November 27, 2022- Happy Thanksgiving-Let the contest begin

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  

There are so many traditions for this holiday. Shopping is not one of them. (Except maybe for spring bulb sales)

When the children were little, my parents (and Julia's mother) would come visit us. We would go out to the tree farm on the Friday after and pick out a Christmas tree. You could pick one out at that point, while it was still in the ground. Then you could go get it right before Christmas.  At that point they would cut it for you and it would be nice and fresh. Some of the first words our children learned to read were on the sign at the tree farm that announced "no dogs."

Of course that tradition is linked with one particular memory. We were driving back from the farm, right before Christmas, with the tree strapped to the roof of our car. That one time it blew off into thr ditch. Yikes.

Traditions change, evolve. You can no longer reserve a fresh tree. It is been many years since we went to the tree farm, on those glorious and sometimes cold afternoons.

I also remember buying sale bulbs and planting them on Thanksgiving weekend. I think the ground may be frozen this year. 

Note- warmer temperatures have returned this week with several days getting into the 50's. Some late crocuses have emerged. If the tempertures hold maybe they will bloom. (The average high temperature this time of year is about 45.)

But let me talk about another tradition which starts today.

The winter picture contest.

The first contest was in 2005. There has been contests each winter ever since, skipping one year. The reason why I missed that one year eludes me at this point, which is fine.

For 13 weeks there will be a contest between 5 pictures from the garden in 2022. You get to vote, using a poll located on the website. The 13 winners and several wildcards advance to the next round. After a final vote, the picture of the year will be selected. By that point, hopefully, spring will either be here, or will be right around the corner.

The pictures are posted early on Sunday morning, with voting available all week. Everyone in the household can vote. I think if you refresh the post that allows another vote to be cast.

Tecnology hint - How to vote on your phone. If you are viewing the blog on your phone, you must scroll to the bottom and click on "view web version." That will get you to the poll.

Comments are encouraged amd much appreciated.  Upon request I also send out an email when the new post is available. (Send me an email if you would like this notice. My address is philip.mears@gmail.com.) Some people like to reply to the email. Others use the comments section at the end of the post. I always am interested in why you picked a particular picture. Comments can be about any subject however, including how your garden is doing or what you think of Julia's recipe.

Other features of the blog, during the contest include:

        There of course are the contestants, and the announcement of the winner from the previous week. If you are interested you can check back during the week to see how the contest is going.

        You vote in the poll section. If it is working correctly you can see each week's vote totals going back to the beginning of the contest. Voting ends at the end of the day on Saturday. There are always a few people who wait to vote to the very end. This can add some suspense if the vote is close.

        There is a "bonus" section.   This contains other pictures related to the contestants. Sometimes for example I will show you the same picture, only with different cropping. 

        There can be a section called "right now." This contains pictures from the garden taken this week. Mostly those will be inside pictures.

        Then of course there is Julia's recipe. She has been doing recipes since the summer of 2016, when that awful election was going on. Katie made us a separate blog for all of her past recipes. It is located at 

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

        Finally there is a section called "Odds and Ends." It contains things I have found odd. It is also located at the End of the blog. 

So let us do it. For 2022-23. 

The contestants for Week #1

#1 Snowdrop- Wendy's Gold (March 13, 2022)

I am excited to show you this snowdrop for several reasons. 

(1) This variety of snowdrops was new to the garden in  2022. It was planted in 2021. New plants are always welcome. (In an already crowded garden this can be a problem.)

(2) Snowdrops are so welcome each winter, as they herald the coming of spring. They really are the first flower of the year. Sometimes they even appear as early as January. 

(3)This particular variety is special for being yellow. Please note the yellow cap.  Most snowdrops have green caps. (Please see the bonus section further down the post.)

(4) Then of course there is the fact that it has a name. In the past I have planted snowdrops without thinking about the names. There were just snowdrops, or maybe double snowdrops. I was introduced to named snowdrops by a garden friend, Don. He has this most fantastic garden north of town. He has over a hundred named varities, of snowdrops.  I went to visit those varieties this past March. It turns out that the English have been obsessed with snowdrops for centuries, almost matching the Dutch tulip mania during the 17th century. (If you do not know that garden story, look it up.) One can pay much money for snowdrops (3 figures), if the obsession works with your budget.

Don is trying to spread enthusiasum for snowdrops beyond his backyard. This fall he gave me ten new varieties that I planted last month. I have them marked with temporary labels but need to get more permanent name plates. Those should be available for viewing in about 4 months. 

(5) I love how snowdrops grow, in the snow. They certainly do not mind the snow, or the cold. Please see more pictures in the bonus section. They have something like antifreeze in their veins. (I know plants do not have veins.) Their cell structure does not break down in the bitter cold. It seems like they actually radiate warmth, which melts the snow around them. (See bonus picture.)

#2 Pink Corydalis- 

George Baker (April 2, 2022)

This is a lovely Corydalis solida named George Baker. 

Corydalis is the genus. Solida is the species. George Baker is the hybrid.

In formal plant naming the genus is listed first, followed by the species, and then the named variety.The genus and species are suppose to be italized, with the genus being capitalized. (Sometimes there is an educational component to this blog.)

Corydalis solida , also called fumewort, comes in a variety of colors, and mostly blooms in the spring. This pink variety is particularly attractive as it blooms at the same time as the little blue scilla, or squill. The scilla blooms in waves througout the garden several weeks after the aconite have painted the garden yellow.

I would like to establish this corydalis in the parts of the garden that have the scilla. I would love  to combine the blue and the pink. I just planted another 25 pink corydalis this fall. I planted the variety called Beth Evans. A picture of that variety appears in the bonus section. To do it right I should really get at least a hundred.

Like many early spring ephemerals it is not tasty to deer (or maybe rabbits.) Snowdrops and aconite also do not taste good. If you think about it, this is natural selection, to use an old term, at its best.

#3  Crocuses (March 17, 2022)

These flowers need little introduction. They arrive in the spring, some time after the snowdrops and the aconite. They then bloom for almost a month.

The genus is...wait for it...Crocus.

I am not sure of the species ot the variety. I usually get crocuses in some collection where they are not named.

Crocus have been around for a long time. They are said to have been introduced to England by the Romans. That was a long time ago.

There are crocus species that bloom in the fall. One is Crocus sativus, which is the saffron crocus. That species has been cultivated for 3500 years.  I planted some of those 6 weeks ago which are just now coming up. We will see if this late warm spell allows them to bloom.

As many know, most crocus are tasty to squirrels. When I plant them in the fall I  put a perforated tray over the place where they are planted. I will leave the tray there until the ground is frozen. I have sometimes sprayed the area with deer repellant, wishfully thinking that deer and squirrels have common smell dislikes.

An exception to this taste thing is Crocus tommasinianus. I will wrote more about that in a few weeks.

#4 Tree peony Phoenix White (May 14, 2022)

These lovelies are home grown in all respects. The plant, and three of its companion blooming plants, were grown from seed in the garden. The seed came from my sister's yard in Maryland. She has now identified the plant as Phoenix White, obtained from Cricket Hill probably 20 years ago.

I carefully planted some of the seed about ten years agi and waited. Nothing. The seeds did not grow. So I just planted the remaining seed and forgot about it. Sure enough, the next spring I noticed little plants I thought looked like peonies. Well they were. Four years later the first one bloomed. That was in 2016. You can see the blog post from May 8, 2016 in the archives section of the blog.

There are now four blooming sized plants from this seed pool. One was buried by a snow pile 2 winters ago and broke off at the base. Remarkably or predictably, it grew back. It is now big enough to bloom, even though you can pick out which plant had to grow back.

Since the success with seeds I have been planting all the seed I get. Then I wait to see what happens. I have about 2 dozen seedlings at this point ranging in age from 1-3 springs. If things take a long time to grow, it helps if you have some in various stages of development.

#5  SDB Iris- Bennett's Star ( May 10, 2022) 

This is a Standard Dwarf Bearded (SDB) iris, named Bennett's Star. It was developed in 2013 by  T.J. Aitkens. His family has a nursery called Aitkens Salmon Creek, located just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. They have developed many bearded iris over their 40 years of being in business. What a great legacy. 

I love dwarf bearded iris for many reasons. 

To begin with they are iris and I love all iris. More than any other flower I can think of, iris come in so many varieties, and bloom for such a long stretch.

The first ones to bloom, early in the spring,  are the little reticulata iris. They bloom with the crocuses. 

Next up are the bearded iris. They bloom in sequence, in order of their height. The smallest comes first. I chuckle almost every time I just look at the categories of these bearded iris. They are, by size:

Minature Dwarf

Standard Dwarf

Intermediate

Miniature Tall

Border 

Tall

The bearded iris last through the month of May. 

Next up are the Siberian, then the Louisiana, the Japanese, and finally the Blackberry lilies (which are really iris). The flowers of the blackberry lilies, of course, look nothing like iris, which confused the people responsible for names. The blackberry lilies (iris) bloom into August.

After that there are certain varities that rebloom in the fall. I did not see if any of mine did that as the rain mostly stopped in August.

I like these short iris start in part because they bloom about the time the initial rush of spring bulbs is ending. In 2022 these short iris bloomed from May 7 to May 15, 2022.

Another reason to like these little iris is that they do not need staking. This is unlike some of the tall bearded iris.  And some of their colors are really fantastic.

Bonus Pictures

Snowdrops

Here is an established clump of snowdrops, with their green caps.

These were some of the earliest snowdrops. This picture was taken on January 7, 2007. In 2022 the earliest snowdrops showed up in late February.

This wonderful picture is of a neighbors back yard. Enjoy the picture as the yard is now being "developed." Change happens.

Wendy's Gold has gold foliage as soon as it was out of the ground.

This was one of the top ten interesting pictures of 2022. All the snowdrops created warm spots that melted back the snow.

Little Iris

I got new varieties in 2020 and 2021.

This next iris joins the "all name" group. It is called "Boink." If you develope the plant you get to name it.

More Corydalis

This is solida Purple Bird

This next is Beth Evans. I think it would be nice to know exactly who she was? Was she the hybridizer or a neighbor or a relative? Where and when did she live? Sometime you can figure it out, with enough time. Sometimes not. I drew a blank.

Here is a short article with some nice pictures and no ads, about corydalis.

https://frustratedgardener.com/2017/03/21/crazy-for-corydalis/

This article says that the red and pink varieties cames from Romania. "Beth Eavns" does not sound like a Romanian name. Maybe she was on holiday there and brought a plant back to England in 1800. Works for me.

Here is George Baker, the contestant this week. I wonder if George was related to Beth. I repeat the picture so you can compare it with Beth Evans. BE has white on the tips of the flower. 

Tree peony pictures

This was one of the plants in April of 2015. That was a year before it bloomed. You can see the colored straws I use to mark special plants to watch for.

The first couple of years the seedlings die all the way back to the ground in the winter. About the third year they begin to form something like a stick. 

This was March 25, 2016. 

This was April 13, 2016. 

This was May 5, 2016. 

Other tree peony pictures. 

This is a nice reddish tree peony we have had for probably 20 years. I reliably blooms but does not look like a 20 year old peony. It probably needs more sun. It only gets about 4-5 hours of mostly morning sun.

This is the oldest tree peony we have. We got it about 2000. It has recently had some difficult years. It was actually more robust 10 years ago.  This picture is from 2013. It gets decent sun, until June. Then the sycamore leaves come out making that part of the yard  dappled shade.

This closeup picture from 2022 almost made the contest. Sometimes I do not know what to think about closeups. They can be so spectacular that I think they could be unfair competition,

Here is the entire plant in 2022. I sometimes forget how young these seedings are.

I do wonder what they will be like in 5-10 years.

This is the wonderful seed head, after the petals had all fallen off. 

Here is the seed pod, when it had just opened. From all of my plants I can get and plant 100 seeds. If I just get a ten percent germination rate that is 10 plants.

Right Now

In this section of the blog post I tell you a little about what is going on now with the garden. 

The kale look good, outside. I am having to think about the phrase "frost heave." Some of the kale plants are just 1-2 inches out of the ground. I will probably add dirt around them, even though at this time of year my dirt supply is limited. 

This is one of the plants I got at the nursery in Des Plaines in early October.

I grow orchids. I have maybe 30 plants. They have a hard time competing for my attention during the outside time. Many bloom once they have been brought inside.

This is a little dendrobrium called Regal Vista.

Julia's recipe

Baked butternut squash and sausage. 

I am still in the world of sheet pan suppers. This recipe is from the NYT, with modifications. Most of the prep time is dealing with the butternut squash and the potatoes. Then the oven does the rest of the work. 

The ingredients:

4 Italian sausages (we used 2 hot and 2 sweet);

3 medium-large Yukon Gold potatoes;

some butternut squash (maybe 4 cups of slices);

some broccoli (maybe 1-1/2 cups of florets);

1/4 cup olive oil;

1 tablespoon lemon juice; and

some kosher salt and black pepper.  

I started by cutting the top part of the squash off the bottom. I cut the bottom part in half lengthwise, scooped the seeds out and baked it (cut side down, with about 1/2" of water) in a 9"x13" pan while the oven was heating up (to 425 degrees). This has nothing to do with the rest of the dinner prep. When the squash is soft, you can scoop it out and process it in a food processor until smooth and then use it instead of pumpkin.

Then I peeled the top part of the squash. I cut the squash in half lengthwise, and then cut each half into half moon shapes. 

I put the squash slices into a bowl. 

Next, I added the 4 sausages, making some slashes in the skin, both to keep them from bursting and, on a more positive note, to let the spicy porky juices flavor the vegetables.

Next, I washed the potatoes. I cut the potatoes in half (no peeling) and cut each half into half moons, discarding out the ends which were mostly potato skin. Then I added the potatoes to the bowl, followed by the olive oil and about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper and tossed everything around. 

I took out a large rimmed sheet pan and poured everything onto it, spreading the ingredients around into a single layer.  

Spreading the ingredients.

While the sheet pan was in the oven, I cut some of the broccoli so I had about 1-1/2 cups of florets. I cooked the florets briefly so they were cooked through but not mushy. Maybe 10 minutes. I set the cooked broccoli bits aside. 

Baking time: about 40 minutes. I stirred stuff around after about 20 minutes. After 40 minutes, the potatoes and squash were browned on the underside and tender and the sausage was cooked. 

I cut the sausages into thirds and poured it all into the attractive serving dish. 

I mixed the broccolit with the lemon juice and poured that over top of the sausage and potatoes and squash. Dinner!

The recipe called for all squash. Which would be fine. I preferred some squash and some potatoes. Don't use russets which fall apart. 

The recipe called for 1-1/4 cups of fresh parsley, which I did not have, to be mixed with the lemon juice. So I went with the green vegetable I had on hand. It was fine: tasted and looked good. 

One could run the sheet pan under the broiler if one wished to brown up the sausages. I didn't. Leftovers were good, warm or cold. Cleanup was easy.   

Odds and Ends

Here is a very special memory from 2022. As soon as you click on the video you should know what I am referring to. You will need the sound.

We usually get mail order frogs from a pond company back east. We were too late with our order in 2022. I guess they do not ship when it is too hot. However some local traveling frogs showed up and provided much evening music, it seemed like for weeks.

The Aitkens website is quite fun to walk through. It is located at

https://flowerfantasy.net/

You can also find it at Salmon Creek nursery. Open gardens during iris season must be grand. Did you ever get there Barb and Larry?  The recent introductions of course are expensive. ($20-$60). I really liked one SDB named Golden Ringlets. Expensive of course is always relative. I was looking at snowdrops that were over $100. We are talking $100/each. What price do you put on something that is beautiful?

The world "iris" is  from the Greek for "rainbow." The genus is "Iris." The genus is so big it has subgenera. One of those containes the beared iris and is called "iris." That is what I read. That subgenera is then divided into sections. One of those sections, is called 'pogon' and is the bearded iris.

Words

What is with the sylllable "wort" in plant names?  Corydalis is fumewort. Pulmonaria is lungwort. There are other examples. Barrenwort is epimedium. I find out that there is an entire Wikipedia entry listing all the wort names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wort_plants

It turns out the suffix "wort" just means "plant."

I hope you have enjoyed this week #1 of the contest. I enjoyed writing it. That has been particularly the case as I had a four day weekend in which to putter on the computer.

Winter will surely come. It will be cold again. We have to go back to work tomorrow. 

The world is still a mess. 

We need to do what we can to make this world a better place.

Pray for peace, and reconciliation. 

And then do something more than pray.

Philip