The view from here
For such terrific vegetable, Romanesco cauliflower is still far too rare, but it does seem to be headed in the right direction. After years of finding it only at farmstands, I saw it last month – more than once – at my favorite greengrocer. Gladdened my foodie little heart, even if it cost $3.50 a head and came so heavily swathed in plastic it looked a bit like King Tut.
Typical head of Romanesco, @ 9 inches tall and maybe 7 inches wide. approximate weight 1.5 pounds
So far, so good. But then just the other day I saw a basket of miniature Romanescos, heads about 3 inches tall, weighing perhaps 2 ounces, being sold for $4.00 each. This was in Manhattan, at Dean and DeLuca furthermore, but I think the sighting remains Eek worthy because those pricy little units were too big to be served beautifully whole and too wilted to be used in a massive flower arrangement which otherwise might have been way cool.
I will refrain from pious remarks about food stamps, but it does seem as though if you’re paying that much you ought to get value for money – even if it’s just snob value. Of course I didn’t buy any, so may be doing them an injustice. Maybe they have a different taste from full size Romanescos, the way Brussels Sprouts have virtues unknown to cabbages. And thus we pass to a happier topic,
Leafy Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts
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Yours for only $499.99, and maybe it's just as well I can't figure out how to make it bigger.
Never would have known the thing exists if yesterday hadn’t been such a slow mail day I actually looked through a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog before putting it on the recycle pile.
And there was our festive Eek of the Week. It’s 7.5 feet tall, made of powder coated steel, lit with 1150 little red lights that “create a scarlet luminescence.”
Shooting fish in a barrel, I know, but still…
Another piece of not-exactly amazing news: being physically warmed up – by holding a hot drink, for instance – makes people feel more warmly toward others, more generous, more tolerant, while getting chilled – by holding a coldpak, for instance – has the opposite effect. You can read all about it here or here.
And then you can be sorry all over again that “global warming” has gotten established as the shorthand for catastrophic climate change. Warm is a hugely positive word, as others before me have been pointing out for some time. If you’re trying to sound the alarm about human-caused atmospheric changes that have enormous downsides (flood, drought, and biblically destructive storms, for starters), using a word that’s more or less synonymous with “good” is probably not such a great idea.
Same problem with undifferentiated “climate change,” given that – as you may have heard lately – change can be something desirable.
frost didn't hit the cosmos until mid-October, two weeks later than usual
Do I have a solution? Not for for the main problem, and not (at least so far) for what to call it. But for the keep yourself feeling warm part, can’t beat
Cream of (wild) Mushroom Soup
Rich in flavor but comparatively light in texture, a redemption of the genre. Also – if you tweak it a bit – a redemption of any recipe that has canned cream of mushroom soup on the ingredient list.
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Fortress Home Depot, Rockland Maine
At first this seemed to need no comment but once I decided to give it an eek I realized that anymore I just drive on by, seeing it without seeing it. Not good, really, no matter how self-preservational. If eyesores don’t keep on right on hurting as many people as possible, they’re going to keep right on getting built.
I love the deep smoky sweetness of prunes – less cloying than dates, more rounded than apricots – and am a sucker for things like devils on horseback (prunes wrapped in bacon), spiced roast duck legs with prunes, and prunes soaked in Armagnac, one of the world’s best instant desserts, especially over ginger ice cream.
But most of the time I snack on them plain, which presumably makes me the target market for
the newest in prune packaging
Plastic canisters filled with individually packaged prunes, each prune in its own private wrapper. What a brilliant idea! Why carry snack prunes in a dedicated plastic sandwich bag, using it over and over, when instead you could be making a big contribution to your local landfill? As a bonus, you get to pay almost twice as much for exactly the same prunes.
That’s hard to believe, but having been stewing about this for some time I checked again yesterday and sure enough: Bulk conventional pitted prunes from Adam’s in Poughkeepsie, NY – $3.50/lb. Individually wrapped “Ones” from the Stop and Shop roughly 1.5 miles away – $ 2.99 per container, aka $ 6.83/lb.
Ok. The recipe for PRUNES IN ARMAGNAC, a duo invented in Southwest France, famous for both pruneaux d’Agen and the ardent spirit that could be described as Cognac with balls. Read More…
Breaking news: the three people left on the planet who didn’t know kid’s sweetened cereals are almost as much sugar as grain have now been clued in, thanks to a study just published by Consumer Reports.
But the spin that makes MY head spin is this, from a Kellogg’s spokeswoman quoted by Reuters:
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Like every garden writer in the history of humankind, I’ve spent my entire career begging ” don’t blow the whole wad on spring. If everything in the yard is done blooming by the 4th of July, how boring is that.”
But then every year about this time I’m glad the people who owned this house before us – in some cases WAY before us – believed in planting the usual.
Actually, for our first decade or so I DID have mixed feelings about the magnolia, which would routinely just start opening into a huge glorious pink cloud and then there would be a frost and believe me a huge brown cloud is not glorious. Then things got warmer and it routinely escaped; we got a whole month of being happy that this giant unit eats about half the side yard. This year, however, after about 10 days of splendor it’s already going over. Eighty degrees is not a whole lot better than 29 from the magnolia longevity point of view.
The amazing thing about plum blossoms is that they smell exactly like the cheap plum incense that perfumed so many groovy abodes in the 60’s. Bees love them, though, so when you stand under the trees you see and hear a very cheering assortment of these threatened creatures.
In contrast to the plum, the viburnum ( carlesii) smells wonderful. Like itself and only like itself, a sweet, non-cloying New Englandish perfume that fills the entire yard on warm evenings and justifies the existence of an otherwise unexciting shrub and if it really does freeze on Tuesday night and clonk it when it’s only about half-open I’m going to put face in my hands and weep. This post hints at my addiction – and offers a few seasonally appropriate garden tips. (Appropriate if you’re in the lower Hudson valley, anyway. And it doesn’t up and snow)
It’s spring! Time to evaluate, improve – or possibly discard – your current collection of houseplants. But it can be hard to see old friends clearly; loyalty gets in the way. The fix? A field trip to the nearest public conservatory. Botanic gardens, universities and colleges all over the country have greenhouses full of wonderful plants and these include (more often than not) humongous, obscenely healthy versions of those meek green units in the living room.
Your fiddleleaf fig could be 13 feet tall too, although you might be just as glad it’s not.
Tropical orchids, ferns on steroids, fragrant blossoms dripping from vines and trees – even the smallest of these places puts spring flower shows to shame. And small can be especially beautiful. Displays will be far less polished but publicity is nonexistent, which means they’re seldom crowded. Call ahead to find out the slow times and you might be the only visitor.
What a deal, especially in raw, cold March. What’s not to like about peaceful warm rooms filled with tropical beauties that somebody else has been taking good care of for years and years and years?
This staghorn fern, more than 6 feet across, was not built in a day.
It also takes more than a moment to grow a good sized flock of birds of paradise.
Oddly enough, seeing one’s familiar home companions in this new light is more energizing than depressing and there is almost always something to learn: When a fiddleleaf gets old, the bark gets gorgeous; dormant orchids don’t look any better when there are 60 pots of them; pruning matters as much indoors as it does in the yard; and whether camellias are worth the hassle may be a function of heritage. Could be you have to be southern.
Oh right, I forgot to mention fruit. In addition to proving dwarf citrus trees CAN produce something that looks like a crop (those are ponderosa lemons, not grapefruit), these places harbor edibles most of us can’t see without buying a plane ticket.
Papaya tree at @ 16 feet ( those dark footballs are the papayas)
The base of the tree is fat, gray and gnarly; the roots go right through the gravel floor, deep into the deeply alien Hudson Vally soil.
But not for much longer, and thus we come to the carpe diem part. These pictures were taken at the greenhouse that belongs to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook New York. It will be closed before the end of March, its collection dispersed, the building dismantled. Gone forever after more than 30 years.
And it’s not likely to be alone. Glasshouses cost a lot to heat; older models cost really a lot to heat. As the price of oil sails ever upward while funding for public institutions shrinks and those institutions start thinking about greenness in a different way …
A bit of creative googling is likely to turn up at least one that’s close to you, but you might as well start with the advanced garden search at the American Public Gardens Association and the international list at Gardening@Closerange.com.
Spring forward; fall back, say phooey to the whole probably doesn’t save energy thing. Gardeners always know what’s what, daylight-wise, and no amount of fiddling with the clock can make any more of it.
We’re already hardwired to natural seasons. Winter – finally! – is for taking a break, though it’s work to resist catalogs in which every flower is blemish-free and every fruit delicious. Spring is for doing the monster sprint: move the stuff that wasn’t divided last fall, plant and plant, weed and weed and prune and pinch andthenthenextthingyou know, it’s harvest. Roast the summer tomatoes; freeze the succotash; move the tender plants indoors and get ready to get your jollies from things that grow in pots.
Only one problem: Whether you have the above hot-cold version, the western dry-wet or the tropical wet and more wet, seasons appear to be headed toward Hades in a globally warmed handbasket. Familiar rituals need adjustment.
What’s wrong with this picture ( other than the fact that real autumn leaves, having been hard at work all summer, don’t look as though they’ve had work done)?
Until this year, our record late date for nasturtium killing frost was October 6th, two days later than the previous record. This year, it was the 28th. Authorities quibble about how much longer the northern growing season lasts, but nobody has any trouble tacking a week or more on each end. And nobody ( unless you count the USDA) has any trouble seeing that most northern climate zones should have higher numbers than they did a decade ago.
Coping: Don’t assume this means you’ve been promoted. Zones measure only the lowest average winter low. That means little if there is also a 6 week warm spell that starts in mid-February and plunges to a frigid end after persuading your peach trees to start blooming. In the north, planting fruit trees on north-facing slopes is more important than ever. In the south, remember the zone range has a high end as well as a low one. Cold-loving plants like sugar maples and rhododendrons are now an unwise bet at the hotter end of their range.
Warmer weather means earlier leaf-out for many trees. That means spring ephemerals like this bloodroot – and crocus, narcissus and bluebells – may not get as much sun as they need to come back strongly year after year.
Coping: plant spring bulbs closer to tree’s drip lines, or out in the open. Consider limbing up – winter is a great time to look at the shapes of deciduous trees and think sculptural thoughts.
This Magnolia soulangeana was planted by an optimist, probably about 50 years ago, and was already huge when we bought the Hudson Valley house. In the old days, it was like Charlie Brown and the football, blossoms would start to unfold, a pink cloud on the horizon and then BAM! browned by frost, year after year. Not any more.
Coping: Fine to plant trees that were once marginal but do bear in mind that fruit-free male trees aren’t problem free. They don’t bear messy or smelly fruits, but they do add to the pollen burden, and allergy sufferers are already going to take a hit: increased carbon dioxide does great things for ragweed as well as poison ivy.
(The pruner is there to show how long the spears are; they were cut in the standard way: with a knife, under ground, to deny any passing beetles a place to land.)
Bill grew up knowing that “if the patch is strong, you can cut asparagus until the 4th of July.” Not true when you start cutting 2 or 3 weeks earlier than formerly. Going by the calendar instead of the size of the spears was never a completely wise idea, but now it would be a recipe for greatly diminished production if not outright death.
Coping: Stop cutting when new shoots start being thinner and fewer. Warm winters mean more asparagus beetles ( as well as every other wretched bug I can think of at the moment). Be sure to clean away old stalks and all surrounding debris; that’s where the eggs winter over.
What’s wrong with THIS picture? We don’t have that all many delphiniums. The bouquet is a consequence of a brutal rainstorm.
Coping: Delphiniums are famous for this, regardless of climate doings, but there’s no question summer storms are becoming stronger. Think carefully before planting things that are vulnerable to wind. Fertilize modestly; encouraging plants to be as tall as possible is no longer a good idea unless you’re fond of the staked-up look.
Storms are also a problem for brittle plants like tender fuchsias. The one on the left is inconspicuously anchored to the wall so strong winds won’t bust it.
This eye-catching fall display is pure genius on the part of the farmer. Not only does it announce abundance to passers-by on the busy highway, it’s also easy to cover on cold nights. Winter squash that is blemished by frost won’t keep. The grand assortment of squash that’s available at farmstands right now won’t keep either, btw; be sure to buy soon and store at home for the best flavor assortment.
It’s tempting to leave houseplants out as long as possible, especially when they’re protected by being close to the house. But if you plan to enjoy them indoors they need time to get adjusted to low light and dry air. Bringing them in when it’s still warm and bright enough to put them in an unheated sunroom or other transitional space will increase the chances that they stay strong, for when you need them most.
outside
inside. Our friend from the window box. Passionflowers are particularly willing to do the in- and – out dance. Logee’s and Brushwood Nursery are among the many sellers with tempting assortments.
Daylight saving thought to live by: Every roasted or dried or frozen tomato you put by is saved daylight; as is every flower on winter’s amaryllis, there because the bulb was nourished by sun on last summer’s leaves.
The well furnished home food garden has always and still should include at least one hive of honeybees. But this is easier said than done, so learning that bees were part of Bill’s dowry may have been the thing that clinched the deal, back when we were courting. Fast forward 16 honeyed years: I’m writing a N.Y. Times bee story and in the course of research discover – who knew? – that this little insect may well be the canary in the agricultural coal mine.
Honeybees don’t get much press compared to, say, petroleum, but their pollination services are just as crucial as fuel and fertilizer to about 15 billion dollars a year in crops, from almonds and alfalfa to sunflower seeds. More bees are needed in each place than any one place could provide, so tens of thousands of hives get loaded on trucks, taken to fields or orchards in bloom, then packed up again and hauled elsewhere.
These migratory honeybees are essential to agribusiness monocropping, which could not exist if it had to depend on local pollinators. That’s why the bees have been getting their 15 minutes of fame* – a mysterious affliction called CCD ( colony collapse disorder) has destroyed so many colonies it’s threatening a major industry. Farmers are paying much higher prices for hive rental while also worrying there may be shortages that can’t be overcome, even with expensive imports.
More than you really want to know is posted, with running updates at beeculture.com, but the very short version is:
*CCD probably isn’t new; reports of similar, albeit far smaller, epidemics go back at least as far as 1898.
* CCD is almost surely not one disease or pest or insecticide but rather some unknown combo thereof that exploits the weakness of bees stressed by profoundly unnatural ways of being kept and used. No study has yet revealed a single insult that is/was the tipping point. Each time a likely culprit is fingered, further investigation confirms that it is at best only part of the puzzle.
* Domestic honeybees are livestock: living creatures raised and used by humans. What do we know about them compared to what we know about chickens and cows? Zilch. What are we likely to learn soon? Also zilch, in part because there is no massive bee industry to lobby for public funds or undertake its own research.
The internet allows posts like this to go on at enormous length, but that doesn’t mean they should, so here are a few visuals from our own
Home Grown Honey Harvest, October 7, 2007
Bill checks to see if there’s any honey in the frame ( a pre-built foundation for the bees to start from).
I always thought smoke made the bees think the hive was on fire, so they were too busy worrying about the house to sting anybody. Beekeepers just say it calms them, with the same result.
They don’t stay calm long; you have to extract the honey someplace they can’t get to, in this case the barn.
This is Bill’s honey extractor, a galvanized antique called the Root Novice. Modern extractors are steel or plastic and this is probably the place to say that honey is more or less self-sterilizing. It’s so sweet bacteria can’t grow in it and so low in water content yeasts won’t grow either. The reason you can’t give it to babies is that it can contain spores of anaerobic bacteria like botulism. The acid in all human digestive systems that process solid food prevents those spores from growing, but new people who still drink all their nourishment don’t have that protection.
After each cell is filled with honey, the bees cap it with a wax lid. You have to slice off the lids (with a wicked sharp, thin-bladed knife) before you can extract the honey.
Bees gather honey from one source at a time. If you want to name the honey for its source – check out the list at honeylocator.com – you have to harvest it before the bees move on. The dark patch looks sort of like buckwheat but I’m sure it’s not. Doesn’t matter, whatever it is will just add complexity to this year’s vintage.
Frames are held upright by arms in the extractor. Turn the crank and the arms whirl around, flinging the honey out by centrifugal force, same as in a salad spinner.
Honey isn’t the only thing that gets flung; the colander catches things like stray bits of wax and the occasional unfortunate bee that didn’t respond to the smoke.
After collection, the honey is poured into sterilized jars. Over the next couple of weeks, any tiny impurities rise and form a thin layer at the top. For gift-giving, we take the layer off. For us, we just leave it as an extra seal until we want to use the honey.
Before the equipment is washed and stored, it’s put outdoors for the bees to clean. They will retrieve almost all of the honey to add to their winter stores.
* Fifteen minutes seems to be about right. Bees are as gone from the headlines as they are from all those dead hives. Tune in next February for a brief flare-up, when almond orchards will need a surge from an army so grievously depleted it may not have enough troops.
