Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - December 2009

Work has been more than a little crazy lately.  In fact, I've worked 48 hours in the past 4 days alone!  I'm not whining, just explaining why I feel as worn out and pale as my beloved evergreen honeysuckle vine, shown above. And also why I'm calling it a day--er, a post--after simply posting a few bloom day photos and a short supplemental list:

From top to bottom: The last bloom on a 'Sharry Baby' (oncidium) orchid that I snagged on clearance because I love its scent, the beautiful orange of pyracantha berries, the Meyer (Improved) lemon still in bloom, and my Jumping Jack 'Big Beans' (zygopetalum) orchid. What else is blooming here?  My jewel orchid, with its tiny white flowers that are more like miniature snapdragons than showy orchid flowers, 'Arp' and 'Huntington Carpet' rosemaries, and a poinsettia with deep burgundy bracts.

For more of what's blooming all around the world this December 15th, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens and her December GBBD post links.  (And for my new favorite exotic-flower-to-drool-over, visit Chuck B's December Bloom Day post and scroll down to the hardenbergia violacea... wow!)

Feeling A Little Dirty...

The Meyer lemon is about halfway to full bloom now, and it smells heavenly in my dining room. Its wonderful lemony perfume that wafts through the house, especially when the heater kicks on and swirls the scent around. And the pristine white (which I usually am ambivalent about at best) blooms are gorgeous in their elegant simplicity.

At first I thought that I would just enjoy the fragrance and flowers... but after so many people commented about waiting on a crop of Meyer lemons themselves I had an about-face and decided to try for the trifecta.  I feel a little silly and inept going around to all of the blooms with the soft paintbrush every day (like a fumbling but enthusiastic 15-year-old boy?!) but I'm really not sure when exactly to pollinate, so I'm covering all my bases.

I understand that I won't get to enjoy the lemons themselves until next year... but I'll know whether any of my ministrations bear fruit--literally--in the next few months, I think!  Stay tuned...  

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - November 2009

 What a beautiful weekend!  As I was out taking photo after photo for November's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day (hosted each month by the lovely and funny Carol of May Dreams Gardens) on Saturday, I kept thinking, "Wow, and there are flowers on THIS, too?" and, "Really, who would have guessed that I'd still be seeing such a show from my salvia guaranitica 'Black & Blue' this late in the season?"  But there it was:

Which brings me to why I participate in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day each month:  Not only is it a lot of fun to see what's blooming in OPG (Other People's Gardens) but also it keeps me on track with the whole "garden journal" purpose of my blog.  While the images were downloading onto my computer, I went back through previous Bloom Days and discovered that LOTS of plants that are blooming today were still blooming here in the past few Novembers, too, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top to bottom, those images show:  'Munstead' lavender, 'Hameln' pennisetum with blue caryopteris, self-sown red snapdragons with one branch of the still-blooming 'Walker's Low' catmint behind, 'Purple Dragon' lamium, 'Jumping Jack' (zygopetalum) orchid, 'Vodka' wax begonias, pineapple sage fronting 'Rotstrahlbusch' switchgrass, lonicera sempervirens--a the native honeysuckle, 'Sweet Kate' tradescantia, 'Golden Delicious' pineapple sage with 'Sweet Kate' behind, 'Ozark' strawberries, and 'Caradonna,' which is my favorite of the long-blooming perennial purple salvias.

I admit, I was a little bit disappointed to find out that many of my "Special November Flowers" weren't really all that special after all!  But there are a few new things blooming here in the garden, like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top to bottom:  Mandevilla sanderi, 'Albury Purple' St. John's Wort, 'Meyer Improved' lemon--which is scenting the dining room wonderfully!--above dark purple begonia foliage, unnamed variety of calendula, lemon verbena, the insidious but pretty 'Neon Lights' mini snapdragons (linaria aerugimea) that self-sow everywhere, and a tiny sprig of alyssum peeking out from a mound of silver 'Amazon Sun' lotus vine foliage.

Other things in bloom at my house this weekend, but not shown in pictures, include:  Peace lily, Thanksgiving cactus, 'Dragon Wing' begonia, 'Grosso' lavender, golden oregano, and 'All Gold' hakonechloa.

Want to see more November blooms?  First check out Carol's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day Post, and then visit the links at the bottom for more.

Any Given Sunday

The sun shone brightly all weekend... as if it somehow KNEW that there was no way Cleveland residents were going to be subjected to yet another Browns loss, and it wanted to celebrate with us. (Maybe Ma Nature has NFL bye weeks marked on her calendar?!)  I was on the garden center schedule until 5pm on Sunday, but when things slowed down around 3:45 I was able to head home to do some work in the garden.

There is still lots of color in the front yard (above) and the oakleaf hydrangea just gets more stunning every day.  But it was the backyard that needed the majority of the work today, so I didn't linger in front for very long.  I did, however, stop inside for a second to take a picture of my blooming Thanksgiving cactus:

The poor thing really need to be repotted out of the small birdbath where it currently resides--and I will do that as soon as its show is over--but there wasn't much time to even think about that.  Daylight is precious and short in the after-work hours right now, and I had a lot of cleanup to do. There were still tomato plants, peppers, and even herbs left in the garden to clean up!

Once the sun set, I headed back inside with a huge basket--trash can lid, actually!--full of the almost-last produce of the gardening year.  I stopped at the computer to search for an interesting green tomato recipe that didn't include the word "fried" in it, and was surprised to find more than a few references to "green tomato gratin."

After checking out both the recipes online and the contents of my cupboard, I decided to do some freelancing and came up with the dish shown both above and below: 

My version of Green Potatoes Gratin:  Rub sides of 9" square baking dish with butter. Cut green tomatoes in a large dice, sprinkle with 1 large garlic clove (minced) and about 3/4 cup of panko (or other breadcrumbs, or some other sort of filler) and dot with about 2 Tbsp of butter.  Then top with 1 tsp. freshly ground sea salt, cracked black pepper to taste, grated white cheddar (all I had left in the fridge, about 2-3 oz.) and a few more Tbsp. of grated asiago.  Bake at 375 covered for about 45 minutes, then another 15 minutes uncovered to brown the topping, then another 10-15 minutes or so, covered, until the largest tomatoes are fork-tender.

When finished, this dish was amazing. Green tomatoes are pretty flavorless on their own and not as acidic, so the taste was hard to describe.  It tasted a bit like baba ghanouj, just without the sesame/tahini flavor.  I am definitely going to make this again--and soon, since I have lots of green tomatoes left!--but I think I'm going to add some smoked paprika.  And maybe make just a batch of roasted green peppers to use as a different base for a baba ghanoj-type spread, just for the heck of it.

While the tomato gratin was baking in the oven, I devoted the rest of my evening to cleaning up the rest of the pears.  They simmered on the stove along with cinnamon (bark,) cardamom, maple and vanilla, and will be turned into all kinds of yummy goodness this week. 

I decided about halfway through the evening that I would not have made a very good pioneer woman, however.  Not that I couldn't have accomplished the tasks at hand, but I have enough trouble escaping my head anyway... and peeling and dicing pears gave me way too much time to think!  But I did sleep well, at least... with the sweet scents of spiced pears lingering in the air.

Hope you all made good use of this beautiful Indian Summer weekend, too!

Pear Pie, Lemon Buds and Fried Green Tomatoes

Seriously, is this not one of the weirdest blog post titles you have ever seen?  It's definitely been a strange stretch of days, both garden- and cooking-wise, though, so the title "fits" my week pretty well!

The weirdness started on Sunday night, when I freaked out a little bit because the temperatures were supposed to drop down into the low 30s for the first time.  I had left my tomato plants up in the garden as a little experiment to see just how long into a Northeast Ohio November they would survive... but I had a LOT of green tomatoes out there, and I hated the thought of them all going to waste.  So I went out and picked a bunch of the largest ones left on the vine:

A not-quite-ripe 'Pineapple' with pretty yellow stripes but (sadly) no red streaks

On Monday nights, I head over to Steve's apartment and we watch "Jeopardy," "Heroes," and "Castle," and just generally chill out while Steve makes dinner.  Sunday night, I told him that I needed to make use of some of my newly harvested green tomatoes, and offered to fry them up as part of Monday supper.  Sliced to about 1/4 of an inch, breaded first in flour seasoned with smoked paprika, sea salt and black pepper, and then in cornmeal... they were delicious.

On Tuesday after work, I noticed a distinct pear smell when I walked into the kitchen.  Last week, during a quick trip home, my grandma and I filled up a large grocery bag with fresh pears from her neighbor's tree.  Eloise doesn't do anything with the pears anymore so she's glad when someone takes them so they don't go to waste... and I'm planning to bring her a jar of pear butter as a thank you when I go home for Thanksgiving.  But Tuesday night, I skipped the pear butter and made this instead:

It's a mishmash of two recipes from Epicurious, Pear Pie with Maple and Ginger and Pear-Cardamom Pie with Almond Crust.  Steve and I tasted it while it was still oven-warm, and it was... absolutely amazing:  The flavors were  more subtle and delicate than I thought I was capable of producing in a pastry, and completely balanced.

The next day, though, I had a small sliver of pie after work and was surprised to find that it tasted completely bland!  In a panic, I tossed it in the microwave for a few seconds... and luckily that did the trick.  I handed out a few slices to friends with the warning that it needed to be reheated, but I'm still curious:  Why would both the spices and the luscious pear flavor itself disappear like that at room temperature?  Any of my foodie friends have a guess as to why the heat restored the flavor excitement?

Speaking of excitement, this gardener is extremely excited about a certain development in her indoor garden:

There are 51 (yes, fifty-one!) flower buds on my Meyer (Improved) lemon!  I'm sure that they won't all turn into baby lemons--and I know that the ones that do will not be ready to pick for a while--but I will definitely enjoy the flower fragrance in a few weeks.  And if I get enough to make even just one of the yummy-sounding Meyer Lemon recipes I've uncovered, I'll be ecstatic.

Hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend, full of similarly pleasant surprises!