The beauty of apricot-colored tulips

Sometimes, my screen around "plants that work for a living" includes plants that bring joy.

Tulips are in that category. 

They're totally "useless" in their cultivated form for anything beyond that (not producing nectar, feeding insects, etc.), unless you count feeding deer.  In nature, species tulips undoubtedly had many ecological roles, but cultivated tulips, not many, except being pretty.

Nonetheless, I've loved them since I first saw the tulip displays near the Jefferson Memorial, in the Washington, DC tidal basin area, many years ago. 

And they were among the first plants I planted as a newbie gardener over three decades ago, not long after that.  I planted red tulips in a triangular block next to our gate to the backyard. 

And potted tulips have long been a Valentine's Day staple, although cyclamens have supplanted them in recent years.

So these lovely apricot-colored tulips, grown in Virginia (which count as regional, I guess), appealed to me and my gardening companion yesterday.

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Late afternoon snow melt

As the snow melted from the leaves of trees this afternoon, under a still lead-grey sky and intermittent flurries, the trunks and branches of the trees in the ravine glistened with remnants of the overnight snow.

As I was putting dinner together, the view was striking.  Now, as the oven hums, the wind howls, and with mid-30° F temperatures, the snow echoes are almost gone.

view from the kitchen window

the big red oak through the deck door

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An unusual early snow

Overnight snow on November 1 is highly unusual, much less the soft fluffy snow that fell, clinging to leaves still on the trees and furrowed bark.

The contrast between the glimpses of fall color cloaked in snow with the vibrancy of a couple of days ago in clear light -- remarkable.

November 1 snow

scarlet oak, red oak, and ginkgo with snow

snow out the window

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A lovely morning walk

Beaver Lake in mid-morning

There's a human-created lake (Beaver Lake) in North Asheville that's truly magical. 

It's a neighborhood lake, supported by the surrounding community, with the only "fee" being for boaters and dog-walkers.

I admit that we've been scofflaws, bringing Woody for walks without the annual permit for dogs (but always picking up after him, when needed!)  

But we'll be happy to contribute to their permit program when we're up here full-time.

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Fall colors

I'm grateful to have two wonderful places to enjoy fall color and inspiring views.

The views from the windows in our small mountain house are glorious right now - at their peak.

Black gum from studio window

kitchen window view

view from the deck

view from my small studio

The views from the windows in our older house are enchanting, too, created by enveloping plantings of natives, punctuated by a few special non-natives. Here's one from the front.  And a view from our bedroom of a wonderful gingko that we planted, that's gotten quite large.

We have a gingko in the mountains, too, that's just started to turn to yellow.  

Transitions are always lovely, with bittersweet overtones.

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A long fall season

This is a magical time of the year. In the Southeastern U.S., we have wonderful fall colors, spread out over many weeks.

In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and in the Southern Appalachians, where I live, it is a time of both senescence and renewal.

Yes, the leaves are turning color and dropping, but it's also a time for reinvention, as we move towards the quiet time of winter.

A post about a full moon, a number of years ago, has reminded me of its magic.

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Beautyberry bread

Gathering the berries. I used only the ones at the ends of the branches because they
are the last to ripen.

I robbed the birds!

Many birds feast on our beautyberries (Callicarpa americana) including mockingbirds, catbirds, and cardinals.  So I felt guilty removing even one cup of their winter berry supplies, even though I have a dozen bushes plus more berries on the wax myrtles. But I saw a recipe for beautyberry cake in Peggy Lantz's new book, Florida's Edible Wild Plants and wanted to try it. I tasted a few berries right off the bush. They were fairly bland and only slightly sweet.

It didn't take long to gather the 1 cup of berries...

I modified Peggy's recipe to fit with the ingredients that I had on hand and added nuts and sunflower seeds to make it more of a bread.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup old fashion oatmeal (Peggy used wheatgerm)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (Instead of the vanilla and nutmeg, she used ground ginger root)
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup brown sugar (Peggy used honey and molasses)
1/4 cup hot water
1 cup beautyberries, washed
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup sunflower seeds, roasted and shelled

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease one 9" x 5" loaf pan. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, in a separate bowl mix the eggs, sugar, oil and hot water, add the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients, and then fold in the beautyberries, nuts and seeds. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes or until the bread cracks on top.

Verdict: The bread was dark, moist, and quite tasty. Both my husband and I liked it, but neither of us could really taste  beautyberries in the bread and wouldn't know they were there except for getting occasional seeds stuck in our teeth. It's sorta like carrot cake where you can't really figure out where the carrots went, but you can still count it as a serving of vegetables anyway. :-)

The bread is beautiful: as it should be.

Hot out of the oven, the pat of butter melts readily. For
subsequent slices, we'll zap them in the microwave for 45 seconds.

Out and about...

A Muscovy duck and a large brood in a Chick fil-A parking lot. Hey what's in those sandwiches anyway?

A mound of mushrooms at the foot of a live oak tree is beautiful in the morning light.

Root beer anyone?? How's this for a catbriar tuber? We were clearing an overgrown area at the edge of the elevated drainfield for the septic system. The catbriar (Smilax ssp.) vines were as thick as my thumb, so I knew there was a tuber, but I did not expect one this big.

The other day, the skies were filled with a wide variety of cloud types. Beautiful.

October is supposed to be one of our 5 wet months, but the dry season has started early this year with not only no rain, but also record heat. We only received 1/2 an inch of rain early in the month and none since then. (The 30-year average rainfall in October for our area is 3.86".)  Don't forget to water your winter vegetables and if you've planted new trees and shrubs this year, be sure to give them extra irrigation as we move into winter so they'll get a good start on their spring leaves.

And most important, vote green and YES to Florida's Amendment #1.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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