Many parts of the country have suffered through a long, cold, very snowy winter. Unfortunately we count ourselves among that group. Though the temps have risen significantly and we've seen a fair amount of sunshine, the snow is lingering to say the least. You can get a sense of what I mean in this group of photos that comprise a brief tour of our front and back gardens. I wish it were an April Fool's joke but we're not laughing!
Looking west from the driveway:
Looking towards the house from the street:
A tighter shot of the same view shows how dirty, hard and crusty the snow is at the end of the season. Nothing pretty about it. The brown leaves you see on the left are Acers that hold their leaves all winter.
Looking from the east edge of our lot line where you can see our neighbor's bags of chopped leaves in his annual Maginot Line of demarcation:
We've come around the east side of the house and are now looking up the dry stream and across the pond (in the center) to the tea house:
Snow or no, we did grill out on Easter yesterday. Looking west across the deck:
If you enlarge this photo, you can see the clump of bamboo is righting itself after being buried under snow since Dec. 19. Pretty amazing recovery. This view is looking southwest from the front edge of the deck:
The next three images were all taken in the southwest corner of the garden where the big Austrian pine came down in December and took out two other trees. You can see sawdust, logs, the big stump and broken tree trunks:
The stump in the background (above) is a crabapple that we took out a number of years ago. The one sign of Spring that has me excited is the arrival of the first snowdrops. These are all doubles growing next to the cement foundation of the house on the south side. I picked my first bouquet to put on the kitchen windowsill for Easter.
Erin, at The Impatient Gardener, invited me to submit my favorite shrub for a recent round-up of that subject on her blog. Given the snowy winter that so many of us have experienced, I think that what I told her is worth sharing with the rest of you:
"If it were May or June, then I'm sure I'd declare Doublefile Viburnum my favorite shrub. It's definitely a show-stopper and is always the center of attention when it blooms. But shrubs in the winter garden need to stand-out in a different way than summer plants. At this season, Alpine currant (Ribes alpinum) makes a much needed statement. We grow both the straight species and the dwarf variety ('Green Mound')."
Our dwarf currant hedge continues the curve of bamboo hoops edging a path buried under the snow.
"They take well to pruning, creating strong horizontal lines in the garden through the seasons: green in summer; almost black in winter. Some years, they make a strong presence in the winter garden; other times only the top of the hedge peeks out of the deep snow. Because they become so densely twiggy they have not been bowed and broken like so many other garden specimens during the heavy snowstorms we've had in recent years. It's a shrub that's well-worth a second look, and it's readily available at most nurseries."
Note: These photos are from prior years. Though we have a lot of snow on the ground, we are at the beginning of a warmer stretch of weather and hoping it means Spring is on the way.
December's snow and the current very cold snap we're in the midst of here, have got me cooking non-stop. There's nothing like a hot oven and a kitchen filled with good smells to take the chill out of winter. Last fall I bought a new cookbook — "Long Nights and Log Fires: Warming Comfort Food for Family and Friends." I found it at Cluck The Chicken Store, which I wrote about not too long ago.
The book is published by Ryland, Peters & Small and is not a title I've seen elsewhere, so I was happy to discover it at Cluck. The photos that accompany almost every recipe made the book an easy sell for me. A cookbook is not one of those things that I would buy online, sight unseen. I want to read the recipes and get a sense of the content before I plunk down my money.
Ever since I brought "Long Nights" home, it's been sitting by my favorite reading spot where I can dip into it when I'm wondering what to make for dinner. The soups are one of the strongest sections of the book. I've made a number of them, all delicious: "roasted tomato soup with rarebit toasts," "slow-cooked onion and cider soup, and "monkfish, fennel and saffron bourride with harissa aioli." The cider soup was interesting because it uses veggie stock instead of beef (which is how I've usually made it), plus hard sweet cider and egg yolks which gives it a lighter color and a more subtle flavor.
I've also made a hearty "smokey sausage and bean casserole" with chipotle sausages, cannellii beans, smoked paprika and maple syrup. The next recipe I want to try is an entree: "sticky pork tenderloin with a pecorino crust, mustard mash and balsamic onions." Doesn't that sound yummy? At least to those of you who eat meat.
The dishes illustrated in the photo above (clockwise from bottom left) are: "goat cheese, leek and walnut tart," "egg, bacon and spinach pie," and "real treacle tart with carmelized bananas."
Mark arrived home from the grocery store late Friday morning just in time to beat the snow storm. He then spent the afternoon cooking spicy Nepalese dishes which he proceeded to serve in courses spread out over a couple of hours. He cooked, we ate, we read by the fire and then he cooked some more.
Strange as it may seem, Madison has a wealth of fabulous Nepalese restaurants. We've been going to the grandmother of them all, Himal Chuli, for more than twenty years. We finally decided we needed to learn how to cook some of our favorite dishes at home, which is how Mark wound up buying Taste of Nepal by Jyoti Pathak.
We began our meal with Taareko Alu or Spicy Sauteed Potatoes from that cookbook. Mark had made these before and this time decided to cut them like chunky French fries and to serve them as an hors d'oeuvre with a glass of Guinness Black Lager. They are fabulous and would work well as a starch with any number of grilled or roasted meats.
This was followed by bowls of Dal a la Himal Chuli. There is nothing more comforting, more warming, more sustaining than Himal's Dal. We'd tried to replicate it at home without much success. I decided to look on-line to see if the restaurant had ever published the recipe; no such luck. But local blogger Jessie Bluejay experimented until she came up with her own recipe to recreate Himal Chuli's Dal at home.
We tried it and thought it was a match. This time Mark served us leftover Dal that we had frozen when we made it after discovering Bluejay's recipe not long ago. De-frosted, and heated up, it still held up quite well both in texture and flavor. Mark served the Dal with Capital Brewery's Winter Skal. We emptied our bowls before I thought to have Mark snap a photo.
(Note that Bluejay's recipe has a couple of visual glitches in it; they appear to be related to accent marks and do not affect the recipe itself or ingredient amounts).
The Dal was followed by Tsak Sha Momos or Tibetan Beef Dumplings, a recipe that appeared in the New York Times not long ago. Momos are a staple at Himal Chuli and these were close enough to their version to satisfy us. Mark served them with Potosi Brewery's Cave Ale and a No Cook Tomato Chutney from the Taste of Nepal cookbook, similar to the way they are presented at Himal. The Tibetan Hot Sauce in the NYTimes sounded too hot for the subtle flavor of Momos.
He was going to also make a stir-fried Ramechhap-style cabbage (from Taste of Nepal), but we ate so many potatoes that we decided to forego that dish.
Huma Siddiqui is a native of Pakistan who has lived in Wisconsin for quite a number of years. She's well-known locally for her televised cooking show, spice blends, and her evocative book, "Jasmine in her Hair." Part-memoir, part-cookbook, this little volume focuses on "culture and cuisine from Pakistan." It is a touching family saga filled with fabulous recipes.
Here you can find more versions of Dal, as well as a recipe for Saag Aloo (spinach with potatoes), one of Mark's favorite dishes from Himal Chuli; though they add black-eyed peas. And Huma also has a recipe for Samosas: pastry stuffed with spiced potatoes. Huma deep-fries hers while they are baked at Himal Chuli. Either way, another great dish winter or summer.
Here's a little video of Huma cooking. Having worked as her assistant during some of the cooking classes she taught at Orange Tree Imports, I want to point out that — though you can't tell from this video — Huma is always wearing heels and never wears an apron. You will also notice that she never seems rushed or tense when she cooks. Being in a kitchen with Huma is an almost meditative experience. If you live in Dane County, consider taking one of her classes or sitting in on the TV tapings. At the very least you will want to add her lovely book to your cooking library.
Editor's note: Just caught up with last week's edition of Isthmus where I read that Himal Chuli was the first Nepali restaurant in the country when it opened in Madison in 1986.
I don't think any of us really believed the mid-week weather forecast that predicted a big snowstorm for Madison and environs on Friday. But by about 11 a.m. yesterday morning, it was snowing steadily, if lightly. It didn't take long for the storm to get serious. Wet, heavy snow started to come down quickly and to stick to everything it touched: wires, roads and walkways and every tree and shrub were soon coated.
It was so gorgeous we kept running to different windows for different views. While many of our trees and shrubs were bowed down under the weight of the snow, nothing looked like it might turn into the garden crisis that resulted from a similar storm in 2009.
We took photos, ate in front of the fire and then went out after dinner to clear the driveway. When we were done with that chore, we threw a few snowballs at each other and toured the garden by snowlight and faint moonlight.
These photos show the drape and droop of the trees, except for the last picture which shows the geometric patterns made by shards of snow falling off the roof and onto the deck. Hard to reconcile the sticky snow on all the vertical surfaces and the crisp design on the horizontal deck.
Early last evening it started to snow: huge fluffy flakes that immediately stuck to everything they touched. It's wasn't long before it was the proverbial winter wonderland in the garden. I kept turning on the deck lights so I could enjoy the view. We got about 3.6 inches of snow, which may be the biggest storm of this very quiet winter. Here are a few shots of what it looks like this morning. At the moment, big clumps of snow are falling from the highest trees, knocking snow off the middle layer on its way down.
A gardening friend e-mailed me Saturday morning suggesting I look out my window because her snowdrops were up and blooming. Since my snowdrops are in a sunny spot right below the library window, it's possible to check on them without going outside. And as it happens, I had already checked on them Friday afternoon because a number of Upper Midwest gardeners had snowdrops on their posts for GBBD.
Mine weren't showing on Wednesday, but two days later and voila! Given this coming week's weather forecast of temperatures between 45-50 degrees F. and rain, I am expecting my snowdrops will definitely continue their growth spurt. Now I need to get out and check on the Hellebores, and see if there are any other surprises lurking in the far corners of the garden.
Typically snowdrops are dug and sold just after blooming "in the green." This is a common practice in the U.K. where dozens of snowdrop specialists offer plants for sale each spring. It is so rare an occurance in the U.S. that I know of only two people who follow this practice. One is Carolyn of Carolyn's Shade Gardens. Alas for me, I forgot to check her website early enough and there are limited choices left.
The other source is Hitch Lyman of Temple Nursery. Hitch is very low-tech. You must buy his paper catalog; no on-line sales. But reading his descriptions and seeing Carolyn's photos will convince you to start a collection. And Hitch's catalog alone is worth ordering and reading. It is so beautifully written and produced, it is a treasure in itself. (Temple Nursery, P.O. Box 591, Trumansburg, New York 14886. The catalog is $3.00).
Mark shot the above photos around 2:30 p.m. yesterday. You can see that one group is barely up while a nearby clump are starting to open. These are Galanthus 'Flore pleno' or double snowdrop which is why they look so plump.
I went for a walk today as I've been doing every day for the past week. The pavement was dry, the sun was out and the temperature was 52 degrees (Fahrenheit). So far it's pretty much been the winter that wasn't. We've only had a little over four inches of snow, compared to our typical amount of 20 inches by this point in the season.
My Thanksgiving Hellebore from the late Seneca Hill Perennials is blooming and my earliest daylily is sending up green spears. Because we haven't had extremely cold temps with this lack of snow cover, I think most things in my garden will be OK. I actually cut a foliage bouquet this afternoon of Hellebores, Arum italicum, Epimediums, Autum fern and a couple of small branches of Gentsch White hemlock.
The other day I took a break from my walk to introduce myself (and Mark — that's his shadow) to a neighbor who's been taking advantage of the nice weather to sit at the end of his driveway and get recall signatures. Ray Coleman (below) lives just around the corner from us and he's set up a signing station that's had a big spurt in drive-by signatures these last few days.
Ray and his friends (below) are just a few of the thousands of Wisconsinites who've used the mostly warm and dry weather we've been experiencing for the last two months (the recall drive began on Nov. 15) to be out and about in their communities gathering signatures on the petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker. The deadline for signing is Friday and our first real snow storm is scheduled to start sometime tonight.
The timing is just about perfect. Ray said he thought about just shoveling out his driveway and continuing his recall vigil until the weather forecasters began to talk about the 30 mile an hour winds and blowing snow. To say nothing of the 30 degree drop in temperatures compared to what we've been enjoying.
So he'll be turning in his petitions, but if you still need to sign, you can do so at the locations mentioned here. This site lists all the recall headquarters around the state; locally look for the Dane County east and west offices. You can also sign the petition (and turn in any signatures you've gathered) at the United Wisconsin locations here.
Woke at 6 a.m. to the sound of the plow going down the street. Jumped out of bed, turned on the Christmas tree lights and pulled back the curtains to find the picture perfect Christmas view. Just enough snow to coat the landscape, but not enough to cause any problems. By 7 a.m. the morning rush of traffic had our street clean down to the pavement. And by 8 a.m. I had two pans of triple gingerbread in the oven. Could not ask for a better day — just a better governor.
Hope you have a lovely holiday. I'm going to take a little break until the New Year begins. See you then!
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If anyone knows who took this photo, please let me know so I can credit them.
At the beginning of March, when we felt so demoralized by the cold, snow and politics here in Wisconsin, I splurged on a breath of Spring at our local source for orchids, the Orchids Garden Centre and Nursery just down the road in Waunakee. I brought home two orchids: Phalaenopsis stuartiana 'Sogo' and this gorgeous Phalaenopsis 'White Dream' (below) which is almost in full bloom a month later. This week we are having warmer temps which are finally thawing the edges of the garden down by the street. A little thaw really helps when you're trying to get all those political yard signs stuck firmly in the ground.
The copyright to photos on this Web site is held by the photographer, Mark Golbach, unless credited otherwise. Original text is copyright by Linda Brazill. Please contact for permission to use.
