March Flowers 2021

2021

March Flowers - finally - we were getting desperate!

This has been a long winter - with Covid 19 limiting our social access, 

and with the weather limiting our outdoor experiences, it has been a long winter. . . 

The first flowers to appear are the snowdrops.

Snowdrops are followed by crocus.

The rabbits have clearly been enjoying these.  They ate the tops of the leaves that emerge before the buds.

Speaking of rabbits, they enjoyed their own personal tulip salad bar.  They ate the growing tops of almost every tulip in the garden.

We are pretty sure it's rabbits - they left some poop when they ate the crocus tops.   Deer like tulips, too, but they usually eat one here and there.  This garden had been almost all eaten.

D immediately went to buy fencing to enclose the gardens that had edibles.

One garden fenced and time for a well deserved break!

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Gwendolyn sent a lovely picture of her white and lavender violets, so I had to wander out to see if we had any.  It is early for us, but I was delighted to find:

These lavender and white crocus were planted by previous owners.  

"Some flies are bee mimics. They can be distinguished from bees by their single pair of wings, and their notably bulging eyes and short antennae. Flies do not actively collect pollen, and lack pollen collecting hairs. They will visit flowers to drink nectar, though, and may thus act as pollinators. While some plant species have evolved to rely on flies for pollination, most plants are better pollinated by bees." https://energy.wisc.edu/bee-guide/WI-Spring-Bee-Guide.pdf

We think this is not a bee.

We keep hoping for early daffodils, but this is all we have on March 21.

Some of the daffodil heads are up.  The brownish plant on the bottom right (around 4 o'clock) is fritillaria, crown imperial.  

March sky is always interesting.

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And the last bit of good news for March, 2021, is we have a daffodil blooming!

YAY!!!!

And for April Fools Day, tomorrow,

we are expecting 4-6 inches of snow!

To see 2020 garden pics:

Second half of September

September 1st half.

Second half of August

First half of August.

2nd half of July.

First half of July garden.

Garden at the End of June

And the first half of June is here.

You can see the end of May, 2020, here.

Here is the first week of May

Daffodils 2020

The middle of April is here.

First week of April.

Unwanted Milk - What to do. . . ?

As we unpacked the Instacart grocery order, we noticed the Instacart shopper left a half-gallon of 2% milk with my order.  We had not ordered milk.  I hope another customer is not missing their milk!  Instacart said we did not need to return it.  We think life is too short to leave out the fat, so now what can I do with low fat milk?

A quick google search suggested cottage cheese or ricotta.  That's something we have never made, even when we had lots of fresh farm milk, but we have the luxury of free time now that we did not have then.

The directions are pretty simple.

Put the milk into a heavy pan.  I used my All Clad pan with the helper handle (what a great invention that is!).

Heat the 2 quarts of milk to 190ºF.

Add 1/3 cup vinegar.  

Let it sit for 30 minutes.

It immediately begins separating into curds and whey.  I feel like Miss Muffet.

Strain into a cheesecloth lined colander.

Let it rest for 30 minutes, then squeeze if necessary.  

Chill it, then add heavy cream and salt.

Eat.

~ ! ~ ! ~ 

Next is what to do with the whey.  The cottage cheese was 2 cups, and there were 6 cups of whey.  We don't have pigs or chickens.  Once again, google to the rescue.

I found a recipe for bread.

I used:

• 400 g whey (2 cups)
• 600 g bread flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

After the first rise I was hungry, so a pinched off a piece to make fry bread to eat while the rest of the dough was rising in the loaf pan.

It was delicious.  A great mid-afternoon snack!

I decided to shape the dough for a standard white-bread sandwich loaf.  I put it in my USA Pan loaf pan. (I do like this company!  I also have two of their muffin tins and one mini-muffin tin.  So far, nothing has stuck, and I do not grease the pans or use muffin papers.)

It has a fairly dense, heavy crumb.  It made delicious grilled cheese sandwiches.  

I have enough whey in the freezer for two more loaves!

Or I may try to find another recipe.

This bread was good, but we still like the challah recipe best.