September 25, 2022- the chill arrives

 Fall is really here.

There first had to be that one day of record heat. On Wednesday, it did get to 96. Then the front came through.

Now the question is which jacket should you wear. 

The buckeyes are falling in the backyard. Buckeyes are rather neat, particularly if you have not seen them before. The leaves from the buckeye tree will be coming down next.

I have mentioned before that we have 5 gigantic mature trees at our house. One each of elm, walnut, linden, sycamore, and buckeye. They drop their leaves at different times. Leaf time goes from September to December.

I can live with cooler temperatures. What concerns me is the predictions for the upper 30's, several days this coming week. I am already thinking about our trip to Maine in early October. That is a great time to go but...how many plants should come inside before we leave.  For now we wait.

The fall crocuses arrived on Tuesday.  I ordered 300 with the idea to sell 200 for the backyard sale for the food banks. I had 18 people order some bulbs. I think most of those people had not even known about fall crocuses. I like the idea of all those gardens with color in November. After I passed 250 on the order list, I ordered 150 more. They really are inexpensive. I do hope they bloom.

The "farm" shuts down this weekend. That is what we call our rented sunny garden plot. I need to go harvest the amaryllis bulbs. I will need to collect all the different peppers.

Here is half of the amaryllis harvest. I will let these dry out in the sun for a week or two. Then I will chop  off the leaves and they will head to a blanket of peat moss for the winter. And into the darkness with them

Stop the presses- Here is a picture of the most amusing and amazing thing in the garden all year.

You may remember I use colored plastic straws to mark where certain things are planted. Tree peony seedlings get marked that was. You may also remember, way back to the beginning of this post, that we have a walnut tree that is tall. A falling walnut can create quite a missile. Our neighbor who also has a walnut tree in her front yard has put up a sign warning people not to park in front of her house. People take the sign seriously.

Back to my yard.

Wel, I came out Saturday morning to look around to decide what to do first. Here is what I saw-

This is not trick photography. The walnut is impaled on the plastic straw. Imagine with what precision that missile must have been sent. A few millimeters either way and it would have glanced off or broken the straw. I laughed loud enough for Julia to hear me inside.

Here is a further away shot.

Hosta

If hosta is not the backbone of the garden, it is certainly part of the backbone. We do have shade. Hosta was probably my first garden enthusiasm, back in the 1980's. I counted hosta varieties, trying to get every one I could find. That stopped after a few years. There were too many to get them all. And I moved on to some other enthusiam.  Daylilies as I recall.

But the hosta remained. I got back into them about ten years ago. I have tried to get 5-6 new ones each year.  They do have to find places to go. Some hosta look rather bedraggled by this time of the season. Some still look good. Here are a few pictures.

This is Brother Stefen, back by the pond. One reason certain hosta still look good is their location. They need to be away from the hot sun, and close to one of the sprinklers. With ertain varities there can be such wonderful patterns in each leaf.

This is June, next to Brother Stefen, right there in my top 10 lost of hostas. It has been there for decades.

This is Earth Angel. 

This is a newer hosta, located in the front sidewalk bed. The name is Ambrosia. It also has a little. room to grow. It does need a label. I need to order labels.

I had to add these two.

This is Andy Murray. I got this plant several years ago. It has taken several years to live up to its original picture.

This is Neptune. It is perhaps the most mentioned hosta when we had the garden walk come through in early July.

Other garden pictures this week

I got a few ornamental kale plants. They will last until December. After I cut back my daylilies I clean up those beds. Sometimes there is space to put things, just for the fall. Ornamental Kale is one of the choices. Fall crocuses is another.

These are rather interesting berries on the kousa dogwood trees. The pink dogwood has only tiny smooth red berries.

The toad lilies are getting organized. I will put up more pictures next week.

This is a rather late colchicum. I know it is a colchicum since it has 6 stamens. Real fall crocuses have 3.

Go ahead-count the stamens.

Julia's recipe

Peanut stew

My colleague Rebekah and I were discussing what was for dinner, and she said she was thinking of making peanut stew. That sounded interesting to me, so I asked for the recipe, which she gave me. Her recipe says it is a modification of a recipe from a website called budgetbytes, for a dish described as "african-peanut-stew-vegan." This is my modification of Rebekah's modification. For one thing, she's a vegan (or mostly vegan) cook and I am not. At least not in any concerted way. My version was tasty and quick (as I had some corner-cutting elements on hand). A vegan version would be nice, as well.   

The ingredients:

2 tablespoons grated ginger; 

1 tablespoon smushed garlic;

1 cup diced onion (medium dice);

1 to 1-1/2 cup peeled, diced (1/2" squares) sweet potato;

2 tablespoons olive oil;

2 cups cooked protein ( I had leftover pulled pork);

4 cups stock (I had stock from cooking the pork in the slow cooker);

1 little (6 oz.) can tomato paste;

1 cup smooth peanut butter;

1-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes;

1-1/2 tablespoon ground cumin;                                                                                                                      1/2 big bag frozen chopped  kale;

 some salt!

There is a jar of peanuts among the ingredients for garnish. People who like cilantro (my people are against it) can garnish with cilantro. If you like heat, you can add sriracha at the table too. 

 

I started by prepping the vegetables, as usual. I peeled and diced the onion; peeled and diced the sweet potato; peeled and smushed the garlic and grated the ginger. 

As I have said, I don't peel ginger and I keep ginger in the freezer. I have had trouble with ginger getting moldy. Frozen ginger does not mold, and it grates up just fine with a rasp-type grater.  

I measured the oil into a big pot and added the onion, garlic and ginger when the oil was warm. Not shimmery, as I did not want to sizzle the aromatics. 

When the onions were translucent, I added the tomato paste and stirred it in for maybe 1 or 2 minutes. After the tomato paste was warmed up, I added the diced sweet potato.

Then I added the cumin and red pepper flakes and some salt. Maybe 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. 

Next, I added the pork stock and the peanut butter. Looks interesting, doesn't it? 

I stirred in the peanut butter and then added the shredded pork. I turned the heat up so the stew came to a boil, then turned the heat down and cooked it for about 20 minutes.

You will see how the stew became kind of opaque - that's the peanut butter. 

After 20 minutes, I added the frozen kale (kind of thawed from sitting on the kitchen counter) and cooked it on medium for maybe another 5 to 7 minutes until the kale was heated up.  

And here it is. Golden and a little mysterious. We served it over a scoop of rice. 

Variations are myriad. If you have leftover cooked chicken, use it! With chicken stock or better than bouillon chicken base or a can of diced tomatoes plus 2 cups of water. Prep your own greens - collards, chard, kale or use other frozen greens like spinach (or the aforementioned collards).

Rebekah makes it with meatballs from impossible ground beef. Making meat balls (impossible or otherwise) lengthens prep time. I think a good vegan protein option would be cubed extra firm tofu. Rebekah also likes spicy food. Really spicy food. If you are also a very spicy eater, feel free to increase the red pepper flakes or cumin or garlic. 

We had the leftovers for lunch, heated up in a skillet with leftover rice mixed in. Better than a sandwich any day. 

Odds and Ends

Yesterday was a busy day in the garden. Between talking with garden visitors and cleaning up just one bed, it was tiring. Then I dug up 40 amaryllis plants over at the "farm." Allowing them 3-4 months of direct sun did seem to make them bigger. We shall see how the bloom in the spring. Then we will fatten them up all over again.

Sometimes I suggest that we remember that a real war is going on. There still is. Pray for peace. 

We have crazy people running for election in lots of places. I absolutely do not understand how so many people vote crazy.

Then something else in the world happens. Several weeks ago it was flooding in Pakistan. Now our thoughts turn to the people of Iran, who risk arrest and much worse, as they try to change their world. I remember the green revolution of 2009. We turned the outline of the blog green for a while. There was so much hope. Now we do it again.

Do what you can. 

At the moment I sell some crocuses to feed people.

What will you do?

Philip