2014 Garden Plans

Plans for the garden are minor for this year, adding drainage will be the most labor intensive and least fun, but could be done in phases. Main goal will be to fill out the various gardens for constant color.

New Plants

• a longer lasting Edelweiss (leontopodium alpinum 'matterhorn') in the trough with the Gentiana.
• Cyclamen to Peony garden and the front garden for fall flower color. White in the Peony Garden and white, pink, purple in the Front Garden. Peony already had Pink Cybermen and their foliage makes for a nice display during the winter months. The front garden has the Huechera for foliage in the winter so the Cyclamen will be planted just for the flowers and will have to be a larger variety.
• Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis sylvatica), below the nook bay window.
• Shade plants around the rain chain, mosses and ferns.
• Primula, dwarf varieties for some troughs and elsewhere.
• Companion plants for the Heaths and Heathers, maybe dwarf pines.
• More Alpines, just can't get enough

Transplants

• Move Hardy Banana to the yard, location to be determined
• Move Red Twig Dogwood from the Peony Garden to TBD location.
• Move some wooly thyme from the Rain Chain Garden to the Border Garden

Replacements

• replace the Northern Bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) which had died this fall.

Hardscaping

• Make some larger troughs using fiberglass tape (used for taping drywall) in place of hardware cloth. It will be easier to work with, hopefully it will be as strong.
• Relay brick path on south side of the house, add a concrete block edge or something similar to keep bricks in place better.
• Yard Drainage
• across front of back garden
• across edge of vegetable garden
• across house side of patio (phase I)
• all discharging though solid pipe along north foundation wall to front of house.

The Estate's Garden Areas are comprised of

1. Rain Chain Garden
2. Heath and Heather Garden
3. Herb Garden
4. Lilac Garden
5. Vegetable Garden
6. Peony Garden
7. Eastern Foundation Garden
8. Western Foundation Garden
9. Front Garden
10. Border Garden

There are various Alpine Troughs littered across the property.

Homemade Beer for the Holidays

Made some beer this morning for Christmas, the girls will be home and I plan to share it with them whether they want to or not. I received the kit last year for Christmas from the Eldest and kept meaning to make a second batch. The first batch, Chocolate Maple Porter came out fine and I guess I was just too busy. Although, it doesn't take long, about 3 hours on day one and an hour or two at bottling time two weeks later. This batch is a Smoked Wheat Beer, "full of beechwood-smoked malt and German wheat making for a rich weizen(German for wheat) body and smooth roasted finish" so says a Brooklyn Brew Shop copywriter. Also purchased an Oatmeal Stout mix so that I have it ready for when the Smoked Wheat is finished, plus the incitement of free shipping was also a factor in buying a second mix and a mini auto-siphon.

The Mash,  cook the grains for an hour.

Looks like oatmeal, the mash gets strained into another pot and then flushed with more water to create the wort. Dumped the spent grains in the compost pile.

The Wort, at this point it tastes sweet. It will be boiled for an hour and hops(adds flavor and prevents growth of some bad bacteria) will be added throughout the boil. The wort tastes a bit bitter after the introduction of the hops.

The Wort after the boil. It gets cooled and then the yeast is added. Over the course of about two weeks sugars will be converted to alcohol(yipee) and carbon dioxide which is let escape. At this point the beer can be bottled.

Beers in the Fridge.

Both good, prefer the Saranac. Last month had the Saranac Pumpkin Ale, it was just OK, slight pumpkin scent, not much in the way of pumpkin flavor, but that is better than being overpowered by pumpkin and spice.

Travel? Why Not! Vienna

Home of the Habsburgs and many classical musicians, lair of Harry Lime of "The Third Man*". Well known for Wiener Schnitzel, Apfelstrudel, other pastries, its coffee and a very rich hot chocolate, I've wanted to visit Vienna for a long time.

Travel

• minimum 10 hours(at least 1 stop) NYC to Flughafen Wien depending on layovers.
• Airport to Wien Mitte station via CAT(City Airport Train) 16 minutes non-stop every half hour.
• Flights from London are about 2.5 hours

Vienna Tourism
Vienna Tourist Card - free public transport and discounts galore
Vienna Museum List
Vienna Public Transport map

Sights

• Ubiquitous Hop On/Off bus tour
• Spanish Riding School home of the Lipizzaner stallions. At the Hofburg.
• The Hofburg, Imperial Apartments and quite a few museums in the City center.
• Schönbrunn Palace, Baroque palace and gardens
• Chocolate Museum
• Josephinum Museum, Anatomical wax models plus other historic medical stuff. Friday and Saturday 10 - 6PM
• Botanic Garden, daily
• Belvedere Palace and Garden, next to the Botanic Gardens.
• St. Stephens Cathedral,Views from the towers got so-so reviews, but the catacomb tour ranked high, with one out of context quite of "cavernous vaults of bones", cool!
• United Nations in Vienna Tour, still have aspirations to get myself or spouse a gig here or in Geneva. Monday to Friday.
• Danube river tour
• Berg Kreuzenstein a few miles north of Vienna
• Clock Museum,
• Vienna Pathological-Anatomical Museum, at the Madhouse

* Screenplay by Graham Greene

Leonard J. Buck Garden

Visited Leonard J. Buck Garden today, "It consists of a series of alpine and woodland gardens situated in a 33-acre wooded stream valley" their words not mine. Traffic was light and it was easy to get to, though there was a detour which put me a few miles out of my way.

Was surprised to see Primula in bloom. Might be an idea for the front garden, it could use a bit of color this time of year.

Tiarella 'Iron Butterfly', was white flower stalks when in bloom, but the foliage is nice too. The leaves have a black/purple center and is in the same family as Heuchera.

The garden has quite a few troughs. Some had small shrubs in them, I wish I knew how often they need to water the troughs to keep the shrubs alive. These three were all 2 foot or longer, but most troughs in the garden were smaller.

This one had bits of blue china strewn about in it, at first I though they were blooms. There is also Erodium there which I can't seem to keep over the winter.

A large (8 foot across) planting of the Heath Erica Carnea 'Springwood White' almost in flower.

There was work being done on one of the ponds and this lumber trackway was to provide access for the backhoe without tearing up the grass.

Cyclamen

 Most of the hilly trails had either wood or rock slab steps.

Yard Cleanup

Cleaned up the yard some more today. Put the plants in the pots and smaller troughs to bed for the winter.

Not sure what to do about the larger troughs I carved out of feather stone, maybe they are large enough to overwinter successfully.

Something not to do.
Don't let drainage holes get clogged, water doesn't drain.

 Then when the water freezes, the structural integrity of the pot breaks down.

This nice pot just showed up one day this summer in the shape you see it here, I guess someone thought it was trash. It is a very nice pot. It is a pleasant shade of terra cotta (Crayola has a shade called Terra Cotta, but no shade called Panna Cotta). Why is the pot there? Why a pot with no plant? That's a silly question, that is like asking why have a bench you never sit on?

Exactly, why have a bench you never sit on.

Fall Bacon

Yesterday, cleaned up the garden, pulled up the last of the tomatoes, pulled in most of the basil (pesto was made), spread out some compost onto the garden beds. Planted 98 cloves of garlic into the one garden bed, the other will lie fallow.

Smoked bacon today. Started the bacon on the 3rd and smoked it today. As usual made one sweet and one savory. That day I started out with a 7 lb pork belly with ribs attached. After trimming I had 2 pre-bacons, a 2.5lb slab for sweet, a 2lb slab for savory and a belly full of spareribs.
Sweet:
1/4 cup dry cure*, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 4 tablespoons Crown Royal maple finished Whisky.
Savory:
1/4 cup dry cure*, 3 bay leaves, 5 smashed garlic, 2 tbs cracked peppercorns, 5 thyme sprigs, 1tbs coriander seeds
Smoked the bacon with Hickory wood chips to an internal temp of 150 degrees F. It took about 2 1/2 hours, grill temp was just over 200.
Sweet was good, but didn't have as big a maple taste as I had expected, but the Savory was fantastic, not too salty, a bit peppery, very savory.

*dry cure from Charcuterie by Ruhlman & Polcyn, 1 part Pink Salt, 4 parts sugar(I use turbinado), 8 parts kosher salt

Hickory Smoked Bacon

Savory

Sweet

Flora
Cyclamen are coming up, I had bought 2 white ones this past spring at Stonecrop Garden's spring Alpine sale, but I don't see them. I expect they will show up next spring.

Cyclamen

 My new Heaths and Heathers all seem to be taking. They all look like they have some new growth at the tips. This one, Erica x Watsonii "Truro" is in bloom and looks great.

Heath "Truro"

Had yellow fall blooming crocus on the side garden and there is a purple one in the backyard. There were more purples in the back, but they must have been disturbed when I prepared the bed for the Heather garden. I didn't get photos of them.

This month's beer list

Big Green Egg

Last weekend got a replacement firebox for our Big Green Egg. We bought it on July 14, 2001 and have had no problems with it except for cracks in the firebox which we lived with for awhile. It got to the point that it really needed a replacement and the company honored the lifetime warrantee and sent a replacement firebox.

We have the Large Egg

 The new firebox, serial number 584534.

The new version of the firebox has a gap to allow for expansion and contraction and to prevent cracking, you can see the gap on the left. Every other component of the Egg is in great shape.

We have smoked bacon, roasted whole turkeys and chickens, made pizza, baked bread, made stews in a dutch oven, grilled Fred Flintstone steaks, brats, veggies, burgers and dogs. I don't think we ever roasted marshmallows though.

The Big Green Egg, the best cooker ever.

Heath and Heather Garden

Added more heathers and heaths to the Garden. I purchased them from Heaths and Heathers Nursery and selected the varieties so one would always be in flower. Also, 2 have different foliage color depending on the season. I'll replace the mulch once I'm happy with plant placement and topology. It will take a couple of years for the plants to fully fill out.

 The 5 new plants from left to right in the above photo.

 Erica Carnea "Schneekuppe" White flowers (Jan-Mar), 6"x12"

 Calluna Vulgaris "Glenmorangie" Lavender flowers (Aug - Sept ), 2"x8"

Glenmorangie closeup, Calluna Vulgaris is a Heather and has scaly foliage versus Ericas aka Heaths which have needle like foliage.

 Erica x watsonii "Truro" Mauve flowers (Jul - Nov), 6"x16"

 Erica x williamsii "Gold Button" Lilac flowers (Aug - Sept), 2" x 4" very small

 Calluna Vulgaris "Alex Warwick" White flowers (Jun - Jul), 4" x 16"

Rain chain complete, Birthday Amp and other new stuff

Finished view of the Rain Chain Pondlette.

.

 Only missing something to mulch the path between the pondlette and the Heather garden.

This new heath is Erica x darleyensis "Furzey", should have pink flowers in the fall.

Here is my version of an Easter Island statute, leftover from the trough I carved the beginning of August 2013, here. It is nowhere near the size of the Easter Island statues.

I lost the tag, but I think that this heath should have white flowers. The plan is to order some dwarf heaths and heathers to fill in the new garden area to the left of the maintenance path.

My Birthday Amp. It is small and light and sounds great. I painted the grill red so when I jam with people there will be no confusion as to whose amp is whose. I looked at a Fender practice amp, but it had too many different amp models to choose from. Some of the other amps I was looking at I didn't like for purely aesthetic reasons(shiny knobs or cheap looking push buttons). If I hadn't purchased the Roland, I may have gone with the Orange Amp, just because it looked cool.

The Roland MicroCube has 6 amp models and effects; chorus, phase, flange, tremolo(so I can play "How soon is now" by The Smiths), delay and reverb.

Newcastle branched out a few years ago with seasonal ales, but only just noticed this while shopping at Holiday Beverage this week. It is just OK, I prefer the Newcastle Brown. I'm not a great fan of pale ales, though I did like the Winter Ale they brewed.

 This is just filler, it is just an OK Belgian style wheat beer.

Tried a bunch of other beers over the summer, but neither kept the labels nor took a photo, was just lazy I suppose.