Holiday Wreaths '11

Last year, I posted a how-to on wreathmaking. I know for a fact that at least two people read that post, because this year my mom and my sister asked me for help making their own wreaths.  So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we got together for a little craft party.

I bought all the goods from Michael's crafts, with these requests: My sister wanted to do something unconventional, with non traditional holiday colors. My mom wanted a boxwood wreath (using boxwood cuttings from her garden).  I wasn't sure what I was going to make.

I saw the above for sale at Michael's and liked the idea of it; I decided to use that as a guide, only I'd scale back the....bling.  I bought fake lemons for my mom and pink and blue Christmas balls for my sister. And I bought wine.  Beaujolais Nouveau in fact. (For the record, the food was tasty too - whole wheat pasta in a butternut squash sauce with toasted walnuts and a salad of shaved Brussel sprouts with pecorino and toasted walnuts).

Above, mom gets started with wire, boxwood and wreath frame.

While Tina starts plotting out placement of ornaments on her foam wreath, using toothpicks to do preliminary placement.

Meanwhile, I took a grapevine wreath and painted it with silver shimmer spraypaint.

Tina's progressed beautifully, though I underestimated how many ornaments we'd need.

Mom's placing an "H" ornament of silver bells on the wreath.

Tina's finished wreath is above - it's Katy Perry's dream wreath, candy colored and fun.

Mom's is above -- very traditional, though I like the off center placement of the bow wrapped around cinnamon sticks.

And mine, above.  It really doesn't photograph well, but not counting drying time for paint, it took about ten minutes to make.

It's simply a grapevine wreath, with silver and red "berries" wired into it.  I would have added more gilt perhaps, but in person it's quite nice.

Okra

The other day, my DC students and I were suffering the recent cold snap of weather, touring gardens around the mall, in search of some notable fall plants.  We found this at a community garden nearby.  At first glance, the leaves (and most of all the flowers) indicate the plant is in the Malvaceae (hibiscus) family, and luckily one of my students instantly recognized this as okra, or Abelmoschus esculentus.

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Below, you can look inside the flower and see why it's so clearly a hibiscus type plant -- the sexual parts of the flower are arranged in along a staminal column - a tall sheath encloses the stems of the pistil, which emerge at the top of the column (the velvety black parts below).  Along the column, stamens and anthers extend, perpendicular to the length of the column. 

At the bottom left on both photos you can see the remaining seed pod after flowering is complete.  The pod is the actual okra forming.  Okra is distinctive by its octagonal cross section.  It's common in southern US food as well as in recipes in the middle east and southeast Asia.  Most of the recipes include stir frying or flash cooking the whole pods.  If they are slow cooked, they become a bit slimy, as the skin that breaks down in heat is mucilaginous. Slicing the pods is common in cajun food like gumbo, and in this case, any broken down 'goo' is cooked off in the soupy mix. 

Depending on the cultivars, some okras are hardy in this zone.  Typically however they are annual.

Baby Peaches

A little over a month ago, I posted about the peach tree, Prunus persica.   I had prepared to take photos of the trees in flower and then of the fruits themselves develop.

But alas, it's been a really busy spring and I missed the flowers!

Instead I can share these pics, taken yesterday, of small peach fruits developing in the place of the spent flowers.  I'll try to catch them again as the fruits get larger.

Carica papaya

Perhaps one of my favorite fruits is the papaya.  One of the things I miss about New York is the ability to pick up a container of cut papaya at any bodega.  It's not quite as thrilling as having access to all that fresh pineapple in Hawaii (as I recently blogged about), but it's good nonetheless.   

The specimens above are growing in a food garden at the Honolulu Zoo.  You can see that the stalk is self-cleaning, dropping its large, lobed leaves as the plant grows upward.  The fruit are cauliflory, which means they grow directly attached the stem.  Papayas when unripe, like the ones above, are often used in cooking, particularly in Thai cuisine (though the plant is native to Mexico).  When ripe, the fruits turn yellow and have a deeply sweet (cloyingly so, to some) flavor.