Last week I had the pleasure of visiting one of my favorite places in central New Jersey: Rutgers Gardens. Rutgers Gardens is maintained by staff, students and volunteers. You can learn more on the website for Rutgers Gardens.
There are various garden areas within Rutgers Gardens. The one above with the bench is part of the rain garden. Vegetation in a rain garden area needs to be acclimated to prolonged periods of inundation, followed by equally prolonged periods of drought. From the Rutgers Gardens website:
Rain gardens look attractive when newly planted, but can and often deteriorate over time with the invasion of unattractive weeds and a resulting decline in vigor from the ornamental plantings as they become ‘choked-out’. The intent at Rutgers Gardens was to design and develop a garden that had all the positive environmental aspects, yet remained attractive throughout the year with minimal maintenance.
These attractive yellow flowers are part of the Donald B. Lacy Display garden. Wish I knew the name of the yellow flowers (and those red pom ones as well – maybe a kind of Gomphrena – maybe Gomphrena globosa ‘Fireworks’). I believe the magenta/purple pom ones I showed last week are Gomphrena globosa. Some of the flowers and vegetables are grown inside a fence with a gate, and the public is not allowed to enter, but it is easy to peek in and view.
One of the great features of Rutgers Gardens are the hikes you can take – we like taking the walk that goes along the Raritan River. There was some colorful foliage but not a lot. I like the pretty colorful reflections in the river.
As I said on the Rutgers Gardens post last week, we saw two chipmunks. Here’s one more photo of the chipmunk in the woods:
Today I visited Rutgers Gardens with my friend Hannah Katsman. I don’t know the name of these delightful purple flowers, but I nicknamed them pom pom flowers (maybe Gomphrena globosa). My photograph originally had more blur in front; I cropped out some of the front flowers. Now you can see more of the blur of the background flowers.
Hannah has a good eye, and thus twice we saw chipmunks. Chipmunks are quick and thus a subject for movement. His eyes were white from my flash, so I toned them down a bit with some brown. I hope it doesn’t look unnatural.
This was the other chipmunk we saw. Here we have a little more of our theme: as the chipmunk moves away, I get blur in my photo.
Thursday Challenge theme is: “BLURRY” (Unfocused, Moving, Foggy,…)
Next Week: LANDSCAPE (Mountains, Trees, Forest, Lake,…)
I’ll post more photos from today’s trip next week for Nature Notes. See an older post of Rutgers Gardens (or click the tag at the bottom for many Rutgers Gardens posts).
I finished reading In The Courtyard Of The Kabbalist by Ruchama King Feuerman, and I hope to write a review soon. I’m sure at this point the review will happen after Ruchama gives her talk at the Highland Park Public Library this Thursday.
Enjoy these easy-to-cook, delicious curried beans. You can adjust the flavorings as you like.
1 cup cooked beans (I found one cup uncooked beans, after cooking, made about two cups cooked) or 1 can of beans
1 tsp. coconut oil
tsp. chopped ginger root (cut off the peel first, then chop the ginger into little squares)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. coriander
salt and pepper to taste
optional: 1 tsp. chopped onion
optional: 1 or 2 carrots, chopped into little circles or into tiny squares
optional: a piece of kombu or wakame (seaweed)
garnish with parsley, coriander, basil or your favorite fresh herb
Soak the beans overnight. I’ve used great northern beans (a small white bean) and red beans; I’ve also cooked both together. I’m sure other beans will work as well, as long as they are not too small and not too mushy when cooked. Discard the soaking water, add new water and cook until the beans are tender. For added nutrients and flavor, add a piece of kombu or seaweed while the beans are cooking. You can also add salt.
When the beans are ready, you can store them in the refrigerator for cooking later, if you are not quite ready to make the recipe.
Heat the coconut oil in a wide pan. I have a wok-like pan for this sort of cooking. When heated, add the spices and stir. Add the chopped ginger and garlic (onion if using – wait five minutes and add carrots if using). Stir and cook for five minutes. Drain any excess water from the beans and add to the pan. Cook for about ten minutes or until warm. Serve warm or room temperature with your favorite herb garnish. Tastes great with rice, pasta or whatever else you are serving (probably not with ice cream, but maybe vanilla ice cream).
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Here is an interesting article about the quality of Costco’s coconut oil. The blog writer interviews the VP of Carrington Farms and the VP says, among other noteworthy responses, “the low price of the oil at Costco is simply a matter of the economy of scale.”
Looking back to my trip to Israel in May, here is a street scene with a Jerusalem light rail train. And lots of people. It’s Thursday night, so many people have finished work for the week.
Bake the acorn squashes whole until they are easier to cut in half. After about twenty minutes of baking, cut them in half. Continue baking until the squash is soft – you can test it with a fork. It took a little over an hour in my oven at 350°. Peel and cook the yam(s) in enough water to cover. Peel the garlic cloves, and cut off the ginger root peel. Cut the ginger root into little pieces. After about 15 minutes of cooking, add the garlic cloves and chopped ginger root. When both the yam(s) and garlic cloves are soft, remove them from the heat and cooked water (I used a slotted spoon). Mash in a bowl, and add salt, pepper and a fresh, chopped herb (I happen to have basil from my garden). Pile scoopfuls of this orange mixture into your baked squashes. Warm before serving.
On the one hand, this recipe takes a while to make because you have to bake the acorn squashes first. On the other hand, you can do it when you already have the oven going, and you can do it a day before you plan to serve the stuffed squash with yams. It’s an easy recipe.
It is Jewish holiday season, and ideally, I would be writing a lovely post about how the Jewish holidays are related to the seasons. In reality, I feel I am constantly preparing for the next holiday (in between having more than plenty of web work). The flower above is one of the gerber daisies my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day (with my husband’s help), and I have managed to keep it alive for the whole summer. Yay, me.
The upcoming holiday this week is called Sukkot, and we do indeed interact with nature. Here is the little booth called a sukkah that we eat meals in for seven days. We cover the top of the sukkah with light natural material called schach, and through this natural material we can sometimes see stars at night. Some people actually sleep in their sukkah.
Here are some of the decorations inside our sukkah. This is from last year – on Wednesday, it will be a mad rush to finish cooking and decorate the sukkah. In New Jersey, it often rains, so we don’t want to decorate too early. Hard enough to keep the decorations going.
This was our old sukkah, that we no longer have. It took too long to put up, so my husband gave it away. We now have a pre-fab sukkah, but I can’t paint the walls. I have to decorate with this velcro tape. I don’t enjoy that as much.
As this post is related to nature, here are some not yet shared nature photos from Israel:
Those are rocks on the top of Mount Meiron. Learn about my hike on Mount Meiron.
Love these delicate pink flowers from Mount Meiron. No idea what they are. Any guesses? Update: might be a bindweed – convolvolus oleifolius.
These trees had bright red blooms in front of the Tel Aviv Museum last May. Any guesses? Flame tree (Delonix regia)? Seems quite similar to the red trees in this Tel Aviv image. Tel Aviv in late May probably has a similar climate to southern California (maybe warmer and more humid).
Getting back to Jewish holidays and nature, the holidays follow the lunar calendar. So the moon is important. Tonight my daughter noticed the moon looked quite full, but it’s not quite the 15th of the month. It’s 13 Tishrei, so I suppose that is close. This year Thanksgiving and Chanukah will coincide, but according to this post, it will not happen again until … year 79,811. Will you be around to celebrate?
This recipe for cucumber garlic salad is an adaption of a recipe from Mama Nazima’s Jewish Iraqi Cuisine cookbook by Rivka Goldman. It is the only Jewish Iraqi cookbook I have read, and the recipes seem simpler than those of, say, Jewish Syrian cuisine. Rivka Goldman was born in Basra, Iraq and now lives in the U.S. Her recipe does not have cilantro or basil; I added basil because I have some in my garden, and I like the basil flavor with cucumbers.
I have had quite a few cucumbers this summer as I am growing them in my front and backyards. My plan had been to make them into pickles, but they usually grow too big so I have been enjoying this cucumber salad and Israeli-style cucumber/tomato salads as well.
Ingredients
3 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced
2-3 chopped garlic cloves
1/4 cup chopped parsley, cilantro and/or basil
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp. olive oil
black pepper and salt to taste
Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Toss and chill a few hours before serving. Enjoy.
This is a guest poem post by Daniel of Adventures in Jewish Thought. The salt shaker is totally my idea. Hoping his poem will evoke some good comments, ideas, reflections.
The Lament of the People of Sodom
Because we did not see
The poor,
The orphans,
The widows
And the strangers
In our midst
We were struck blind.
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As we are approaching Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, I would like to share with you these links:
Simanim – Symbols for Jewish New Year – fun to prepare and to eat
What do these photos of Jaffa Street (Rechov Jaffo) in Jerusalem and (below) one of the Moorlyn Theater in Ocean City, New Jersey have in common? They were both taken as the day moved away from dawn (Moorlyn Theater) or towards dusk (Jaffa Street shots). If you photograph closer to dusk or dawn, you will often capture beautiful, golden light. Back in 2009, a reader described, regarding a photo of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, “the late afternoon quality of the light.” Ever since then, I’ve been more conscious of capturing photos during those golden hours of the day.
The Moorlyn Theater is on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. They feature both movies and live shows. This photo was taken the morning my daughter and I woke early for sunrise.
Here is another shot of Jaffa Road in Jerusalem on a late Thursday afternoon in May. Note the tracks for the lightrail and the many people walking the streets. Thursday night in Jerusalem is a bit like the American Saturday night, as people usually don’t have work or school the next day. There is a sharp contrast of the golden basking glow of the apartment buildings and the shadows of the street area.
