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12/30/2023 spring beauty expansion

I point at the base of each long skinny green leaf with my first two fingers
I was showing Mom today how one of the two Spring Beauties she gave us have survived. She pointed out it now has two stems from the same plant! I can’t find the second plant which was another foot or so away. I accidentally pulled up its single leaf last year while weeding out Star of Bethlehem lilies and I suspect that killed it.
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12/21/2023 flan

A perfect round egg-colored flan with an apple-tinted syrup in a white bowl with black stripe around the edge
Paula brought back eggs from her family’s chickens (very free range!) and the Chef decided to make flan. I’ve never had it before. I’m scheduling this to post after we visit home so Judy doesn’t guess we’re bringing her some of these eggs, haha!
A spoon slice of flan scooped away so you can see the silky interior
It was delicious! He topped it with a sauce made from the crabapple syrup (the less-jellied jars of jelly).
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12/23/2023 basketflower

Surprise! Seedlings!
The label
Has an adult leaf
Younger one
Several including one nibbled on
Basketflower seedlings have emerged! It’s an annual, so I assume they start now and then goes through summer. Hopefully they can survive frosts. Presumably they can though since seeds fall all fall in the wild too.

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12/19/2023 power line easement

The mostly leafless red oak in our backyard
Our poor oak tree had to get trimmed the full 10 foot easement along the power line. The trunk is almost right at the 10 foot mark.
A big red oak with almost half its branches gone, all along the power line side.
So, there’s going to be a lot more light along the fence. Today (12/21) I cut some stalks of annual and Maximilian sunflowers, ironweed, and camphorweed to scatter along the fence in hope that their seeds will like the new amount of light there.
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12/21/2023 preparing for solstice rain

The rain barrel on its now bare stand, with the tepary bean vine pile, a glass Pyrex bowl of tepary bean pods, and a rolling stool on the driveway in front of it, on a cloudy day.
We have been slowly harvesting all the tepary beans dry off the vine. The vines made this rain barrel hard to use in summer, so we’ll stick to no vines on it next year. I moved some strawberries to under the rain barrel where I can let it drip on them in summer.
I’m holding a dormant ampelopsis plant. Its root has two side branches and the main root branch is torn.
I’ve had my eye on an Ampelosis near the woodpile all summer. It’s finally dormant but it turned out to be mostly under the edge of the patio. We shall see if it lives.
I point at four clumps of a divided sedge at the base of the red oak, among many fallen leaves.
A native sedge in the backyard sprouts up between the pavers periodically, so I’m slowly moving (and dividing them) out of the path. I like to move plants in the winter right before rains so I don’t have to water them.
I’m holding a dried mystery grass by the tops. One seedhead is visible.
Top of grass
I’m holding a dormant grass by the base, so you can see the roots are relatively short in the damp earth.
Roots
Four grasses, I think all one species, came up between the concrete blocks and the path, not on the other side of the blocks where I wanted native grasses. I don’t recognize this one but I assume I put it there and it washed down. I moved all four back into the prairie area. The soil is still nice and soft after last week’s inch of rain.

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12/16/2023 Maximilian sunflowers stalks in driveway

Sunflower stalks probably 6-8 feet tall tied up with a white cotton rope to keep them bundled up out of the driveway
In late fall rains, the maxes fell over. This has been pretty annoying when backing cars out of the garage or trying to put stuff in the bins. So I have preliminarily tied them up so the seedheads are still there for birds and the stalks are there for overwintering bees. But less aggravating to walk through. I might put a raffia ribbon on it or something if there are Complaints about it.