Little Wonders in the Garden

 

Whenever I go outside and spend some time in my garden, looking at my plants, I often see a lot of "small stuff" that I call the little wonders. It can be a spider web, an insect, a seed. Whatever it is, it belongs in my garden and is just as important and interesting as the "showy" bigger things. Like that beautiful Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata) in the top photo. It is a dragonfly that is the most common in my garden.

This spring I noticed a higher number than usual of emerging crickets. They are always stunning when they just emerge - look at those beautiful turquoise transparent wings. It doesn't take long and all the brilliance is gone.

I wasn't successful in figuring out what kind of caterpillar (if any) this one was that I discovered on my lupines (Lupinus). I first thought it might a Painted Lady caterpillar, but I am not sure at all. A couple days later the leaves of the plant looked like in the right photo. The entire plant slowly died.

Neither could I identify the little visitor on my red-flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande). Small feathers like the one in the left photo I found throughout the garden, and bigger ones as well.

St. Catherine's Lace (Eriogonum giganteum) attracts all kinds of insects. Bees love it, but so does the Elegant Grass-carrying wasp (Isodontia elegans).

When you start to look for bugs, you see many of them. From left to right: Cribate Weevil (Otiorhynchus cribricollis), Largus californicus adult and as a nymph. I also call them love bugs because they seem to mate all the time. Quite a suprise to find a solitairy one on my sliding door.

Ladybugs are always welcome since they are hungry for aphids and eat lots of them. I think that's some kind of hoverfly on my ground morning glory.

More bees, this time on my Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa). I don't know the exact identification of the flies in the photo after that.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I saw this amount of (dead?) bees only on one of my Verbena bonariensis.

And look at those beauties here - California pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor hirsuta) and Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) in top photo and Mournful Duskywing (Erynnis tristis).

There are many many spiders in my garden, but most of the time I only see their beautiful artwork and what they catch within it.

Garden snails, on the other hand, are not turning up in big numbers. They have proven to be quite the climbers.

This year there are more Western fence lizards than usual sunnying in my garden. This one scaled up the screen on our sliding door.

A decaying pine cone. I don't have pine trees, but years ago, when we were still living further up the hill, my neighbor brought me a bag of pine cones from the Sierras. I believe this is a Jeffrey pine cone (Pinus jeffreyi).

Last but certainly not least, these beautiful seeds are found hanging in different locations, where the wind has blown them. I think they might be seeds of Salsify - and hope that I'm mistaken

I had Salsify in my garden three years ago and since then have worked hard to get rid of them by either digging up the plants or cutting off the truly showy seedheads as soon as possible. The flower is star-shaped, but the seedheads are real showstoppers. Unfortunately they are very invasive in a garden setting, even in a native and/or wildflower garden. You can see a photo of both flower and seedhead below.

Hopefully with all these tiny faces, this post qualifies for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Busy in the Kitchen

 

This is a shorter post again since this is another busy week for me. I'm getting a bit tired of this and look forward to some slower times. Hopefully soon.

Cooking in the summer is not my most favorite thing to do, especially when it is hot. However, this year it didn't get hot until August and even then there weren't too many days with temperatures over 90F (32 C). Still, I had many days when I didn't completely enjoy cooking - and you know, usually I do. This was a bit of a surprise to me that the lackluster mood lasted for such a long time.

Nevertheless, I was busy in the kitchen. The cooler season was sent out the door with a delicious chili that you can see in the top picture. Another favorite with my family is lemon chicken with orecchiette; this time I added shiitake mushrooms which I got from my trusted "mushroom man" at the farmers market. I used chicken breast and I think this was the last time I used that. Chicken breast is just boring, becomes dry way too fast and doesn't have much flavor. Next time I will go back to boneless skinless chicken thighs.

Another evening I made creamy chicken with lemon and thyme. I had seen something similar somewhere (I can't remember where) and decided to just wing it. I added cremini and we had pasta with it. It was quite good. Chicken seems to be the only meat we still eat apart from ground beef every now and then.

Another chicken recipe I made just a few days ago since I wanted to use fresh tomatoes and nothing out of a can (I'm not a big fan of canned tomatoes). This is tomato basil chicken breast, a recipe I found in NYT cooking, and here the chicken breast worked very well. It was a very delicious dinner. It was asking for capers and red wine vinegar which I simply omitted. You can find the recipe here.

Surprisingly I did quite some baking - I'm not a big baker apart from baking bread. I don't like that you have to be pretty precise when baking and that is not something I enjoy too much. At least not in the kitchen. At "cherry time" I made a cherry almond clafoutis, using almond flour instead of regular APF. The recipe (here) also asks for almond milk which I don't have, so I used regular whole milk and instead of cornstarch I used potato starch.

You can make this also with other fruit; I tried it with plums once and it was very tasty. This is a lovely recipe that I have done several times. But then I found a raspberry almond clafoutis in NYT cooking, a little bit different, but also with almond flour. I first was a bit skeptical about the measurements because I thought it was a lot of liquid and the raspberries are moist as well. If I would have followed their baking time (30-35 minutes) it would have been a mess, however, I baked it for 45-50 minutes and it was perfect!

At the farmers market I bought super delicious blueberries and thought about what to do with them. In an AARP bulletin (of all magazines!) I saw blueberry oatmeal cakes and thought that was interesting. Maple syrup instead of sugar (I hope David will be delighted that every now and then I do use maple syrup), soaked rolled oats instead of flour and almost no extra fat except for two TB of canola oil - a real winner. It helps that the blueberries are delicious and not your usual supermarket fare. I freeze these and we pull them out whenever we want. Great for the Geek to take to work.

Of course I made several jars of tomato sauce that I put in the freezer, but I also made 15 jars of raspberry preserve as well as several jars of apple sauce (which I freeze) because my neighbor gave me a good amount of her apples.

Those peaches from the farmers market were to die for! Peaches are my favorite summer fruit, sweet and juicy. When the juice runs down your arms while you eat them over the sink (in order not to make too big of a mess) they are just right!

Of course I baked bread, hearty whole wheat bread. I'm still experimenting with the recipe, tweaking it until I finally will get a loaf with the perfect amount of moisture.

Do you have a favorite summer dinner? Ours is caprese with tomatoes and basil from our garden. We always take turns who gets the "tower" in the middle.

With it we enjoy a lovely summer drink - fresh strawberries in dry Riesling. Cheers!

This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.

Augustbreak

 

This past August I joined Susannah Conway's Augustbreak again, and this was the first time that I posted photos for each prompt. Usually there are some prompts that I just skip, but this time I tried to find something to post every day. 

I did feel like August was just flying by - if I didn't have these pictures, I might think it didn't even happen. I didn't use the prompts for taking photos, but often going through my archive, which is always fun since I'm stumbling over photos I had completely forgotten about. 

You see the prompts above and my take on them below.

There are a few faces here - especially little Kibeau's right on top - so I link to Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Sorry for the extremely short post today - I feel like time is running away from me! September already - really! Have a delightful weekend, everyone!

UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site Wadden Sea

 

After our first night in Aurich, one of the middle sized towns in Ostfriesland (East Frisia), we went to have breakfast in a lovely bakery. The breakfast was divine - I chose the cheese breakfast with two rolls and three different cheeses and homemade jam. The delicious coffee is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday - of course! 

After that we took off along the country roads. Many of them are lined with trees which at that time of year were bare. Like the day before, it was gray and rather chilly.

It was Sunday, so people enjoyed a traditional Northern German game called "Boßeln". It's a kind of road bowling played on rural roads. I had read about it in books where the plot takes place in East Frisia, but I had never experienced it myself. It was interesting for us to see.

Along the way we also passed quite some windmills. They seem to be everywhere.

Our destination this morning was Bensersiel with its natural beach.

The Bensersieler Naturstrand (Bensersiel Natural Beach) is part of the Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea) which is a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. The text on the sign in the following photo on the right side reads: "Please be considerate of nature and animals. For migrating wading birds and waterfowl, the Wadden Sea is the hub along the East Atlantic Flyway. Millions of wading birds, geese, ducks, gulls, and terns use this unique natural area on the North Sea coast. Because of its importance for birds, the Wadden Sea is unique in the world and protected as a national park and World Heritage Site."

Despite the gray weather I found this site pretty remarkable. It's lonesome out here, perfect if you're looking for some solitude.

The Wattenmeer is the world's largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mudflats. It is a diverse environment that inlcudes sand dunes, salt marshes and lagoons and has a rich biodiversity.

Some areas of the beach were littered with shells.

Even though it seemed like it looked the same everywhere, I was fascinated by the views we had over the beach and the Wattenmeer. This looks very different during high tide.

I loved all the plants, but of many I have no idea what they are.

And just like almost everywhere, someone had built a little cairn on the beach.

We spent a long time at the beach and then walked back to the little town of Bensersiel. Guess what we did at this food truck? Yes, of course we got our Krabbenbrötchen (roll with North Sea shrimps) - how could we not? The "funny" striped chairs you see are the typical roofed wicker beach chairs we have in Germany, a Strandkorb.

Apart from the natural beach there isn't anything else in Bensersiel, so we drove to Neuharlingersiel. You might notice that many places here end with the word "siel" - Bensersiel, Greetsiel, Neuharlingersiel. "siel" is a Frisian word that means sluice or flood gate. If the name of a town or village ends with "siel" it indicates that it was built around a sluice that controls the water flow. Neuharlingersiel is also the coastal town from where the boats to the German island Spiekeroog depart. The schedule of these boats depend on the tidal schedule of course and change every day. In 2014 we left for Spiekeroog from this harbor.

In the photo above you can see one of those boats leaving for Spiekeroog in the background. They are not particularly big because they need to fit in the shipping channel of the Wattenmeer.

I liked this sculpture of fishermen.

In the following picture you see an old Stockanker on the left side - I don't know the exact translation for this, it's a kind of anchor that was used for 3000 years on sailboats in the North Sea. This one from the 16th century is made from wood and was found in 2003 between the islands of Spiekeroog and Langeoog after a storm had exposed it. The smaller anchor to the right was found in the 1980s at the same location. 

Being so close to the sea, the town needs a Hochwasserschutzmauer (flood masonry wall). This one was built in 1961 and 36 years later increased in height. We visited the café Dattein behind the wall.

Dattein is a café as well as a Kneipe (pub), very gemütlich (cozy) and charming. We wanted something warm to drink - Kaefer and I ordered each a hot chocolate (hers was with rum and mine with amaretto) and the Geek got a Grog, a classic winter drink from Ostfriesland made of rum, sugar and water and heated up. The hot chocolate was served in traditional mugs. Of course, this is also for T Tuesday.

We were warm again and ventured out for another walk on the natural beach of Schillig that was very different to the one in Bensersiel.

We were almost alone on this beach except for a few hardy people.

Finally it was our last dinner in Ostfriesland which we had in Aurich. My appetizer was a very delicious Krabbensuppe (soup with North Sea shrimp) and there's another Weißbier for T Tuesday.

Early the next morning we had breakfast at the same bakery again and then we drove back to Münster (a drive of less than two hours). The following day we were on our flight back to San Francisco. Four wonderful weeks had come to an end.