Katisue

Today, 10-10-10, is one of my granddaughter's birthdays.  I have the above daylily, Katisue, in her honor in my family bed.

Hemerocallis Katisue is not widely sold and I'm not sure why.  I had found it at Oakes Daylilies and by the time I decided to buy one the next Spring, they no longer listed.  I contacted them, they still had a few and sold one to me. 

Because of it's size, Katisue looks best when it can be near the front of a bed and not crowded.  The scapes stand about 26 inches and the flowers are 2 3/4 inches.  Flower measurements are only across the top of a flower - not neccessarily from tip to tip.  Since Katisue has curled petals and sepals, the measurement is smaller.  It is a nice deep yellow brushed with a little cinnamon color. 

Registered by J. Lewis in 1989 - it is a Diploid. 

 It is a healthy plant, has increased in size, dormant, and blooms rather late in the season.  Mine has numerous buds on each scape and the plant is full of flowers.  The flowers sometimes last well into the evening.  The only down side to the plant is it doesn't easily shed it's dead flowers - they must be deadheaded to look neat. 

It's a sweet little daylily and in that aspect it mimics my granddaughter perfectly. 

Your Neck of the Woods

Our "Fransred" Maple always puts on a beautiful Fall show.

This Staghorn Sumac glows a bright orange every Fall.

This year, to date, the trees are just beginning to turn their Fall colors.  And, we are in what is traditionally known as Indian Summer.  

I was rather curious where the term originated and found the general definitions:  "It is a warm dry period after the first frost or freeze."  The term was first in print a couple of centuries ago and it is from North America.  As you might guess, it is supposedly from a period when the North American Native Americans harvested their corn.  That is termed a "guess" because it was never recorded.

Obviously, if you must have a freeze/frost first, the term doesn't get much use in the South.  Since its first publication, it has been used by authors and weather enthusiasts as a colorful description of this meteorological event.

For those of us looking towards cold and snow for several months, it's one of the sweetest weather related treats!  Some things you might want to accomplish during this bonus period:

• Clean the leaves out of your gutters.
• Put away summer yard things.
• Clean the porches and decks one last time.
• Plant Spring flowering bulbs.
• Add a layer of mulch to your beds.
• Have a cookout.
• Pick any flower that's blooming and bring in the house for decoration.
• Put your Christmas lights up (remember how much fun it is to do this when it's freezing?)
• OR, Sit outside and do nothing but enjoy the warm days and stars at night.  

It's above 80 degrees and we're headed out to an outside birthday party tonight and a cookout tomorrow afternoon.  Oh, yes it's time to celebrate Indian Summer in this household. 

Harvest Time

This is a photo of my "volunteer" pumpkin. We had a wedding cookout early last November and decorations included pumpkins. The weather turned nasty shortly afterwards and the pumpkins sat in a little flower bed beside the shed. And this beauty is my very first home raised pumpkin - hopefully at some point prior to heavy freezing it will turn orange!

I don’t get overly excited about Halloween decorations at my home, but, I’m certainly not above enjoying the fun others display in their front yards. Typically, I focus more on harvest-type decorations.

The most obvious is corn stalks and pumpkins. Although there’s been talk of a pumpkin shortage, apparently the display variety is still in abundance. Two of my favorite vendors, Prairie Country Gardens (Galva) and Stahl’s Farm (Lafayette) seem to have good quantities. (Side Note: Display and cooking pumpkins are two very different varieties)

Mums are another beautiful accent. Whether you choose the annual variety (usually found in the big box stores in the fall) or plant the perennial variety, the blast of color really enhances the fall garden.

Some other pretty cute accents for harvest decorating:

Scarecrows: The homemade version is one of my favorites. A simple “T” structure driven into the ground allows it to stand up to wind. This can be welded by the handy person or made of wood or an old metal fence post. Without the free standing “T” structure, tie it to a fence, lamp post, or sit it on something.

Homemade scarecrows just beg for old clothes. Old bib overhauls and a flannel shirt fit the farm décor and may be stuffed with straw or plastic grocery bags. A straw hat, old gloves and a red handkerchief are all a must although there is considerable draw for farm caps.
Heads can be made from (1) stuffed pillowcases with a hand drawn face, (2) a painted face on a pumpkin, or (3) an old Halloween mask.

Straw: A few of the square bales of straw add structure to the harvest scene. Use beside corn stalks, as a seat for the scarecrow, or as a table for pumpkins and mums. I’ve seen some pretty creative round bales this time of the year decorated as cats, pumpkins, and goblins.

Corn: The most obvious is a shock of corn stalks. It takes a lot of stalks to make a sturdy free-standing shock. I most often tie a few stalks to a post. Hang ears of corn, either field type or the more decorative Indian corn, from doors and posts.

Pumpkins, gourds, and flowers: Instant color!

Other things: Wood wheelbarrows, a child’s wagon, grapevine wreaths, colored fabric leaves, bittersweet, apples, jugs, old garden tools, burlap, or wood crates.

A reminder: If you plan to leave your outdoor decorations through Thanksgiving, they need to be weather proof and securely anchored.

As we bid farewell to this beautiful summer of 2010, let’s usher in a beautiful 2010 harvest season. And with this season, we are praying for a safe harvest for all our farm families.

ER Room at the PC Hospital

This week I've taken as many walks through the yard and woods as I could accomplish. Taking my camera and taking many pictures of the last blooming hurrah. I've posted wild or naturalized asters. This one is a self seeded naturalized perennial - offering up lunch to a butterfly.

The bottom two pictures are the parent of asters, the wild version. They are thick in our woods this year due to the heavy rains.

Some are white and others a light lavender.

Tonight should put a stop to the growing season if we actually get a freeze. I had hoped to issue my readers all kinds of warnings and suggestions for your flowers in hopes of prolonging some of the blooms.

Alas, my computer finally locked up and is heading to the PC ER. I'm using a little laptop and my fingers haven't adjusted to the change yet. Hence - no warnings from this gardener unless you want to struggle around in the dark...

Typically, I don't try to prolong the annuals' blooms - they go when they go. This year, I did try to cover my pots out front and cover my one enormous chartreuse potato vine in hopes of looking at them just a little bit longer. I'm just not ready to part with their last burst of color quite yet.

I've found that flannel backed plastic table cloths (the kind you get at Dollar General on sale for $1) work quite well for covering plants during light frosts. We'll see how well they work if it really freezes tonight.

If my postings become a little sparse for a week - realize I really do need to be at the ER holding the hand (or is it the drive) of my computer. I told my daughter's friend (the computer guru) that people my age (I'll let that definition just lay out there) just want a computer invented that takes no special talents to operate. Just do your job and stop making me try to fix, update, delete and now repair the thing. Don't put a bunch of programs and games on my PC without asking because it slows it down and what's the point if I never use them. With all the computer gurus out there, wouldn't you think just one would have thought it might be a market worth tapping???

Alright, I'm getting off my PC soapbox and see if an aspirin will work - for me not my PC! And I'm putting a disclaimer out there right now - misspelled words and other odd grammar mistakes are a probability for the rest of next week. fekawz m aveng a rd tym...z

Under Pressure

Because most of my food preservation is tomatoes and they are high in acid content, I've most often used a water bath preservation method. Occasionally, there are debates about the safety of the water bath method, but, I've always found if I use quality produce and follow the directions I have no spoilage.

I have on occasion used my Amish recipes and the old preservation methods for non acidic produce and products. It requires "cooking" for several hours, but again, I follow directions, use good products and have no spoilage. I do NOT recommend this to any one because the FDA, everyone who owns a product or network show, Hilliary Clinton, the Back Street Boys and a truck driver who once delivered a table says it's unsafe.

A few times, I've used my small (seven pints) pressure cooker for odd products and small quantities. I finally decided to break free with some seriously high dollars and buy a pressure canner that would hold 7 quarts. I looked at the ones that would hold 19 quarts - which could make the processing faster. But then I couldn't lift it and I'd have to mortgage our house because they are seriously big bucks.

I don't kid myself that home canning is a cheaper way to feed a family. It is definitely a better quality of food and a better flavor. Plus, it's kinda fun in a self punishing kinda way.

I've been buying whole chickens on sale and certainly love having the convenience of homemade chicken stock. I've previously had home canned meat and poultry stock but won't brag about it on this BLOG for fear the FBI is keeping a list of people who break the canning rules.

I "thought" using the pressure cooker to preserve would be much quicker because it does cook meat much faster (and is more tender) when used traditionally. At 5:30 tonight, I'm into my 9th hour at canning chicken stock. Right now only my second batch is being pressurized.

Granted, I have used less water and probably less gas (gas stove top) and that alone should make me feel virtuous but frankly I just feel tired.

Because pressure canning directions must be followed to the "T", there are a lot of little time consuming steps that add up to a long day. Of course, boiling and boning four chickens, washing and cutting onions, celery, and carrots, cleaning and chopping herbs and all takes a good share of this time.

One recipe has a great suggestion: Take all the clean pieces of vegetables that you aren't going to put in the pretty chicken stock and all the bones and debris from the cooked/boned chicken and add it to a pot of water, cook, strain and have clear broth. Waste not ~ want not is the mantra for Amish cooks. Had I done that, I would probably be up till midnight...

At the risk of being a whiner (OK, I have been a whiner) I'm sure I'll do this again and I'm sure I've been temporarily taken off the CIA "threat" list for manufacturing my own noxious potions. I'm virtuously polishing those beautiful quart jars of chicken soup in preparation for those cold nights when all we want to do is have a quick supper and snuggle up with a good book.

That Old Black Magic

Black Magic Hollyhock is said to be a rather muddy brown maroon in real life and has a very low survival rate.

Jungle Beauty Daylily, although more of a very dark purple, is still beautiful.

Black Barlow Columbine is more a dark blue/purple.

Black Magic Rose is about as dark/black as a rose comes. Black roses are often used in fiction to symbolize death, hatred, revenge, sorrow or mourning. Only in fiction is there a black rose. Well, fiction and tattoos - saw a lot of those while researching this little project...

"That old black magic has me in its spell

That old black magic that you weave so well."

Tulip Parrot Black is actually a deep burgundy red.

Green Wizard Coneflower has a cone of brown/black & there are absolutely no petals.

In this 1942 hit written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, that old black magic could certainly pertain to black flowers in the garden. Magic Buster: There is no (nada - none - zip - zero) naturally occurring black flower known to man.

There is one a l m o s t black flower and that is the "Coal Black Pansy" shown above. Viola x wittrockiana is a genetically bred flower and is the most black of any flower.

There are several plants with foliage (elephant ear, fountain grass) that are touted as nearly black or with variegation's of black.

The bottom line: If you want a garden patch with black flowers, you may have to be happy with almost black or buy a can of spray paint or consider silk flowers or keep the light really low. But if you are happy with almost, there are many lovely almost black flowers. And you can at least have a nifty story to tell your visitors.

"Why," you may ask, "is there no black flower?" It's because insects do not like black flowers. It's that whole circle of nature thing. Plus, I'm sure flowers, by their very beauty, do not want to parade around in a Goth costume every summer - it just isn't garden magical . . .
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UPDATE: Henry Stark County Health Department will be at the Methodist Church in Galva, September 27 from 9-10 a.m.

Genealogy of a Gardener

1908 post card of Exchange Street in Galva IL

I work on family genealogy like crazy for a few days and then put it away for months. Several of my relatives have done quite extensive research which leaves me free to go on little side hunts. I often focus on the farm and family culture that made my family what it has been and is today.

The farm and family culture brings the “ah ha” moments where I realize my family did something because (1) it was their Mennonite religion, (2) it was what pioneers heading west in the early 1800’s had to endure, (3) it was how generations of my family from Switzerland, Lancaster, PA, Holmes Co., OH and then Howard Co., IN developed, and (4) it was how the great Midwest was found and changed.

Both this portion of the Illinois Grand Prairie & my area of Indiana were marshland and heavily wooded. Both presented huge challenges for pioneering farmers. Each meant clearing and stabilizing the land for family homes, crops and beginning communities.

I enjoy visiting old homesteads and visualizing the family and how they settled the area. Why was the well placed in a certain place? Is that the foundation of a summer kitchen? Is the mint, gooseberries and rhubarb a part of a pioneer woman’s garden? Is that sweet little Seven Sisters Rose bush original to the family that built the home? The stone step, hallowed out from thousands of feet crossing the threshold, gives me a sense of touching the history of another family.

Old gardens are always fascinating. Plants and seeds were passed down among generations of family and neighbors. It’s the woman of the house telling her daughter, “Oh honey, that’s Evelyn Troline’s mother’s iris. It’s just like my mother had at our house.” Or, “The seeds for those hollyhocks came from my cousin’s wife, Bonnie.” “I remember the year of the tornado, it’s the year Shelly Sundquist gave me that start of Gooseneck Loosestrife.” It’s not just a garden; it’s the fabric of a family and friends’ genealogy.

This kind of genealogy goes beyond who is related to whom and in what order (although I enjoy that, too). For a gardener, it may pull you to plant things that remind you of home. It may be a bouquet of flowers in just the same kind of vase your grandmother always had on her mantle. It’s a few blue Bachelor Buttons in a little container that reminds me of a favorite neighbor.

For me, memories come strong from the more simple old homes, ones where there were hard working farm families. It’s the land that carries memories of feast and famine, celebrations and heartbreak, love and turbulence, and the hand of the long forgotten gardener.

It’s in spite of the fact there are three stone markers for little babies lost, a pioneer woman planted, reaped and sustained her family at this home. It’s in spite of the Great Depression, the many wars, the loss of husbands and sons, wives and mothers kept a little patch of flowers right by the kitchen window.

Many of us don’t live in the same place where our family originated. But, we can still share the genealogy of the fabric of our family with the next generation by explaining why we planted that simple rose instead of a new hybrid – it’s like my great-grandmother had growing up her garden shed. These conversations give your children and grandchildren a sense of history and belonging. It’s the seeds of the past to germinate a future.