Surprises in the plant kingdom

The Chinese evergreen, aglaonema to the initiated, suddenly bust out with a bunch of flowers this week.  

I noticed they're very similar to the flowers on other plants such as the spathiphyllum and the dracaena, and found that they're all members of the lily family.  Which I suppose is why they also look like arum lily flowers.  And I wonder if Jack in the Pulpit is a wild cousin of the clan?  

Anyway, nice surprise.  I always like it when plants bloom, just as when animals reproduce, it means they're happy in their environment.  And when they point out something interesting for me to explore, even better.

And the peacock jasmine, a mail order arrival, too small to photograph when she arrived, back in May, is now developing and has started putting out tiny white flowers, which have the most powerful scent you can imagine, like being in a jungle paradise. 

These are the flowers used in Hawaiian leis, pure white, scented, would be nice to wear.  If you could handle the scent at that range. 

This botanical excursion is meant to distract from the kitchen excitement of this morning.  My overhead light went a few days ago, the replacement has arrived, and I'm hoping my friend next door will get around to installing it.  He's been busy, and it's a favor, so I don't like to press. 

However, cooking by the light of the sink light and the stove light is getting old, particularly since this morning I was making a new recipe, partly to try on Handsome Son tomorrow, partly to have extra in the freezer. 

One of those recipes where you deal with opening canned salmon, wiping and slicing mushrooms, picking and mincing fresh herbs, cooking rice and combining it with yogurt, thawing puff pastry, frying onions, it better be good, that kind.

All went pretty much okay, and I made double the quantities, since the only can of salmon available was twice the size needed, and I am not budgetarily up to salmon steaks.  Sooooo, so far so more or less good, until I read the directions for oven temp. 

I thought they were a bit low, but needing new glasses, and the small type, and the suboptimal kitchen light, I soldiered on thinking well, perhaps they're right, but I thought this pastry needed a hotter oven.

Followed it to where it should have been all done, and it really really wasn't, looked pale and sad, not brown and joyful.  So I irritatedly shoved the temp up a good bit higher and now it started to work better.  I will finish the cooking tomorrow evening, so that it comes out fresh from the oven for dinner. And hope by then it works, because this is two complete puff pastry pie things plus another sort of quiche for the freezer.  All the ingredients were cooked ahead, really, so it's only the pastry that needs to step it up.

Then I was about to make notes on the cookbook indicating that it should be at the temp I put it at in the end, and realized, doh, they had put the celsius reading ahead of the fahrenheit, a reversal of what I'm used to, not being in a decimalized world here.  And the Fahrenheit temp I'd put it at was the one they'd said all along....so now I've circled blackly the correct temps for my use.  Doh, again.

So this points up three needs: get the &*&**& kitchen light installed, make eye doctor appointment, and read the recipe slooooowly..in a good light.

If it comes out well after all this, I'll pic it for you.  All good ingredients as my mom used to say if something came out below expectations.

On a different topic, yesterday was the  Feast of Sts Peter and Paul.  I've always thought this was a sort of canonical in-joke, since they did. not.get.along.at.all in life.  So the Church makes them share the same feast day in perpetuity.  I wonder what Pope thought that one up.  Now, boys, you have to just learn to get along, see what you have in common, not what you always argue about. I bet they would have argued about the oven temp, too.

Vertical gardening revisited and an exotic arrival

I was at the plant nursery yesterday, stocked up on a few herbs to replace ones which didn't survive the winter.  Moseying round the place, I noticed on their greenhouse walls some black plastic hanging sleeves, filled with potting soil, with small plants inserted into slits at intervals down the length.  You could do it with newspaper sleeves, I imagine.  Old idea, but it reminded me that I would like to have a few plants hanging from my fence.

Then at home I remembered I had a few burlap pockets, given by an artist who had been given hundreds of them -- wrongly made for an order, given to the cause of art -- and who shared them around. thanks Art Lee!

So, I dug them out, found a roll of petersham ribbon from a stash gift, stapled five of the pockets at intervals down the ribbon, with a loop at the top, and hung the result on a nail already in the fence.  

Time elapsed: five minutes including finding the stapler. Cost zero.  Appearance pleasing, nicer than black plastic.  My kind of invention.

And the same idea as the hanging plastic sleeve, except I will plant each pocket.  Water will drain down from one to another.  And I remembered a little marjoram plant I've had rooting in water for months and now finally have given it a home, in the top pocket.

Feel free to copy at will! not my original idea, I'm sure, but it should be fun to see how this works. Oh, and I put a tissue soaked in peppermint essence in the top pocket to deter squirrels.  I have a feeling that if wrens choose to nest in a pocket I won't have much say in the matter.  If they did, there would be no squirrel problem, though.

And the mail today brought me the peacock jasmine plant I've been awaiting for months, so it is now planted, no, not outside, but in a pot safely indoors in a window that gets some sun.  It's tiny, so pix will wait till it's big enough to see.  This is the plant that flower leis are made from, nice scent, gets big, I'm hopeful.