Author Archives: Sheryl @ Flowery Prose

Flowery Friday.

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FPCWHNormandeau

I wonder how much soil is under that rock?  I’m guessing, not much.  And I’m not showing it in this photo, but there was snow clinging to the rocks just southeast of where I was standing.  In July.  This common willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum), a close relative of the (ahem!) even more common fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium*, also known as rosebay willowherb), is a mountain plant with heaps of beauty AND brawn.

*In another case of Nomenclature Gone Wild, fireweed was previously known as Epilobium angustifolium.  I can’t yet find an explanation as to why the genus name was changed for this plant and not for common willowherb…but I’ll keep digging.

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The Door is Ajar: Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton.

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DragonTeeth-Cover-Live

Dragon Teeth – Michael Crichton (2017, HarperLuxe, New York)

Published nearly a decade after his death, Michael Crichton’s “undiscovered” novel Dragon Teeth is a decent mash-up of history, science, and good old-fashioned storytelling, inspired by the outlandish, well-documented, and sometimes extremely violent rivalry between late 19th century American paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edwin Drinker Cope. Their quests (competition?) to find and document fossilized dinosaurs and other creatures of the distant past in a cultural climate that was struggling to wrap its collective noggin around evolutionary theory is fascinating – especially when you consider that they did most of their bone-hunting and collecting in the wild west, where, if you weren’t bit by a rattlesnake or died of exposure or illness, you could suffer death, injury, or at the very least, be swindled out of all your worldly possessions by any number of unsavory characters.  A quick, (at times overly) simple, entertaining read.

Alberta snapshot: Johnston Canyon (past the Upper Falls).

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To Inkpots 2

Admission to Canada’s national parks has been free all year as the country celebrates its sesquicentennial, but it’s a gift I hadn’t yet enjoyed…until braving the insane long-weekend crowds in Banff’s Johnston Canyon last Saturday.  Parking was at a premium (thank goodness my brother has a car with a supremely compact exterior and a dimension-bending interior) and the steel catwalks to the spectacular falls were crammed with visitors, but as we ventured past the Upper Falls and headed towards the mineral pools known as the Ink Pots, the throngs thinned out and the scenery kept getting better and better…if such a thing is even possible.  It’s pretty easy to see why everyone is so keen on showing up.

Recipe: Sea buckthorn and apple jelly.

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It’s time for my annual visitation of this old-but-relevant post from 2012…’tis the season for harvesting sea buckthorn berries in Alberta (and many other places worldwide)! Tasty AND beautiful!

 

Original Post: September 27, 2012 by 

(Photo credit:  R. Normandeau)

My hubby and I managed to get out this past Saturday morning and gather some sea buckthorn fruit so that I could try my hand at making jelly from it.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll recall that I made a sea buckthorn beverage last year – I just love the citrusy taste of the berries and their gorgeous sun-bright colour.

Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) is a fairly common roadside plant here in Calgary – the City planted many of them years ago, mostly for erosion control on slopes.  It’s one of those shrubs you’d be hard-pressed to kill:  it’s tough-as-nails, drought-tolerant, pollution and salt-tolerant (good for our winter roads and all that de-icing salt), and a fairly aggressive spreader.  You don’t find it employed as an ornamental landscape plant very often, but it’s really very pretty, with silvery-green leaf clusters and the brilliant autumn fruit.  (Both male and female plants are required for fruit production).  Sure, some people may be turned off by the thorns, but they contribute to the shrub’s rabbit and deer resistance, which can’t be a bad thing, right?!

The only thing that irks me to no end about gathering sea buckthorn berries is that it’s just such a difficult process – the fruit only comes off the stems under extreme duress.   The kind of duress that leaves you standing there with bright orange seabuckthorn juice all over your clothes and squirted in your eye.  I’ve read that commercial harvesters of the shrub just go along and prune off fruit-bearing branches, freeze them for awhile, and then “shake” the berries free…but I didn’t give that a go.  I ought to have – it took me FOREVER to get the berries off of the branches.

But it’s worth it for this jelly.  Trust me.  It’s so yummy and pretty!

Small-Batch Sea Buckthorn and Apple Jelly

(I added apples to this recipe because I didn’t use commercial pectin – sea buckthorn doesn’t have very much natural pectin, so the addition of a high-pectin fruit helps the jelly set properly.  I had some British Columbia-grown ‘Sunrise’ apples, but use any variety you love.  Crabapples would work as well).

4 cups sea buckthorn berries, washed thoroughly

3 apples, washed, peeled, cored, and diced finely (if you don’t want to go to the trouble, and your apples are organic, you can leave the peels on)

1/2 cup water

Place berries, apples and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer fruit for 20 minutes.  Stir periodically and crush the fruit against the side of the pan with the back of the spoon.  (It all mashes down pretty well on its own, and won’t require much additional help).

Strain the fruit through a jelly bag (or several layers of cheesecloth) over a large bowl.  Don’t force the fruit through the bag – this will make the jelly cloudy and you don’t want that!  Set it up so that the fruit can slowly strain overnight.

In the morning, sterilize your canning jars and lids.   Measure out the juice.  I ended up with 2 cups using this recipe, but your measurement may vary slightly.  Place the juice into a saucepan and mix in an equal amount of white sugar.  Bring the sugar and juice to a rolling boil and boil, stirring constantly, until you’ve reached gel point.

Carefully pour the jelly into the sterilized jars, apply the lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes (don’t forget to adjust the length of time according to altitude, as specified in this handy chart).  If you plan to eat the jelly soon and don’t want to go to all the trouble of processing jars for storing, you can just pop the jars into the fridge once the jelly is cool.  It is a very small batch, after all…and you’ll be hooked once you have a taste!

Do you grow sea buckthorn in your garden, or do you forage for sea buckthorn berries?  

 Looking for more sea buckthorn berry recipes?

My sea buckthorn berry recipe book, Sea Buckthorn Bounty: Recipes is now available here!

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Fun with search terms, Flowery Prose edition.

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clip art of a search icon

I love the WordPress feature that keeps track of the search engine terms that have led readers to our blogs. Some of them are obvious and you can definitely pinpoint the exact entries you’ve written that came up in the search (and hopefully assisted someone with their query)…but others are just plain entertaining!  I have a habit of plugging in as many words as possible into search engines to narrow down the possible hits, so I can only imagine what someone on the receiving end might think of the weird stuff I come up with.

Here are a few of the search terms that have been logged on Flowery Prose within the past year, the ones that got me giggling the most. I really hope something I’ve posted helped these folks out, as well, but I’m not entirely convinced of that….

saskatoon berry alcohol shot

Yes, please.

hula hooping sitting on bed

I’m not that flexible…or creative. I might somehow throw out a hip.

what if I eat a spittle bug

No biggie, it’s three percent of your daily recommended intake of protein.  And the spittle gives it a smooth mouthfeel.

prose soup

Is that like Alphagetti noodles?  Do you add veggies?  I might want that recipe.

prose on parenting

*looks to see if anyone has dropped off any kids at my house and left them there without my knowledge*

nose ill

I think this was supposed to be “Nose Hill,” one of my favourite places to walk in Calgary.  I can’t say I’ve ever written a post about “nose ills,” but if there’s a call for it, I can definitely make something up oblige.

covering raised veggie bads (sic) at night

I’m glad I’m not the only one who had veggie bads this year – I can’t believe only three of my carrot seeds germinated out of an ENTIRE package.  Maybe I would have had more success had I covered them at night.  Things to note for next year.

same look like winter cress but not

Occasionally my hair gets this way before I put the anti-frizz cream in.

speak about flower

Ask my hubby; I do, ad nauseum.  This may be a search term I’m actually qualified to write about.  If not qualified, I can certainly babble endlessly about it.  I have also been known to expound at length about flour, as well, but that’s another story….

Check your search terms: do you have any silly or unusual ones you’d like to share?  

Clipart credit.

 

Flowery Friday.

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LFPNormandeau

Lewisia (Lewisii spp.) isn’t a plant I’ve come across very often here in Calgary, so I was absolutely delighted last week when I spotted a couple of specimens in bloom in the William Reader Rock Garden.  If my own rock garden ever happens, there will be more than a couple of these beauties tucked in.  Do you grow them?

Alberta snapshot: William Reader Rock Garden.

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WRRGFPNormandeau

Apart from the staff bustling away at the tea house, the whole of the William Reader Rock Garden was mine one morning last week.  It was utterly blissful.  Especially when you contemplated scenes like this, which were pretty much everywhere.  It’s a wonder I didn’t trip over my jaw and stumble on the rocks.

And this is the garden past its peak, sliding into autumn.