Out of the Cave and Looking Around

Unless you're living in a cave or, more likely, you have zero interest in such things, you know by now that Kansas did not win the NCAA basketball championship. One of the things they did right, however, was to narrow an 18 point score deficit to a respectable five points by playing hard right up until the final buzzer. Even people who hoped it would turn out differently had a hunch that Kentucky would prevail, and the fact that Kansas made them work a bit for the championship was as good as could be reasonably expected. “We came up short,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “But, you know, I don't think we lost. I think they just beat us.”

The way the KU program is run has an aura of respectability that not everyone sees in the Kentucky one--principally because of the rapid turnover of players at Kentucky. Rather than stick around and maintain academic eligibility, many of them play for one or perhaps two years, and then they abscond--off to the pros. That happens occasionally at KU too, but the academic performance of the players is among the highest in the NCAA, if what I've heard is correct.

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On Friday, Joel and Hilda will be off to New York City for six weeks. They're planning to stay with Josh and Misty. Later this year they will be living in Bangladesh again for a number of months to help things run smoothly in the office where Ellis works. Their family will be in the States during that time.

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We ate our first meal of fresh asparagus tonight. Delicious. Yesterday at the sewing I got hungry for creamed asparagus after I heard Fannie (Mrs. Melvin N.) talk about how good creamed vegetables are when prepared with real cream. I used to prefer asparagus floured and salted and fried in butter, but when tonight's harvest looked a little meager, I thought immediately of stretching it by creaming it. I was not disappointed.

I marvel at how freshly harvested asparagus has no tough stem ends when it's harvested by snapping it off and prepared promptly for the table. Left in the refrigerator too long, the end toughens and needs to be trimmed off, but there is no waste when it's freshly picked.

Several years ago I bought some Atlas asparagus roots from a grower in eastern Kansas. Last year I wanted the same variety to plant at the Trail West place and could not find a single source of roots. One wholesale supplier has the seeds, but they cannot be purchased except in huge quantities. It's a heat and drought tolerant variety developed in California from the older variety UC157. The stalks are thick and long and the plants are disease resistant. In far northern areas, it may not be quite as reliably hardy as some others--the Jersey ones, for example. Also, Atlas is not an all-male variety as the Jersey ones are, so the bed eventually might become crowded with seedlings and therefore less productive, but I'd still like to have Atlas asparagus to plant. K-state recommends it, based on comparative trials.

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One of the two longest-surviving guineas got hit on the road today. They have not usually hung around out there a lot, but I don't think they're smart enough to avoid danger--just lucky so far, till today.

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"I ought to give you part of my paycheck," the lady working among the perennials at Stutzmans told me on Monday.

An elderly lady had asked if there were primroses available. I overheard the employee say "The plants are all arranged by their real [botanical] names because that's the way Jason wants it." She had a problem though because she didn't know the botanical name for primroses.

"It's Primula," I said, after I had almost walked off without paying any attention to what they were saying.

Then I thought better of it. "Oh no, if it's a perennial, it's probably Oenothera," I corrected myself. "There's both pink and yellow." Then I couldn't keep myself from kicking it into teacher mode and added, "That's why Jason wants people to use the botanical names--because each one represents only one kind of plant. Common names can be attached to more than one kind of plant." Primroses were the obvious example--Primula and Oenothera, very different in growth habits, cultural requirements, and appearance, but both called Primrose. As far as I know, no one grows Primula outdoors here.

The customer decided to buy both the pink and yellow.

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Besides thinking about creamed vegetables, I learned another kitchen trick at the sewing yesterday. When you need whipped cream and don't have home-separated cream or commercially processed cream, what you might have instead is cream dipped off the top of a jar of non-homogenized whole milk--probably either from your own cow or a nearby dairy farm. Often this ladled-off cream does not whip into a stiff product because there's too much water mixed with the butterfat. The trick I learned is to whip it as much as possible, then add about a tablespoon of powdered vanilla pudding mix to each cup of cream (measured before whipping). Mix it in and it will keep the cream from "melting" into glop for quite a while.

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On a different subject, anyone who wants to start some seeds indoors and doesn't have the usual supplies can make use of a recycled container like my friend James (the retired horticulture professor) does. He takes the lid of a frozen whipped topping container and carefully cuts out the center till only a narrow rim is left around the edges. Then he puts an inch or two of a good potting soil mix into the frozen whipped topping tub. He dampens the soil with a very gentle squirt of water from a turkey baster (like a giant medicine dropper). Then he spreads the seeds on the surface and either leaves them uncovered or covers them, depending on whether or not the seeds need light to germinate. Last, he spreads clear plastic wrap over the top of the container and snaps the rim of the lid in place to hold it taut. He pokes a few holes in the plastic to allow for air circulation, makes sure the container is labeled and waits for the seeds to sprout. This keeps the seeds moist as long as it takes for them to germinate.

As many of us know, all it takes to ruin a perfectly good batch of expensive seeds is for them to dry out just once after they've begun to germinate. James does all his watering with a turkey baster, and he grows many hundreds of transplants each year without a greenhouse. He does it in his basement under florescent lights. Many of his plants go to his cousin's farm near Wichita. She grows flowers to salable size in a high tunnel and outdoors.

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I stopped in yesterday at Bob Marker's place near Benton's Greenhouse to see if he has some of his rhubarb roots available. He wasn't home. I did a blog post last year about the variety his family has been growing and propagating locally ever since about 1930 when his great grandfather brought five roots here from Europe. The variety is known locally by the family name, Van Norman.

Eighty years of growing here should be enough time to have developed a variety that is pretty well adapted to local growing conditions.

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Hiromi helped me plant 39 different varieties of vegetables and flowers indoors today. Most of them should probably have been planted earlier, but we do what we can when we can. Hiromi's day off during spring break happens only once a year, and that was today. We have them under a florescent light in the dining room--on a very ugly but functional plant table, with a propagation mat providing warmth underneath.

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I am mesmerized by the wind map at this site. It's sensuous and revealing. All day today, we were at the vortex of wind currents over the entire Midwest circling around us. It didn't feel windy here, but there was a lot of action in the region. Hint: It's very helpful if you know the latitude/longitude coordinates of your location. You can find this in various ways on the internet. I memorized our location from the NOAA weather site when I typed in our home town. We're roughly at 98 degrees W. longitude and 38 degrees N. latitude.

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I went to see Dr. Schletzbaum yesterday. When Grant was in high school, he was Dr. Schletzbaum's very first vision therapy patient. We were impressed with his competence then and have stayed with him ever since. He talks about feeling old when he learns about how far along people like Grant are in adult life. He can't believe he's married.

His testing revealed a need for significant changes in my lens prescription. I'm glad it's correctable. Things weren't working very well for me the last while, and I decided I don't want to wait till summer to get my eyes checked. It's been at least three years since I've had this done, despite the reminders they've mailed out to me.

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My sister-in-law's father, Sanford Y. has had a tough time of it in the Costa Rica hospital where he is a patient. The family learned that he had not been eating well because he was too weak to feed himself, and no one offered to help him. The family was not allowed to be with him most of the time and did not realize what was happening. They would have been glad to help, had they known. Also, he seemed to have been over-sedated, which explained his grogginess when they did have a few minutes to be with him. All of the children were able to be together with their parents for several days at least. The last I heard, Lowell was still not sure when Judy would be coming home--perhaps on Saturday when Lois leaves, if the medication continues to be as effective as it seems to have been so far. Coordinating trips to the airport makes a lot of sense. It's quite a drive from the hospital.

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Marvin and Lois and their family came through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport yesterday--later [edited] on the same day a tornado hit there and damaged 110 airplanes. The family was headed for Peru.

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We had a half inch of gentle rain last night, and the weather has cooled off, but, mercifully, there's no freeze in sight.