Favorite Spring Plant – Crocus

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Crocus chrysanthus var. Blue Bird

Crocuses or is it Croci?

I love it when the crocuses bloom in our yard and fill the beds with Easter colors. I’m not too partial to the common gaudy large crocuses in purple and white also called Dutch crocus or Crocus vernus. The rain knocks them down and destroys them here in Seattle.

I much prefer the Crocus chrysanthus hybrids or snow crocus. They are smaller and more resilient in the rain. We have three that come back every year for over 10 years; the yellow and maroon stripped ‘Gypsy Girl’, the white with lilac stripes and tips ‘Snowbunting’ and magical violet-blue with white margins ‘Blue Bird’. I also like another spring blooming species – Crocus tommasinianus.

Crocus are native to the European mediteranean countries – Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Italy and Greece. We have seen the fall crocus in Italy but never the Spring crocus. Another dream on my list – hunting for wild spring croci.

A great source is McClure and Zimmerman

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Crocus chrysanthus var. Snowbunting

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Crocus chrysanthus var. Blue Bird

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Crocus chrysanthus var. Gypsy girl

Favorite Spring Plant – Daphne mezereum

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daphne

I love this plant. It blooms brilliant fuchsia colored blossoms along the upright stark bare branches. The perfume fills the air on a sunny late winter day with the most intoxicating scent. It is always a harbinger of spring and very hardy. Here in Seattle it blooms at the end of February and is commonly called February daphne.

It is also an extremely poisonous plant. The blooms turn into brilliant red seeds along the stems. According to some of the websites, 10 seeds can cause death. Fortunately, we do not have children and pets are not attracted or affected by the seeds. There is also an ‘alba’ white form which has creamy yellow seeds.

G remembers even seeing it in the wild above Lake Misurina in the Dolomite region of the Italian Alps.

Market House Corned Beef

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Market House Corned Beef

Vegetarians – Look away quick!

G doesn’t eat meat but I still do. I find it difficult around holidays to avoid traditional meals. At Thanksgiving, I always want to cook a turkey. St. Patrick’s Day is coming up soon and I’m feeling the need to have corned beef.

My ancestry is mixed. A little German, a little Scottish but mostly Irish. We always cooked corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day when I was growing up. It was not cooked in G’s household. I cooked it a couple of times early in our marriage but it never became a tradition in our house. It was easy to give up when G became vegetarian. But there has been that little nagging in the back of my mind in March that it is time to cook corned beef.

I tried it a couple of years ago. I bought one of the major commercial brands and boiled it up as my mother cooked it. Yech! It was so fat and salty. I decided to write it off. But the March nagging persisted.

Metropolitan Market is a local market which has a great selection of choice meats, fish and seafood. I love to shop at the Queen Anne branch during my lunch break. I was shopping last week and noticed that they had Market House Corned Beef. Market House is a small local company that brines their own corned beef. In Seattle, it is considered the best local corned beef and they provide corned beef to many of the local restaurants. I found a small piece and decided to give it a try.

I cooked it on Sunday. The package recommended baking it at 300 degrees covered in a pan with 1/4 water for 3 – 5 1/2 hours. My piece was rather small so I cooked it just about 3 hours.

I cut off a small piece after cooking. Oh my goodness, it was so good! It was not salty at all with a nice spicy taste. I couldn’t stop snacking and finished off about 1/4 of it.

Today I had a great sandwich made with whole wheat bread, mayo, horseradish and dijon mustard. I maybe able to get a second sandwich off the small piece I bought. But my craving hasn’t been satisfied. I’m making another trip to Metropolitan Market for another piece to cook next week.

For more information on the history of Market House – here is an article from the Stranger newspaper.

The seeds have arrived!

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Territorial seed order

My seed order arrived on Saturday. That was quite quick. I place my order on Wednesday and the seeds arrived on Saturday. Territorial is located in Cottage Grove, Oregon which means they don’t have to come far but 3 days is great turnaround time on our order.

G will be planting up a couple of 6-pack seed trays of the lettuce. I think he is also going to be starting the tomatoes although we won’t be able to plant them until May.

Leap Day

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PostcardLeapYearMaidensAre1908

Well it is finally here – leap day. Not only is this an extra day but it is the end of the Slow Travel Blog for a Month. This has been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed reading posts by my fellow bloggers. I am going to continue updating my blog but just not daily.

Leap Day has always been fun. I remember Sadie Hawkins Day when I was growing up. In high school, girls could ask the boys out to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. I wonder if there are any Sadie Hawkins Dances tonight?

Dreams

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For a long time my dreams were of places I would travel.Through the years I’ve checked places off and added new places. South Africa – check. Australia – check, study French in Villefranche – check. New places have been added such as India, Malaysia, the Amazon.

Only recently have I realized that I have another dream – an early retirement. Well, maybe not exactly retirement but taking a step out of the corporate world. I think it started a while back when I read a book whose basically said it was your life or your job. At the time, I was very content in my job but the seed was planted.

More and more friends and neighbors have made changed their jobs and moved towards retirement. I’m currently reading Work Less, Live More and it sounding better and better. Someday, maybe this dream will come true also.

Seed order

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I placed my seed order tonight from Territorial Seed. I checked around a bit at the local seed racks but I didn’t see the ones I wanted so I decided to go ahead and place an order. There was no sales tax since Territorial is located in Oregon but the shipping was about 1/3 of the cost of the order. But it will be fun growing the vegetables I want to try.

I ordered 3 different types of beans; Maxibel French haricot beans, Etna shelling bean and Helda romano beans. I was disappointed that I couldn’t find Goldmarie; a yellow romano pole bean. I did see a couple of providers on the web but I didn’t want to order just one seed packet.

For salads, I ordered three types of lettuce. Nevada lettuce which several of the farmers grew last year at University Farmer’s Market. It lasts a long time after harvested and G can use for his sandwiches. Sunset – a red leafed lettuce and Mascara, a red oak leaf. To go along with the lettuce, we also ordered Orient Express cuke and Momotaro Tomato. We’ll get some other tomatoes plants later in the year but G wanted to grow this specific tomato.

We’re soaking our snap peas tonight and G will start them tomorrow indoors. I’ll plant the starts out in a week or so.

There will be blood

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San ardo oil fields
San Ardo Oil Fields near King City, California

I was glad that Daniel Day Lewis won for best actor. His portrait of oilman Daniel Plainview was stunning. He was so charismatic and yet such a villain. I was also surprised that it was about the oil fields of California. I had assumed it was Texas until I heard them refer to Point Hueneme half way through the movie.

I remember the oil derricks in the southern part of central valley of California. We would travel to visit my aunt who lived in Pasadena and pass them along the highway before we headed up over the Grapevine. Their movement facinated me as a child from the window of our car.

Oil did shape a lot of Southern California and even had repercussions into the 1960’s when there were efforts to stop drilling off the coast. I passed the San Ardo oil field along Highway 101 on my way to Paso Robles in February just after seeing the movie.

The railroad also had a big impact on the area. Not only for transporting oil but also transporting crops. One of my favorite books in high school was “The Octopus” by Frank Norris. I should go back and read this novel and “Oil!” by Sinclair Lewis which was the inspiration for the movie.

Spring is closer

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crocus

We have had a string of sunny days. It has been so nice. Even today, a Monday, it was wonderful to see the sun out. It has spurred the plants along. The crocus and snowdrops are doing well. I have also seen a few daffodils in bloom in the warmer areas of the city.

And did you realize that daylight time starts in 2 weeks! Yes, it starts the 2nd Sunday of March which is March 9th. I’ll have to give up waking to sunlight for a couple of weeks but it will be worth it to have the longer light in the evening.