The contest has a winner- March 30, 2025

Busy busy busy. 

Where is that quote from? One point for the author. One point for the book.

But that is my life.

Last week there was the first daffodil.

Now every crocus is blooming, the first trillium is blooming and the star magnolia is blooming. Pictures are firther down.

The Finals- The Results

The picture contest was a cliff hanger, all week.

At one point it was

Later it was

I just waited for those last Saturday votes to get counted.

Here is the final tally after the polls are closed.

The number 5 seed won, in a whisker.

It was perhaps the closest finals vote ever.

Here is your winner, the Blue Siberian Iris.

I should mention the Siberian iris are coming up too.

The contest is over. The blog continues. I will even have more voting, but not for a week.

Right Now

There is so much going on in the garden.

The hellebores are opening and putting on their display. When fully up and blooming they are almost 12 inches tall. As such they are the tallest plant in the garden, for now.

This is a corydalis. It is established and spreads.

This is a late blooming crocus. It was Christopher's favorite. Katie send me a picture of their backyard yesterday, in Maine. It was covered with snow.

Crocuses do tend to clump over time. It seems that deer mostly leave crocuses alone.

The aconite is finished blooming in parts of the yard. But not all. It does tend tontake over at times. However it disappears by June.

The Virginia bluebells are emerging. I pot up a lot of the them for the plant sale for the foodbanks.  The form a root/tubor, looking like a carrot.

The scilla is everywhere, creating wonderful combinations.

The white crocuses are also larger and bloom later.

Julia's recipe

Lemon Poppyseed bread

Here's another lemony recipe from Michael Knock, the food writer for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. This is a glazed quick bread. Just the name of the bread is inviting. Like Michael Knock, I like sweet things with lemon - lemon meringue pie, lemon pudding cake, lemon pound cake, lemon cookies. So this recipe spoke to me. I made it the other day, and it was as good as I thought it would be.  

The ingredients:

1/2 cup regular oil;

1-1/3 cups white sugar;

3 tablespoons lemon zest - 3 lemons;

1/2 cup lemon juice, divided;

2 eggs;

2/3 cup buttermilk or sour milk;

1-1/2 teaspoon salt;

1 tablespoon baking powder;

1 tablespoon poppy seed; and

2-1/2 cups flour. 

I don't keep buttermilk on hand so I make sour milk when buttermilk is on the parts list. If you want (as I did) 3/4 cup of buttermilk, put about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in the bottom of a 1 cup measuring cup then add enough whole milk to get to 3/4 cup. Do this early on in the recipe work, and you will have thick-ish sour milk by the time you need it.

No additional ingredients for the glaze: just 1/4 of the lemon juice and 1/3 cup of the sugar. I'll get to the glaze later.

I started by measuring the oil and 1 cup of the sugar into a biggish bowl. Next I zested 3 lemons right over the mixing bowl. So I'm not sure I had exactly 3 tablespoons. If you zest the lemon over the mixing bowl, all of the zest and volatile oils end up in the bowl. If you take the intermediate step of measuring the zest, you will leave some flavor behind. So I think that equating one lemon with 1 tablespoon's worth of zest is a good way to measure. Three lemons for three tablespoons of zest. I had a nice amount of lemon zest in the bowl with the oil and sugar. 

I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and sprayed two 8" by 4" loaf pans with no-stick spray.

The recipe said to use one 9" x 5" loaf pan. I don't think that would have worked - too much batter.   

Next I juiced all three lemons. I ended up with more than the 1/2 cup I would need. The extra went into the lemon juice bottle in the refrigerator.

I added 1/4 cup of the lemon juice to the oil and sugar and zest. I noticed there was some pulp left on the reamer so I fished out the little seeds and added the pulp to the bowl too. 

I used a hand mixer to blend these ingredients.

I stirred the dry ingredients (salt, baking powder, poppy seeds and flour) together in a small bowl.

I had made sour milk in a one cup measuring cup. It is a generous cup, so I was able to add the eggs and stir the milk and eggs together in the cup.

I added 1/3 of the dry ingredients and then 1/3 of the milk-egg mixture, three times, ending with the last of the milk-eggs.

More alternating wet and dry.

More mixing.

I scooped and scraped the batter into the two prepared loaf pans, equal amounts (more or less) in each.

While the loaves were baking, I mixed the other 1/4 cup of lemon juice and the other 1/3 cup of sugar in a very small saucepan.

I cooked the mixture over low heat until the sugar melted and the mixture thickened slightly.

I baked the loaves for about 45 or 50 minutes. They were done when a skewer poked in the center of the loaf came out clean. 

I left the loaves in the pans for about 10 minutes then turned them out onto a cooling rack.

When the loaves were not hot any more, I poked maybe 20 little holes in the top of each loaf. 

Then when the syrup was warm but no longer hot, I brushed it all over the top and sides of the loaves. That's why the loaves look shiny. Very good and very pretty. This recipe is pretty much a standard quick bread, nothing particularly difficult, except maybe zesting 3 lemons. If you like lemony treats, give this a try.

Odds and Ends

"Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper wherever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is." from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

The world is a mess. 

Imagin paying people a million dollars to vote a particular way. What is wrong with that picture?

Pray for peace.

Figure out what you can do to help, even a little.

If you are in Iowa City come by and see the garden. I certainly do not have to be here.  If there are deer in the garden chase them away.

The contest is over, for 2024-25. I am already watching for pictures for the next one.

But do not go away. I will continue to share little pieces of the garden. It is always good to hear from you.

Philip