Weed Roses

It appears I have some multiflora rose, aka weeds, growing here and there... I have some upright canes but mostly ones that snake along the ground.  The leaves and thorns make it obvious that they're roses; this is the first year that I have seen any blooms.

They're fragrant enough, but their invasive properties (and susceptibility to rose rosette disease) render them undesirable.  I'm going to be more aggressive about dealing with them.

They're growing mostly in a fairly shady area, competing with blackberries and other similar plants. At least they don't grow very fast, so cutting them and keeping them back should be relatively easy.

"Soft Wheat Is for Cakes and Pie Crusts..."

The title of this post is another thing I have heard from almost everyone.  I have ordered White Sonora wheat a couple of times and it makes great bread (as others have found).  Hayden Flour Mills and Breadtopia (and probably others) sell it. It's a heritage white wheat, but is classified as soft.

So far, I haven't tried to make 100% whole wheat with it, just my normal 50/50 sourdough blend.  It behaves about as well as any other white whole wheat flour, which is to say it's very mild and rises well when blended with white flour.

More on Pickled Asparagus

Previously I described the process I use to pickle asparagus.  Here's a little more detail.

I mentioned that I cut the spears to fit in the jars.  That's pretty obviously needed.  Below is a picture of my cutting board.  I use the two Sharpie dots as guides.  I line the tops up using the left dot then cut along the right, leading to the small pieces shown at the top.  I cut some of those into bite-sized chunks and fill them in around the longer spears as needed.   I also can a couple of quarts of just small chunks.  It might not have much eye appeal, but the jars are completely usable.  The whole spear more or less has the same flavor, at least as far as I can tell.

I always look before buying--and after opening the bag--for bad spears.  They usually seem to go bad at the tip first.  Frustratingly, some bags don't allow very thorough inspection of the tips before buying.  Sometimes I've gotten a lot of bad ones, but usually they're not too bad.  The one shown here is one of only a couple of culls in my latest batch of eight pounds (which went into nine quarts).  Even with the culls, the rest of the spear is often fine.  I just cut the tip off of this one.  Side note:  while trimming, I discovered the dog likes asparagus.  I only gave her a few pieces.

I also cut off the woody ends (if applicable), and at a minimum trim off the very bottom that's usually dried out and often uneven.  Then into the jars they go (as noted previously, with one clove of garlic per pint of jar capacity).

I used to try to use fresh dill, but since I don't have dill growing myself--yet--I just use seed.  One teaspoon per jar.  It works well and dill seed keeps a long time.  Also as noted previously, the canning liquid is 50/50 water/vinegar and it reliably shows a pH of around 3.0. I heat it to boiling

I ladle hot syrup into the jars, then process in atmospheric steam for 15 minutes.  It's quick, easy, and works well.  It took about three hours to do everything.  The eight pounds of asparagus cost about $24; the jar lids were another $1.50 or so; the dill seed and garlic together were less than $1.  That's nine quarts for $26.50 plus time (maybe add another $0.90 for jar depreciation).  It looks like the cost for commercially-pickled asparagus is about $13 or more per quart.  That's a $90 return for three hours of work.  Not bad...

Rye Bread

As noted previously, I have sometimes had trouble with getting rye bread to rise.  Rye has limited gluten.  Rye has other issues--the dough is usually gluey and messy to deal with, among other things.  One time I left some out of the refrigerator and it got pink mold on it.  I didn't even open the bag at that point but pitched it.

I've had pretty decent luck putting rye into cornbread.  And on occasion I've gotten rye/wheat loaves to rise well.

I recently baked a loaf of 50/50 rye/wheat.  The sponge after 12 hours was pretty dramatic.  The house was still relatively cool in mid-April, so I put it in the oven with the light on overnight.

I'm back to 12 hours' rise for the cooler months, but I may shorten that as the house warms.  Soon it will be near 80 inside again (meaning I have missed my window for sauerkraut this year...I just didn't get to it this winter/spring).

The loaf ended up okay--not great, but certainly much better than the fail loaf mentioned previously.  I don't know that I've ever gotten really vigorous oven spring from rye dough, but it's usually at least decent.

Chuck-Will's-Widows

Chuck-will's-widows are nightjars that are present in the Southeast in the spring and summer months. They are insect feeders and have a repetitive call that can be heard from dusk until dawn; they call from the time they move into the area until about late June.  They show up in north Georgia in mid- to late April.  After mid June, they quiet down, raise their brood, then head back down south in the fall.  Although whip-poor-wills are better-known and supposedly include north Georgia as part of their summer range, I have never heard one.  Common nighthawks, another nightjar, are also allegedly in the area, but I haven't heard them here, either--ever.  I did, however, hear them in the early summer in east-central Illinois when I used to live there.

When I first moved to my house in the exurbs of Atlanta in the late 1990s, I heard chucks the first spring.  At the time, my subdivision was one of a few cut into the woods, so the surrounding area was mostly forested. Between my subdivision and the one immediately next to mine is a belt of large trees that weren't taken out--some are on the lots in my subdivision; some are in the next.  I used to sometimes have one there, possibly even on my property, on some nights.  I think I caught a glimpse of one at dusk one summer; it called for a few minutes from the ground inside the tree line, then abruptly stopped. I saw a large dark blur flying away.  Even if not in or next to my own yard, they were always nearby and plainly audible--usually a few could be heard at once, but almost always at least one.  I could usually hear them inside the house.  I asked friends what they might be and they suggested whip-poor-wills; I dug a little deeper and soon identified them as Chuck-will's-widows.

After about 2010, their nearness and numbers changed gradually.  A few years ago I realized that I didn't always hear them anymore.  Now I basically never do, because the area has gotten pretty well-developed. Several hundred acres of woods nearby have been turned into additional subdivisions, strip malls, and warehouses over the last couple of decades.  When I hear them at all here, it's mostly right when they are first coming into the area--presumably as they are heading toward summer nesting spots where their preferred habitat still exists.  This year, I heard one the morning of April 24th, some distance away, at 1 am when the dog decided she needed to go out.  The same thing happened last year: once in April, then basically never again for the rest of the season.

They are definitely coming back into Georgia now--the evening of April 27th, I was at a friend's house that's located in an area much like mine used to be--an isolated subdivision cut into the surrounding forest.  At 9 pm it was obvious they were everywhere.  I could hear several close by.  I can't help feeling a little wistful at their disappearance near my formerly exurban (now suburban) house, much like Sigrid Sanders noted in a column in 2009 (the link at the top of this page has a recording of their call; her column also has a link to a recording).

Development does push them out.  Forty years ago, they were probably common in Gwinnett County, but now probably are relatively rare there.  The same has now happened where I live.  It's not enough to have a little clutch of trees here and there--the spot behind my house where one used to occasionally reside has been unchanged since 2001 or so.  There have to be a lot of such places available nearby to support a population.  That's why I think I only hear them early in the season--they'll stop for a night in my neighborhood when first arriving, but they won't stay.  There aren't enough others here.

For now, if I want to hear them--and I do--I'll have to jump in the car and drive a ways--though not all that far.  I'm now in the suburbs, but the forest isn't far away.

Native Azaleas

Azaleas are well-known in the South.  They're acid-loving plants that enjoy a bit of shade, and can be had in a wide array of colors--including white, pink, red, purple, and orange.  Less well-known are native azaleas, which thrive in the understory in southern hardwood forests.

Named cultivars have been developed; the only one I have seen in the wild is the Piedmont.  It's a pale pink and blooms early.  Native azaleas are tall and relatively spindly compared to their compact shrubby counterparts; they're deciduous versus evergreen.

"Lilacs Don't Grow in Georgia..."

I have heard that numerous times, most recently from someone in the garden department at a retail outlet here.  Many varieties of the traditional northern-planted lilac, Syringa vulgaris, apparently need more chilling hours than north Georgia typically delivers.  However, there are low-chill varieties available.  As I have written before, I have one.  The only catch is that I'm not sure anymore what it is.  I got three: two Lavender Lady and one Blue Skies.  I gave one away (probably one of the LLs) and an oaf with the phone company almost immediately killed another by over-spraying glyphosate.  I think what I have at this point is the other LL.  I think Blue Skies bought it courtesy of AT&T.

Whatever the plant is, it has bloomed reliably every year (when the deer haven't eaten the buds or a late frost hasn't killed them as they were about to open).  Two problems with lilacs are commonly cited:  lilac borers and powdery mildew.  I have never had any problem with powdery mildew but I did have a lilac borer one time kill a major branch.

LL is a Descanso hybrid, one of several developed in southern California.  An article in Sunset magazine describes a few others.

My lilac has endured but not really thrived.  There have been a lot of drought summers since it was planted, and it has done well to survive.  It isn't much taller now than it was in the picture in the link referenced at the top of the post, which was probably shot 5+ years ago.  It has remained a small shrub.

It blooms every year in March and finishes up by about the first week of April.  It is a little ahead of Miss Kim, S. patula, which blooms in mid-April.  Miss Kim has a different scent that is still nice (albeit heavier and more cloying than the other lilac) and the flowers are much smaller.  My Miss Kims have bloomed pretty much every year, too, although they can be zapped by a late frost, as well.  I had one break apart in tropical-storm-force winds, so I pulled it out and hauled it to an inert landfill.  I now have only two left.  They grow to be about seven feet high.

Lilacs are a very fragrant early to mid-spring flower.  They come just before native azaleas and about a month before gardenias.  I was introduced to them first in Denver, but later when I lived in the Midwest.  It was those memories that made me want to try them here.  I'm glad I did.