La Clé des Champs - Hermès Scarf #2

 A year ago I got a scarf, La Clé des Champs, in lovely pastel shades of damask silk.  It is one of my favorite scarves, although it is well worn.  I was tickled to find another with a gray border.

The scarf was designed in 1965.  It was reissued in 1990 and 1995.  Hermès stopped producing damask fabric in 2001/2002.  This gray one is a more recent iteration, and it is not a damask fabric.

Some other differences are the location of the artist signature, Fr(ançoise) Faconnet.

. . . 

And the Hermès Paris.  The early one does not have a copyright mark.

{Update 11/17/22: After two years of searching, I found the copyright mark on the older scarf.

. . . 

Like all Hermès scarves, this drapes well and is fascinating to study.

Hard to believe - the last Hermès blog post was four months ago!

To see the other Hermès scarves I have blogged, click here.

Hummingbird Moth - 2001 - Page 1

 Hummingbird Moth

(Hemaris thysbe)(I think)
We were delighted to see hummingbird moths on the monarda in 2021 at our house in town.  But we have not gotten pictures as good as those D took in 2001.  Here they are.
August, 2001
On BeeBalm (Monarda)
Photos by David

These photos were taken in Norwich, NY, on WayStead Acres Farm, Chenango County.

Hummingbird Moths and Bees love this plant!

It looks like a winged lobster to me!

On to Page Two of Hummingbird Moths

Hummingbird Moths - page 2

 There are six pictures on this page.

Hummingbird Moth
Norwich, New York
Photos by David
August, 2001

The hummingbird moth comes several times a day
to the pink Bee Balm (Monarda)

which it is forced to share with bumblebees.

It is a strange creature, and at first we thought it was a hummingbird.
It buzzes and sounds like a muffled hummingbird.
And, like the hummingbird, can hover and fly backward.

~
The proboscis is kept curled when it is in flight,

Then it unfurls to get to the nectar at the bottom of the petals.

~
Notice that the wings have transparent sections where scales have fallen off.

These creatures were fascinating in August.

There are at least three different ones that were photographed, and we have lots more pictures,
if you are interested!
Actually, we have lots more if you are not interested, too.

Click to see the earlier hummingbird moth pictures.

Garden in the end of June 2021

 The spring bulbs are done.  The alliums are thriving.  The peonies and irises are finishing for the year.

D likes a mixed garden, and there is always something interesting to find.  Included with the iris and zinnias and gladiolus, you can find marigold, daylily, tomato, cosmos.  There are probably more that I don't recognize yet. . . 

We bought two Itoh peony plants - also sometimes called tree peony - one bloomed.

Isn't this a strange flower?  It's called Astrantia or masterwort!

It's a shade loving perennial suitable for zones 4-7.  It seems to be more popular in England than here.

It does need moist soil, and we have planted it next to the downspout water barrel.

The leaves you are seeing are from a hollyhock.

Last year, this section of the front yard was tomatoes.

D sprinkled poppy seed.  They dance in the breeze.

A happy flower.

We always had wild mallows at the farm.  They need no care and seem happy anywhere.  This one surprised us, since we did not plant it!

The orange flower is calendula.  The lilies have buds but no flowers yet.  Isn't that delphinium a powerful purple?

The calendula are self-seeding annuals, and boy, do they ever seed!

We started with a couple along the front sidewalk.

Now they are in every garden.  I guess the birds or squirrels did it.

The strawberries are done.

We put the last ones to good use with pancakes!

Now, it's a wait until they do their second season in August.

We can't complain.  We ate or froze 11 quarts in June.

We have flowers in lots of different gardens, but I asked D to make me a cutting garden, where I could feel free to remove as many blooms as I wanted without destroying the effect of the garden.  On the left are dahlias, then snapdragons, then lisianthus (check back another time for more on this), then statice, then glads and strawflowers.

This photo is taken while standing in the back door of the garage.  On the left is a brugmansia, and the right is a shrub that makes sweet scented flowers in the spring.  Straight back is hedge marking the southern end of the property.  

Check back when there are posts for July and August to see how does this garden grow.

Did I say, "Let's have a wok in the garden?"

Actually, I did. . . It's hard to tell if it's raining when everything is soggy, and we needed something like a birdbath so that the raindrops would show.  This works perfectly.  I can look out my window and see if it's drizzling.  And it makes me smile!

2021 Garden Pics

March

April

May Part 2 and Part One

Part one of June

Flowers of June

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.

Flowers of June 2021

I began to worry that I had just too many pictures for one post, so here are some of the individual flowers for the end of June 2021.

There are going to be lots of daylilies soon.  These are the first:

This is related to Stella di Oro, which bloomed in early June.  

This is a bit more of a melon color and the petals are recurves.

The first marigold.

The first dahlia in the cutting garden.

The first zinnia.  This is a white one - or at least as white as zinnias get.

One of the fun things of a busy garden is that it forms a test for alzheimers.

Is this a larkspur?  Delphinium?  Foxglove?  Wolfsbane?  

I know it's not monkshood, since that's not blooming yet.

Finally!  A lupin has bloomed.  Two plants survived.  

One bloomed.

The sweetpeas have a wonderful fragrance.

This is a bouquet of sweetpeas, zinnia, and kale.

Check back to see the Gardens of June (end).

2021 Garden Pics

March

April

May Part 2 and Part One

Part one of June

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.

Chicken Piccata

I make chicken piccata fairly often.  We always have lemons, capers, and butter in the refrigerator and chicken breasts in the freezer.  I was wasting time one day and came across this video from America's Test Kitchen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp_fnC12UrQ.  There were a couple of things that they do differently:

1)  They slice the meat into just a few chunks.  I slice the raw meat thinly, thinking it will be more tender.  It's more work than their way, and my way is not better!

2)  They salt the raw meat and let it sit a bit.  

3)  They eat the whole slices of cooked lemon.  Haven't tried that. . . 

We were very pleased with this recipe.  They said that salting the meat would make it tender.  They were right.

It's very hot today.  Usually I serve this with linguini fini, but I was not interested in boiling water for that long for the pasta, so I tried ramen noodles.  They are a bit gummy, so they soak up the sauce.  Yum.

(Don't use the flavor packet that comes with the noodles!)

We have two kinds of parsley growing in the garden - curly and Italian flat leaf.  I used both.

This recipe is a keeper!

Ingredients

• 2 large lemons
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 pounds), preferably kosher or Bell and Evans, rinsed, dried thoroughly, trimmed of excess fat, and prepared according to illustrations below
• Salt and ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 small shallot, minced (about 2 tablespoons) or 1 small garlic clove, minced (about 1 teaspoon)
• 1 cup chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons small capers, drained
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter , softened
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves

Garden in the First Half of June - 2021

Winters in upstate NY are long, cold, and snowy.  We look forward to plants and flowers and sitting out in the yard enjoying them and listening to the birds.  It's the joy of June.  There are few biting bugs.  The temperatures are mild but not too hot.

The daffodils are finished and so are the tulips.  It's the season of the iris and the peonies.

. . 

Along the base of the hedge in the background (above) is a border of hosta.  Between the hosta are pulmonaria, but they are finished blooming.  There are also begonias.

 . . . . 

We have white bleeding heart.  

But the greatest joy of June is the strawberries.  Years ago, we discovered Mara des Bois berries from France.  Although they have spectacular flavor and are lovely, often completely red inside, they are not grown commercially.  We learned why!  Within a day or two of picking, they are spoiled, mushy, moldy.  So - you have to eat them!  And they are wonderful.

In the first half of June, after cleaning, we ate or froze 28 cups (That's 7 quarts!).

If you are wondering how much property we have, the lot is 99'x90', with a house, garage, sidewalks.

D has become an expert at space utilization!

Along the front walk are iris on the right and daylilies on the left.  

Near the steps are chives (Thanks, Karen).

In the foreground above are three different types of allium.

The tomato plants are blossoming, and there are a couple of tomatoes.

We are growing Cherokee Purple (a reddish/black), Azoychka (a blush yellow), and one new to us - Berkeley Tie Dye (a pink).

I have saved a lot of pictures for another time, including alliums, peonies, astrantia, Itoh peony.  There were 13 that I selected but did not use here. . . Not counting the hundreds. . . 

And to whet your appetite for the next post, here's our first dahlia.

2021 Garden Pics

March

April

May Part 2 and Part One

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.