September 11, 2022- finally some rain

It is raining. It is Saturday night and it is raining. A gentle but steady rain that is predicted to be perhaps an inch. We can use it. I gardened today with the determination of someone who knows rain is coming. 

Update- 5:30 am Sunday- It did rain. By some measures we had an entire inch. It has been over two months since we had a rain of over an inch. It also rained an inch over about 12 hours. It all should have all gone right into the ground.

Second update: Big Bloom right now, and I actually mean right now, at 5:37 am on Sunday morning.

We knew the rain was coming. It was forecast all day and it actually came when predicted. I also knew the Queen of the Night was going to bloom, Saturday night. In the rain.

Queen of the Night is the common name for the very big epiphyllum in the front yard. It is epiphyllum oxypetallum and is sometimes called the Night Blooming cereus. Purists tell me it is not a cereus at all. So I will do a little to correct this misinformation.

So I moved the plant up onto the front porch. Where it bloomed, being fully open by about 9:30. It is still open in the dark this morning.

It does have a nice fragrance. With 7 flowers is makes a nice statement. Being on the porch was a good idea.

This is out the front door at 5 this morning.

Here is some video.

I have almost planted 2 flats of pansies in the front sidewalk bed. I have also planted the last of the impatiens that I had started from cuttings, several months ago. There might have been two flats of them. I went for a short visit to the local nursery yesterday. They had lots of nice pansies, at surprisingly reasonable prices. I have almost finished the one bed in the front. Of course that will mean I start on another bed. There are always more things to do.

What is hard to know is just how much more of a season we will have. In recent years the first frost has sometimes waiting until Halloween. That is a ways off.

Pansies at least will take a frost and keep on coming.

It is increasingly obvious that it is fall. The front arrived yesterday (Saturday)  sending the temperatures down to close to 50 degrees.

The Japanese anemones are well underway. They do hold their own against weeds. They do not appear affected by the lack of rain. In fact they are at the very edges of where the sprinkler reaches.

Another sign of fall is the opening of the seed pods on the tree peonies. I will collect the seed and try to get it into the ground within a week.

It is important to stay on top of this development. I understand that the seeds will harden quickly after the pods open. If planted before they harden, they may germinate in the first spring. If you wait, they may not germinate until the second spring.

I should really take a census of the existing seedlings. One is finishing its third season. 

It takes about 5 years to be big enough to bloom. It takes about three years before the plants  develop a woody structure and not die all the way back to the ground.

I think I have about 20 seedlings, many of which are in their first year.

The other white epiphyllum have been blooming this week.

Julia's recipe

A new Soup- plum

This recipe for plum soup is from Michael Knock's biweekly food column in the IC Press Citizen, in connection with a local heritage celebration which featured old recipes, including this one. The recipe is easy (with a blender and a word of advice, which will appear below). But first a story.

Some years ago on an occasion I do not recall, I had cold cherry soup at somebody's house, I would imagine. It was delicious. And I thought I could do this with some other fruit. So I made cold cantaloupe soup. It did not work. The children still speak of it with horror and shudders. As a result, I turned away from the the cold fruit soup impulse. Until now. Maggie, although skeptical and still harping on the failed cantaloupe experiment, tasted this and pronounced it good. Whew. 

The ingredients:

2 14 oz. cans of plums;

1 cup sour cream;

1 tablespoon sugar;

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon; and

1/4 teaspoon almond extract.

I think vanilla would be fine instead of almond extract and I would guess that Greek yogurt (thick and not gunked up with artificial sweeteners or thickeners) would substitute for the sour cream.

If one had fresh plums, they could be cooked in a little water and sieved and used instead of canned. More work, however. 

What's the word of advice about? Canned plum nomenclature. My cans said "unpitted purple plums." I assumed this meant purple plums without pits. Sans pits. Pits gone. So I dumped the sour cream and one of the cans of plums into my blender and turned it on. Such a racket. "Unpitted" means WITH pits. Using the same number of letters, the can could have been labeled "purple plums with pits." I advise caution whenever encountering can label information about pits. For example this soup would be lovely with canned cherries, a straight-up swap with canned sweet cherries and requiring maybe a bit more sugar with canned (or frozen and thawed) sour cherries. But what about pits? 

In order to salvage my soup, I had to strain it through a fine-ish mesh strainer. And when I added the second can of plums, I made sure to extract the pits. 

Here is the stage when I realized straining would be necessary. 

So I put the big strainer over an appropriately sized bowl and poured the soup in. I used the rubber spatula to force the slurry through the sieve. I was left with some bits of plum skin and some bits of plum pits. My blender was powerful enough to partially pulverize some of the pits. So tedious.

Once the strained soup was in the bowl, I whisked in the sugar, cinnamon and almond extract and that was that.  

I put the bowl of soup in the refrigerator so the soup would get nice and cold. Before serving, I poured it into a prettier bowl. 

Then I thought cookies would be a welcome addition so I made some plain shortbread.

Dessert! Plum soup and shortbread.

I was feeling fancy, so we ate it out of bowls. It is a nice in a cup too. 

Now that I am wise to the the pit problem, I think I will try cherry soup. 

But not cantaloupe. 

Odds and Ends

 A somewhat dated followup to drought report

I am not going to dwell on the lack of rain in Iowa City. It is what it is.  

But here is the map from Saturday morning, with no rain in Iowa City this month. 

I have gardener's hands at this point in the year. There are minor rashes from pulling something that had some toxins in it. Yesterday I got stung through my cotton gloves by a bee. I think  I disturbed it in the ground. I have a gardener's thumbnail developed to be a minor cutting tool.

The rain is about over. I look forward to the light of the day, which will be delayed some as it is cloudy.

I should really get my last bulbs ordered.

Pray for peace, and for reconciliation. Figure out if there is anything you can do besides prayer.

Maybe plant a pansy thinking about November.

Philip