February 25, 2024 Week #1 of the playoffs

 

It is absolutely glorious in the garden. The aconite and snowdrops have been joined by the crocuses to create this wonderful swirl of color. I was outside for 4-5 hours yesterday. I am a little stiff and may have gotten some sun.

Remarkably, we are still in February. Everything that is up and blooming is tough. They survived the temperature drop of a week ago, when for two nights in a row it got to single digits. Here is a little clump of tommasinianius crocuses, before and after the very cold. It was very cold on February 17 and 18,

2-16-24

        

2-20-24

    

          We have had early aconite before. At the moment we have peaking aconite. You know it is full blown aconite season when the next generation appears, exponentially adding to the flowers to come in the future.

Then there are the crocuses. Many are the little tommies, the tommasinianus. They are early and they taste bad. So many, if not all of the plants, flowers, that are up now taste bad.

If you listen carefully to this video you can hear the bees buzzing.

Just look at this combination of colors.

There is so much happening outside. I do remember we have been having a picture contest. Let me get right to that.

Winter Picture Contest 2023-24

         We have a real milestone this week. The 13 weeks are over. You have seen 65 pictures. We are now down to 15. 

Last Week

It was one of the tightest vote we had all year. I know Week 7 ended in a tie. You can not  get any closer than that. But each picture that week got 29%. 

This past week there was another tie. The striped crocuse and the dogwood  finished dead even. Each picture got  36%. 

Both of the contestants advance to the playoffs.

Here is the full tally from Week 13.

The playoffs

We will have 3 weeks of playoffs, followed by the finals.

The seeding is based on the top percentages during the 13 weeks.

The seeds are (1) Kale from week 6 with 51%. (2) Purple Iris from Week 4 with 48% and (3) Gray Poppy from Week 1 with 47%.

Since there was a tie in Week 7, both of those pictures advance. That meant there  could be only 1 wild card.

Since there was a tie in Week 13, both of those pictures advance.

That fills the bracket with 15 pictures. There are no wild cards this year.

So... we have 3 weeks of playoffs and then the finals.

Week #1 of the playoffs

#1 Frosty Kale 

December 14, 2023

There have been 19 previous contests, I think. We started in 2005 and missed one year. That is over 1200 pictures. I really like it when something new makes its appearance. 

This frosty kale was partucularly special on a cold morning in December.

Most of the kale did survive the winter. I really do not know what they will look like in April.

#2 Dwarf Iris Blissfull 

May 5, 2023

Normally little iris start in late April. April 17 is about the earliest picture of a  little dwarf iris I find in the massive library.  Who knows what will happen this year. I have raked them off and the foliage looks good. 

I have taken the plant sale iris out of the garage where they spent a few months. 

#3 Pink Shirleys

 June 10, 2023

Shirley poppies are certainly all over the playoffs. You selected 4 to be in the playoffs, not counting the Oriental poppy in the next picture.

I picked this of all years to start my Shirleys inside. They are actually just getting their secondary leaves. 

If April is in February, what will April bring? I suspect this will be a theme for the next several months.

#4 Red Poppy

 May 25, 2023

Sometimes I think about having a contest just about color. We did that once, forming teams of pictures based on colors.

#5 Mermaid Kisses

 March 17, 2023

My interest in Violets has grown over the last 15 months. A big thank you goes to Jean, who sells them at the Winter Farmers Market out at the Fairgrounds in Iowa City. That market goes from November to April, the time when the regular downtown market shuts down for the season. 

With wicking as the method of watering, we have not killed them. That is the first step in developing an enthusiasm. Some of our plants are almost 15 months old at this point.

Violets are also inexpensive. They sell for $5 each, for a plant that blooms a very long time, and then reblooms. That is about the cost of a cup of coffee. (I must confess it has been a long time since I bought a cup of coffee.) 

I suppose the price is low because they are relatively easy to propogate. You take a leaf and set it in water for a month and then you have roots. You plant the rooted leaf and in 3 months you have a little plant. You can do the math. If you want you can have many plants after a year or so.

This is the second year when a violet was in the contest. Last year Birth of a Galaxy was in the contest. It made the playoffs, and advanced to the finals, finishing second.

Will a violet go all the way this time?

There you have it. You have seen these pictures before. But the choices get hard from this point on. Tell me what you thing. Grab someone else and have them vote.

Bonus Pictures

Violets

Amor Elite Standard

Birth of a Galaxy

Kale right now

I actually have been shaping them a little, cutting off some lower leaves that are not very crisp.

The color is so stricking when contrasted with the whites and yellows of the early spring garden.

Right Now

This is Snowdrop Wendy's Gold. It is special because it has a yellow cap. I planted this in 2022. It is starting to clump.

One or two more days, and it should bloom.

One of the hoyas in our bedroom has started to bloom. There are 4 more clusters coming on the same plant.

A squill in February. Just this one so far. The place where they usually start is next to the house in the backyard. It is very dry there. I think I may get out the hose. In February? What does that say about April. There is no rain in the ten day forcast.

The hellebores are about to bloom. 

This is one of the baby tree peonies, perhaps in its third year. (It could be the forth.) It looks like it will bloom.

When I rake up the leaves it is particularly thrilling to find a big mature clump of lupines.

It should be a good year for lupines.

Julia's recipe

Shrimp and Spinach

Another quick supper with shrimp. This is from Madhur Jeffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, which is a very nice cookbook that I received some years ago from Katie. The author suggests making it with squid or scallops or shrimp. I am not a fan of squid, having spent my entire life in the great middle of the country. I would make it with scallops - using the little ones as is or the big ones cut in half. I had shrimp on hand, which are reliably available and familiar. The picture below shows a bunch of ingredients, but most of them are spices for the curry sauce. The dish can be on the table in about the same amount of time as it takes to cook the rice to serve it with. 

The ingredients:

1 5 oz. box of baby spinach;

1 lb. shrimp, thawed if frozen;

3/4 cup canned diced tomatoes; and

1/2 cup cream (or coconut milk).

For the sauce:

1/2 teaspoon cayenne;

1/2 teaspoon turmeric;

1 teaspoon ground cumin;

1 teaspoon ground coriander;

1 teaspoon salt;

some pepper;

1 teaspoon dijon mustard; and

2 tablespoons water.

Extra ingredients:

3 tablespoons regular oil;

1 teaspoon mustard seeds of any color;

1 teaspoon smushed garlic;

1 teaspoon grated ginger; and

about 1 cup of water.

First I put all of the sauce ingredients in a little bowl with the water and stirred it up. 

Then I grated the ginger (shown at the bottom of the picture) and smushed the garlic.

I heated the oil in the skillet. I put the mustard seeds in, which started popping almost immediately. Then I added the ginger and garlic and stirred it around.

I believe this is a video of stirring the ginger and garlic, until it was fragrant - not very long. . 

In short order, I added the tomatoes and the spice mixture in the little bowl and the spinach and about 1 cup of water. I simmered this mixture for about 10 minutes. 

Next I added the shrimp. My shrimp were deveined and shelled and cooked. They had been frozen, and I defrosted them. 

They had the tail shells on. Why? No idea. When I took the tails off, I noticed that some of the shrimp had been imperfectly deveined so I ended up cutting the last 1/4 inch or so off some of the shrimp. 

I placed the shrimp on top of the spinach- tomato-spice sauce just to warm up. Already cooked. 

Lastly, I added the 1/2 cup of whipping cream and once everything was warm, the dish was ready. 

Here is is on the table. We served it with rice (we used basmati, but any rice will be fine) and salad and raspberries. 

There are a lot of spices, but the result is very flavorful and as I said above, if you have cleaned and deveined shrimp (that are thawed), this meal can be on the table in less than 30 minutes. 

We had a little leftover, which was nice for lunch.  

Odds and ends

Baseball- You can officially call it spring once baseball starts. All the teams have reported to spring training. The first spring training games have been in the last two days. The first offical games are on March 20-21, in Korea.

I have been selling aconite for the foodbanks.  I have sold about 30 little strays. Those are the ones that come up in the paths or close to it. This weekend I will think about potting hellebores.

I assume we will hear next week about how February set all sorts of records for the warmest February. What we need to remember is that December was also quite warm. January was warm except for that 10 day period when it was cold. The ground never really froze.

The warm temperatures continue with highs in the 60's schduled for Monday, Tuesday, and then the weekend.

Wendesday the high will be 36. Of course that is about normal for this time of year.

Noxious Weeds

Do you know there is a law in Iowa? Here is a link and a list.

https://crops.extension.iastate.edu/encyclopedia/iowas-noxious-weed-law-chapter-317

Precipitation

With the gradual melting of the 15 inches of snow we had in January, most of the garden does not seem dry. Hoever there are parts of the yard that look dry. They are dry. Right next to the house on the south side is one place. WIth no rain coming this week, I do think I will get out the hose later today.

Overall here is the nation drought map for the moment. We are real close to the red part. Look at California.

Our local newspaper is not what it once was. Here was the front page one day this week.

I have spared you the article about the state's fish. I had hoped it was a story about the Republican party.

The republicans somehow became the party of the elephant. What if we start a movement to consider their animal to be the fish?

Now to end on a more serious note.

Please give a quiet moment to think about the Ukrane. They have been living in terror for over two years.

Now give a moment to resolve to get rid of all those who would abandon the Ukrane, and who would  kiss putin's ___.

As they say in New Orleans, be nice, or leave.

Philip

February 18, 2024- Week #13- still a little bit of winter

It is Friday evening, and the temperature is still falling. During the day it reached a cold 32 degrees. There had even been a dusting of snow on the ground to start the day. Then there was a stiff wind making you think about the really heavy coat again. It is now 15 degrees and in free fall. I really do not know how far it will go.

Update: 6am Saturday. It is 7 degrees, according to the little weather station in our bedroom. That was the only night in a month when it has been in single digits. (Fact check- it was -7 on January 22.

Update:6am Sunday- It is 23 degrees, and I believe the warm February has returned.

Spring returns today. We have had an early spring  for a month, giving us

February 14, 2024.

It was a Valentine's Day crocus. Even in 2012, the other warmest February I can find in my pictures, the first crocus was not until March 1. Of course as I think about it, I probably have a lot more crocuses planted today than 12 years ago.

We knew this cold period was coming. I came home early on Thursday, and potted up some aconite. I have about 3 dozen potted now. I have sold a dozen for the food banks.

 I am actually doing a controlled experiment with those little yellow light bulbs. I put two flats inside the back garage. I left one flat outside, next to the back garage. We will see how they compare. I suspect that there will be no difference.

Last year the first aconite was just appearing on February 26, 2023. The first crocus 

was March 1. 

More from this week.

Some spring bulbs spread over time. A single bulb with multiply and then you get a clump like this.

Garden tip-you can get a clump faster if you plant several of the little bulbs in the same hole.

This past week there even were white crocuses.

It is certainly a glorious time. It will of course return when the temperatures are back in the 50's in a few days.

Last week in the contest the easy winner was 

The black poppy.

The full vote was

It was a convincing win. I do like it when every picture does get good support.

This week will be Week 13

This will be the last week where you see a new set of pictures. Next week will bring the playoffs. But here are some nice pictures, for this last week.

#1 Trillium grandiflorum 

April 30, 2023

I love trillium. This one is the biggest. I have had this plant for probably 20 years. It is quite reliable always coming back in the same decent clump.

It is remarkable in that it changes color. It starts out white and fades to pink.

#2 Pink Dogwood 

May 3, 2023

The pink dogwood is quite remarkable in the nighborhood. It was a birthday present for Julia, about 30 years ago. We were told it might not do well in zone 5. For that reason we planted so the house would protect it a little from the winter north wind.

It now grows up to the second floor, which is out our bedroom windows.

Dogwood trees are understory trees. They like the dappled shade.

They are native to eastern North America.

The genus is Cornus. 

We have planted 3 other dogwoods in the backyard. They are white ones that bloom later in the season.

#3 The pansy face 

May 27, 2023

Pansies are so wonderful. They are real cold weather plants. You can plant them in October. They will survive a frost. They will also over winter, even if there is a winter. What keeps them from being a perennial is the heat. They die in the heat of the summer.

This past fall it was next to impossible to find them anywhere. Like so many plants I would like to find a place where I could get 5-6 flats. Then I could plant 25 and have many for the sale table.

#4 Another Red Poppy 

June 10, 2023

There have been a number of poppies in the contest this year. None had this kind of smooth color.

#5 Striped crocus

 May 27, 2023

Crocuses are so special. They add color to the early spring bulbs. This one was Christopher's faorite that time they lived with us during COVID.

Bonus pictures

In keeping with last weeks post, here are a few pictures that almost made the contest.

At some point in the Spring the aconite foliage almost makes a mat. Up through that comes the occasional late crocus.

Here are other trillium pictures

These little guys also fade from white to pink.

The story of the special Orchid

I belong to a local orchid club. I have belonged to that club for 25 years. I like the group because you do not have to be a fanatic to belong. 

Each year for your modest dues you get a free orchid. You get this plant if you attend the holiday dinner in early December. All the gift orchids are put on a table. Tickets are then drawn that determone the order in which people can pick out the orchid they want.

In December 2014, I picked this plant.

The name is Stenorrhynchos speciosus. I liked it in part because it really did not look like what most people think of as an orchid. One of its features was that it would usually bloom right after the first of the year.

A month later it was in full bloom.

It got bigger over the next 9 years, sometimes even blooming in the sunnmer. I did not divide it, but put it into bigger hanging pots.

It is listed as a terrestrial, native to Mexico and Central America. That means it grows in the ground, not attached to trees.

Here is is in 2019. The closeup shows you the individual flowers.

One of the activities of the local orchid club is to take members' plants to orchid shows around the upper midwest. I do not have many orchids for those shows. My orchid collection is only 20-25 plants. My orchids probably do not get the best attention as there are so many other plants. The orchids do all go outside for the summer, hanging from poles around the backyard.

Well last year, 2023, in the winter, I packed up this orchid and sent it to the shows. It came back loaded with ribbons. It scored well in whatever was the class they put it in. I figured it was in the odd-looking class.

Well 2024 rolled around. The plant had 13 stalks, compared to maybe 11 last year. I packed it up sending it north to St. Paul.

The plant went off to a show in St. Paul. Judging takes place first, at 8am on Saturday. 

I understand the idea of ribbons. I do not know that much about judging.

I had heard people at the club talk about plants being taken "back" for AOS judging. I had no idea what that was. I now have learned.

Apparently the judges first give out the regular ribbons. They then look at the plants that got first place ribbons and decide which are really special. That group goes to some other room or table for what is called AOS judging. (American Orchid Society.) I gather at this point plants or particular flowers are measured against some ideal plant or flower. You get a point score. If your score is over some total you really have done well., and get an award.

So on Saturday morning, in late January, the weekend of the St. Paul orchid show, the local club person who had taken the plant to the show, called me. Julia and I were out driving someplace. He told me the plant had been taken back for AOS judging. It had been awarded an AOS award,  something called a Certificate of Cultural Merit, or CCM. It apparently scored 83 on some scale. OK

But what he said next was the remarkable part. He told me I got to the right to name the plant.

What? And I had to pick a name in the next 30 minutes. Remember, we were out driving around.

So remembering that Maisie really liked the color red, I picked the name "Maisie."

(Sometime this summer we will name a daylily "Christopher.")

So let me introduce to you Stennorynchos speciosus "Maisie."

Here is the plant, back on our dining room table, with some of the hardware and ribbons.

Wow- what do you do next?

Here is a closeup with one of the stalks. The individual flowers do look like what you think of as an orchid.

Someone who was judging counted the little flowers. There were 195 open. 118 remained in bud.

Here was the label at the next show the following week, in Madison.

Right Now

This was before the freeze. I will report next week on how the clump fared as a result of the single digit temperatures.

The bud is opening.

Julia's recipe

Sugar Cookies

Sometimes a person want to make roll-out and cut-out cookies. I had it in mind to make heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's Day, and the best recipe for this purpose is sugar cookies. My go-to cookbook for basic recipes is Betty Crocker. My edition is from 1974, before an emphasis (in later editions) on boxed (cake mix) or canned (canned soup) items as ingredients. As I may have said along the way on ths blog, I cook as much as possible with ingredients my grandmother would recognize. That is the case here.   

The ingredients:

3/4 cup butter (1-1/2 sticks) - softened;

2 eggs;

1+ teaspoon vanilla;

1 cup sugar;

2-1/2 cups flour;

1 teaspoon baking powder; and

1 teaspoon salt.

The container on the left in the picture is cream cheese frosting. Whenever I bake a cake or something like pumpkin bars to be frosted, I do not worry about making the exact amount needed. There is no such thing as too much frosting. Extra cream cheese frosting freezes just fine and when later thawed, it spreads and tastes fine too. Also if you decide to frost your cookies, it would be nice to have some sprinkles on hand. We shop from time to time at an Amish country store called Stringtown Grocery. They sell, among other things, an amazing array of sprinkles, some figures (like snowflakes and candy canes and cows and pigs), some not (sparkly colored sugars and nonpareils).  

Two videos. The first is stage one of cookie preparation, creaming the butter and the sugar. I mixed the butter and sugar first, and then pretty quickly thereafter, added (and beat in) the eggs one at a time and then a slug of vanilla. I don't really measure vanilla. I probably used about 2 teaspoons instead of 1 teaspoon. I like to note the presence of vanilla. Another confession: I own fancy vanilla but I don't usually use it. The cooking show gurus (Milk Street, America's Test Kitchen) say they and their tasters can't tell the difference. Me neither. Non-genuine vanilla is much less expensive than the real thing. Use the money you save to buy fancy coffee. Or tea. Or seltzer.  

The secon video is mixing in the rest of the ingredients (flour, salt, leavening) until it turned into dough. 

After I had a big shaggy blob of dough in the mixing bowl, I turned it onto a piece of plastic wrap (or waxed paper or parchment), patted it into a round, wrapped it up and refrigerated the package for about 1 hour.

After an hour, I took it out and let it sit on the counter (still wrapped) for about 10 minutes. I turned the oven on to 400 degrees.

Next, I cut the dough ball in half, as it would not work to roll out the whole thing at once. 

I have a plastic rolling mat that my sister gave me. The circles show how big to roll out crust for pie shells of various sizes. I use it for cookies or yeast rolls because it is easier to clean up than the counter.

I dusted the mat with a little flour and started rolling out the cookie dough, rolling out from the middle in all directions and rotating the piece of dough after every few rolls. 

I needed to add a little flour now and again so that the dough would not stick to the mat. 

I used to use a canvas cloth to roll dough out on. But it was problematic. Either you washed it every time you used it, which was a mess or you didn't, which seemed unhygienic. 

This mat is a little unwieldy to get into the sink, but easy to wash and then air dry and then roll up and store until next time. 

As I said at the outset, I decided to make hearts. Seasonal. I have a lot of cookie cutters - bunnies, kitties, camels, snowmen, a spider, a ghost, a very large pig, circles of various sizes and much more. My heart cookie cutters come in sizes. I made some medium sized (as pictured) and some one size up. 

I baked them on regular air-bake cookie sheets. I have thin flexible re-usable baking sheet liners (the brown thing covering the cookie sheet). Not necessary, but I used them because I had them. 

No need to grease the cookie sheets. 

I baked the cookies two sheets at a time for about 15 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets front to back and top to bottom about halfway through. 

A lot of cookies on cooling racks. I let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes after which they could be easily removed with a spatula. 

This recipe makes a lot of cookies. Of course, how many depends on what size cookie cutter you use. I think I ended up with about 5 dozen cookies. 

I frosted the bigger cookies with some of the cream cheese frosting. Although the frosting was soft when spread, it did harden after a few hours, so the sprinkles would stay put and so the cookies could be shipped without worrying about stickiness.  

I ended up with 24 frosted and sprinkled cookies: pink pig sprinkles, brown, black and white cow sprinkles. purple sparkly sugar and multicolored little tiny shiny bits.  

Cookies! We sent some to a child of our acquaintance with a birthday. We also sent some plain ones to the family in Maine and ate a lot ourselves. 

So make sugar cookies sometime. They are satisfying in all ways. 

Odds and Ends

Garden yardsticks- Gardeners  enjoy comparing the current year with the past. But how do you measure whether a particular year is earlier or later than some other time?

One way is to take note of when certain plants bloom, perhaps for the first time. Here are a few measuring events. I think I have the order correct. The dates are for 2024

First Snowdrop- February 4 

First Aconite- February 8

First Crocus-February 14

First Dwarf Iris

First Bluebell

First Daffodil

Star magnolia blooms

Pink Dogwood blooms

Monsella tulips

White Tree Peony

You get the picture.

We got home from the grocery store Friday late afternoon and it was still light out. On January 1, 2024 we had 9 hours and 13 minutes of daylight. As of today, Febraury 18, we will have 10 hours and 44 minutes. Sunrise is at 6:57. Sunset is at 5:42. 

When the temperatures are above freezing, I can actually do some work in the garden, before and after work.

It is to get to 45 degrees today (Sunday). I need to put seedlings in the basement into bigger pots. I need to get the dirt for that operation in out of the back garage.

Pray for the world and this country. I can only begin to imgine the anxiety we will all feel, if that buffoon really makes it close. 

Philip