4 cup olive oil;

3 tablespoons butter;

2 teaspoons cumin seed;

1-1/4 (or so) cups of grated pecorino;

1-1/2 cups walnuts;

1tablespoon black pepper (really);

2-3 tablespoons lemon juice;

                                                                                                        2 tablespoons kosher salt.

Do not be dismayed by the 12 cups of shredded cabbage. I cut it into shreds myself, because sometimes that's how I roll. However, the Dole people sell packaged shredded cabbage called (I think) Angel Hair Cabbage. Sometimes we buy it as a short-cut salad component. It's fine. Just shredded cabbage. I think you'd need about 2-1/2 10 ounce bags of Angel Hair cabbage.

As usual, I started with vegetable prep. I trimmed the leeks, throwing away the leafy dark green parts. I have never figured out anything to do with them.

I cut each leek in half lengthwise and washed it lest there be grit among the leaves. Then I sliced the leeks into thin (about 1/8") slices. I ended up with about 1 cup. I set them aside and turned my attention to the cabbage. But first to the walnuts.

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and poured the walnuts into a pie plate, spreading them into a single layer. I put the pie plate into the oven while it was still heating up and baked the walnuts for maybe 10 minutes. If you have had the foresight to pre-heat the oven, bake for maybe 7 minutes. 

I cut the cabbage into quarters and peeled off the tired outer leaves. Then I cut the core out of each piece and started making thin (again 1/8") cross slices. I stopped at about 12 cups. 

I smushed the garlic and put it in a little dish. 

Next I measured the olive oil and butter and put them in a Dutch oven on medium heat. 

When the butter had melted, I added the cumin seed and let it cook for maybe 15 to 30 seconds until I could smell it. 

Next I added the leeks and garlic and 2 teaspoons of salt, immediately followed by... 

all the cabbage.

I stirred the mixture for a few minutes, until the cabbage wilted pretty much down to less than half.

Then I put a lid on the pot, turned the stove down to medium low and set the timer for 10 minutes.

I put a big pot of water on with about 1 tablespoon of salt to cook the pasta. 

When the water came to a boil, I put the spaghetti in. I used thin spaghetti which cooks in about 7 or 8 minutes. 

When the cabbage mixture had cooked for 10 minutes, I gave it a stir and put the lid back on. I set the timer for 5 minutes.  I tasted at that point, and added a little more salt. Cabbage - done.

When the pasta was done, I used tongs to shift the spaghetti from one pot to the other. 

The idea was to have some of the pasta cooking water get into the pot with the cabbage. 

More spaghetti moving. I also ladled out maybe 1/2 cup of pasta cooking water into the cabbage/spaghetti mixture. And stirred.

I poured in 1-1/4 cup grated pecorino and stirred some more.

Then I added the black pepper and lemon juice. I admit I did not measure the lemon juice. And stirred again.

Lastly, I plopped it into a nice serving dish and sprinkled the toasted walnuts on top. We put a dish of grated pecorino on the table. Along with a nice green salad and raspberries with yogurt. 

The walnuts were a surprisingly effective addition, adding a bit of flavor and texture. If you are opposed to walnuts, leave them out or maybe substitute roasted pecans or macadamia nuts. 

The recipe makes a lot. We had 2 quarts left over, which made lunch for Philip and me twice over the next week. It held up fine in the refrigerator and heated nicely in a non-stick skillet with a little water. 

Odds and Ends and what is funny

As I was working on this post I googled the name Lily Elise. It turned out there is a singer with that name. Who knew?

36 days until spring. There are 40's back in the forecast. It would be good to be warm enough to start a little garden cleanup. I am still on the lookout for the first snowdrop.

I ordered some coleus seed yesterday. And some columbine seed.

We got another snow dusting last night. 

Be careful out there.

Philip