Angel Trumpets

I love these beautiful tropical plants. The flowers bloom all day, but their gorgeous fragrance is most powerful at night. They're a very poisonous plant, but we have no small children and our cats don't bother plants.

I got tired of buying new plants every year, so last fall I took cuttings and rooted them and planted them outdoors in May. They're doing well, but the plants from the cuttings seem to be blooming several weeks later than the ones I purchased last week.

I have pink ones and white ones. I think next year I'll buy a yellow one also. I have one big plant that hasn't even bloomed yet, but it's covered with buds.

A Mushroom Bigger than My Head

Our post-Ernesto rainstorms continued this week and brought up lots of strange mushrooms in the flower garden. The hardwood mulch seems to have had lots of mushroom spores just waiting for the rainy season. I don't know what kind of a mushroom this is, but it sure is big. My husband said, "You want a pizza with that mushroom?" I wish I could grow edible things this big.

Chickpea and Vegetable Curry

We had a potluck at work Friday. I made a big vegetable curry with Basmati rice. This made a lot, probably 12 servings. It was delicious and very fragrant. I would have preferred a hotter curry, with cumin and hotter peppers, but my colleagues like it mild.

Chickpea and Vegetable Curry

1 stick unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic minced
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, pared and minced
2 large onions, diced
4 bell peppers (red, green and yellow) seeded and cut into large dice
4 mild chili peppers, seeded and cut into small dice
2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼ inch slices
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼ inch slices
1 acorn squash, remove seeds from center, peel and cut into 2 inch chunks
1 can coconut milk
3 cans water
1 cup red lentils, rinsed and picked over
2 cans chick peas, drained
2 cans black-eyed peas, drained
6 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
2 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons curry powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
¼ teaspoon Tabasco
Teaspoon sea salt
2 bay leaves

In a large Dutch over slowly cook onions, garlic and ginger in melted butter until almost cooked. Add chilies, potatoes and squash. Cook, stirring frequently, about ten minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Cook, stirring often, about 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender and the lentils have cooked and almost melted.

The First Salsify

Sunday I harvested the first bunch of salsify. They were hard to pull out of the earth boxes. Next year I plan to mix some sand in with the potting mixture. I scrapped them like a carrot and parboiled them in acidulated water. I had to use lime juice because I was out of lemons. I refrigerated them overnight, and yesterday Judi made a white sauce with Parmesan cheese and baked the salisify in the sauce. There was just enough for the three of us last night. It was wonderful. We should have enough for five or six more weeks.

Vegetables that take a very long time to grow are worth the wait. Next year I plan to grow some leeks. They take even longer than salsify to grow, and they definitely need some sand mixed into the soil.

Location, Location, Location

My friend Margaret and I have a continuing fig contest going on. Whose fig trees are the best? My trees produce really nice big, fat figs, but Margaret's tree makes up for it in quantity. Look what she picked in just one day! It probably helps that her house is about 7 miles southeast of mine. I don't know why, but the state department of argiculture map puts my neighborhood down in the southern tip of Stafford County in the Piedmont area, but the city of Fredericksburg just across the river is on the edge of the Tidewater. The couple of miles distance between my house and the other side of the river can mean 5 degrees in temperature. That probably translates into a few more days of growing season. My daughter's house in King George County only 25 mile away is definitiely in Tidewater Virginia. her growing season is two full weeks longer than mine. Life is not fair.
However, mulch can help a lot. last year I saved my bay laurel tree (zone 8) by putting tires around it and filling them with mulch. It came through the winter beautifully. Now I have to figure out how to keep a "hardy" (zone 8) oleander living through a zone 7 winter.