Chili and beans

I bought some interesting Anaszi beans at the China Ranch Date Farm when we were in California last month. These days I make lots of beans in the pressure cooker, and (sorry, Kroger) these were a cut above supermarket dried pintos.

So I mail ordered more, plus some other varieties from an outfit called iGourmet.  Of course they give these beans clever names, which is good marketing. They look colorful, but all tend to cook up creamy and pink. They are perfect for eating plain with tacos, making re-fried beans, or chili.

Speaking of chili, there's nothing wrong with hamburger or ground turkey, but if you have time (or a pressure cooker) chili is good made with real chunks of beef.  Scrappy meat like chuck steak works the best, and it doesn't cost more than hamburger these days, go figure.  Dice up the meat and brown it thoroughly in a heavy pot, add diced onion and peppers, jalapenos if you like it hot, and saute a little longer.

Then add a couple cans of crushed or diced tomatoes, chili powder to season, and let it braise very slowly until the meat is fork tender.  This takes a few hours. Finally, add some of those cooked "artisan" beans and you'll have a darn good chili dinner, with plenty left over for the freezer.  

Blue sky and matching poppies

Around Mother's Day, we usually drive down to Federal Way and walk in the Rhododendron Species Garden. The Pacific Bonsai Museum is adjacent, and the specimens are perfection personified.  My favorite is always the blooming wisteria.

Out in the large, natural botanical garden, the Himalayan Blue Poppy is one of the highlights of the year.  We didn't expect to see them yesterday, but no surprise, they're blooming early so we lucked out.  Also lucky that we got down there early, because by Sunday afternoon there can be as many camera tripods as poppies.

But who can resist taking pictures?  They've been featured on the blog many times.  I forget from year to year, but on a sunny day this color looks like little chips fell out of the blue sky.

Needless to say, their growing requirements are onerous, but they thrive in this one little patch at the bottom of the garden.  Seattle's Zone 7 does not have much in common with the Himalayan meadows, but gardeners are an obstinate bunch. Last year I succumbed and purchased a $10 start. I planted it in a big pot where it soon burned to a crisp.  This year I passed on the nursery gift shop temptations. I know where to see blue poppies once a year.

But there are other plant wonders and oddities. Just like our garden, everything seemed abnormally big and lush from the record winter rain and high spring temperatures. This must be the largest magnolia blossom in the world--  Magnolia hypoleuca, or Japanese big leaf magnolia.

And of course, what's a rhododendron garden without masses and masses of these? 

Lemonade time

Seattle had an average high temperature of 66 degrees in April, which shattered the old record of 63, set back in 1977.  It's even warmer of course in central Washington, and Amanda sent me this picture of the little entrepreneurs at work yesterday. 

Viadoom

Starting this morning, the Alaska Way Viaduct is closed for at least two weeks as Bertha attempts to pass 15 feet beneath the foundation of the sinking elevated structure.

West Seattle will feel the most pain during the closure, with all of us trying to get to I-5 (a bottleneck on any normal day) or, take the clogged surface streets with 90,000 other drivers who use the Viaduct daily to get downtown.  Those are the only options for leaving our little Peninsula, unless you want to drive far south of here and double back. 

With Bertha's track record, I think a two-week closure is probably optimistic. The engineers are going to monitor for new cracks and there's a good possibility it may never open again, if it isn't safe to drive on. Of course "safe" is kind of a relative term for the already teetering structure.  Pioneer Square is also full of historic brick buildings, ready to fall down in the next earthquake, or Bertha-generated sinkhole.  Another big bill coming due for the city of Seattle.

Oh well, that's the price we pay to live in our Northwest urban paradise. But I'll definitely be thinking hard before getting in the car. May might be a good month for garden work and ukulele practice.

The German Society

I was looking at old family photos of mom yesterday, and ran across this great picture of her parents, Anna and Herman Klingler, dressed in traditional German garb.

Anna is in the front row, 4th from the left, and Herman is 3rd from the right in the back.  They look like the youngest members of the group, so this might have been taken shortly after they arrived in the United States, when they were both in their 20's.

Unfortunately, the photo doesn't have a caption, so it's impossible to know for sure. It might be before they left the Homeland, but this looks too prosperous for Germany between the wars. The mix of ages and formal pose tells me this is an organized club, not a gathering of young friends.

They first lived in Philadelphia, so I did some research on German clubs of the time.   In the 1920's, the German Society of Philadelphia  had over 600 members, with another 800 in the Women's Auxiliary. (You can read their history by clicking that link.)

So I'm guessing they're at an outdoor event with that popular club. My grandmother, Anna, was very social.  The Germans loved their music and dancing, and you can see traditional instruments in the picture.

The club was at its peak then. Not long after, WWII became an extremely difficult time for German-Americans.  But somehow the club managed to hold its own and exists to this day.  It was founded in 1764, so it must be one of oldest cultural clubs in the nation.

Weeds?

A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place.

Now that's a sorry sight.  A big cartload of " Spanish Bluebells" that I yanked out of the flower beds. I must have planted one bulb once and now there are thousands.  They spread by deep roots and connecting bulbs underground, so they are just about impossible to get rid of without destroying the entire garden.

On the bright side, they're pretty for a little while and then disappear completely.  The problem is the dense leaves choke everything trying to come up around them. They even pop up right in the center of rose bushes.  So I'm not as heartless as it looks, ripping out pretty blue flowers.

But I wish we had a dozen of these blooming in April. I can't remember when I planted it, but this Virburnum Snowball is beautiful.  Woody ornamental shrubs aren't so popular anymore,  probably because they just sit there for 50 weeks of the year. They're tough and live for decades, so you still see them around old houses.

The Spring season is typically slow, wet and chilly in western Washington, but we seem to be headed right into summer.  There will be a little blip of rain on Friday, then back to dry and unseasonably warm weather for the weekend and beyond.  In fact, the long-term forecast is for another hot summer.  Good for growing you-know-what.