Daina Savage

The best way to beat the midwinter blues? Take a road trip to the charm city for a sensory stimulation to carry you through until spring. A quick day trip yielded towering dinosaurs, a glam version of Icarus soaring through the heavens, and a fanciful confectionary creation that left us hungry for more. First stop, the Maryland Science Center with its dinosaur hall, hands-on kinetic Newton’s Alley room, and gross-out body exhibits including the guess-that-sound display. Of course we had to try out the bed of nail as well as get our goggles and lab coats on for the WetLab experiments. Truly interactive, with a “please touch” ethos, the Science Center inspires wonder in the small set and engages otherwise jaded teens. The grown-ups got their giggle on as well, engaging the laws of physics through play. Read the rest of this entry »

In a snow-covered landscape, plants that spice up that expanse of white make the winter more interesting. Evergreen boughs iced with a frosting of snow, multicolored peeling bark, deciduous branches cupping icy decorations, lingering berries on shrubs and trees, and the seed heads of fall blooming perennials all break up the monotony of the bleakest of seasons. Now’s the time to check out the bones of your garden and see what structure is missing. Check out your neighborhood for the plants that make the winter more colorful to add to your spring shopping list.

A love of artisanal foods naturally leads to a desire to try your hand at making your own. Unfortunately, my first attempts at the ancient culinary craft of cheesemaking were, frankly, embarrassing.
Inspired after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” I had dreams of making my own mozzarella to top grilled pizzas and tuck between slices of heirloom tomatoes and basil.
I procured the milk, rennet tablets and citric acid to make the “30 Minute Mozzarella Magic” created by “Cheese Queen” Ricki Carroll, whose “Home Cheese Making” manual has inspired legions of novices to turn into cheesemakers. The founder of the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company in 1978 in an attempt to preserve the milk on her own farm, she has taught more than 7,000 people how to make cheese in workshops, not to mention the more than 100,000 who bought her book and presumably attempted it on their own. Read the rest of this entry »

After all the glitter and baubles from the holidays are put away, we embrace the simplicity of winter. Yet we still seem to hunger for a bit of color to remind us that spring will come again. Thankfully, long-blooming orchids fit the bill, with their stark, elegant lines, culminating in a singular spray of heady, extravagant blossoms. Varieties of phalaenopsis and dendrobium orchids are generally the best for beginners. When you’re starting out, it’s best to match your selection with your home’s conditions, rather than trying to artificially create an environment for a fussy, expensive showpiece. When you’re ready for a challenge, the Susquehanna Orchid Society and Little Brook Orchids can be helpful resources.

Sure we know there’s great rodeo riding and sheep shearing to entertain us, rivers of poinsettias and sculpted winter-blooming garden scenes to give color to our winter-weariness, and a cacophony of clucking and baaing and mooing all blending into a barnyard orchestra performance of comical proportions.

But admit it, we really return to the Pennsylvania State Farm Show each year for the food.

“When I was a kid, I remember always waiting in line with the masses of people to get my 50 cent milkshake and a signature Farm Show baked potato,” recalls Christian Herr, who exhibited sheep at the show during his childhood, oversaw contests as a deputy secretary of agriculture, and now organizes the show’s largest food booth as the executive vice president of Penn Ag Industries. “It’s still the best place to feed your family with good locally-grown food for not a lot of money.”

The show remains the world’s largest indoor gathering devoted entirely to celebrating and promoting agriculture, continuing traditions started in 1917 like exhibiting celery and wool, while giving up those like the 1955 mashed potato sculpture in favor of trying out a cheese sculpting contest in recent years.

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“It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter.”

Walking through the Tanger Arboretum next to Wheatland Mansion, I was surprised to see a bed of blooming iris on St. Nicholas Day. Added to the garden about two years ago, they came from a Wheatland Garden Club member’s garden as pass-along plants from her grandmother. So old, they probably aren’t even a named cultivar. According to club co-founder Donna Mentzer, “this is the first year they have bloomed, which would be consistent with the remontant, or reblooming iris which need to be establish for two to three years before rebloom.”
Donna shares that “there is an old yellow cultivar called ‘Sangreal’ that was hybridized back in the 1930s and also a nice yellow iris with a bit of ruffle that was hybridized in 1987 by Beyers – it is a consistent rebloomer and was named ‘Billionairie’. I don’t know the parentage of either, but it seems this may have been a parent for one or both of these, judging from the great bloom. Since this is the first rebloom, I can’t tell if this is when they would normally bloom or if the rather warm autumn was the cause.”
Although there are a number of reblooming iris on the market, Donna is partial to a pure white cultivar called “Immortality,” which she says is one of the oldest and most reliable.

Sure plenty of trees have great fall color, but how many smell like cotton candy? As the county’s autumn fairs finish, it’s a way to recapture that festival scent a little later into the season. The lovely heart shaped leaves of the Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) turn a mix of bright yellows, pinks and orange-reds in the autumn. But after they’ve dried and fallen, the fragrant leaves release a strong sweet fragrance when crushed or chopped in a mower. The scent is often described as burnt brown sugar or cotton candy.
It’s a fast-growing shade tree, often multi-stemmed, when it planted in moist soil, but is very sensitive to drought. When mature, it also will exhibit some bark peeling for winter interest.

It’s a reason to hold out hope for a late freeze. Just when they’ve come into their own in prolific showy displays, upward facing daturas and pendulous brugmansias make a heroic last stand in the face of their certain demise. Incongruous amidst the surrounding autumn foliage, these tropical beauties, more commonly known as Angel Trumpets, herald their end exuberantly. Terribly toxic, wear gloves when removing dying stalks from the garden. Brugmansia cuttings can be potted and overwintered in cool, dark spots that don’t freeze, like an unheated cellar. Collect datura seeds and start new plants in the spring.

In the dark days of winter, when we tend toward our own hibernation, craving warming fires and cozy meals – nature answers our need.

It is the time of root vegetables, those hidden mysteries of the earth, packed with sugars and starches to warm us and loaded with antioxidants and nutrients to sustain us until we awaken again to the spring tonic of early greens.

Hearty, versatile, and economical, they are locally at their best from October through March when their flavors have matured and mellowed.

Some of these Earth vegetables we cherish as kitchen essentials, the tuberous potatoes and sweet potatoes and the generous taproots of bright orange carrots.

There are the bulbs of onions and garlic that serve as the foundation for so many meals, and the roots of ginger and horseradish that add strength, heartiness, and welcome heat to winter fare, as well as helping to boost our defenses with their medicinal qualities.

And then there are the less familiar, the maligned, even the lost varieties that were once sustenance for the roots on our own family trees. Shifts in farming practices, food storage and preparation, and even our changing palates have turned purple-topped turnips, black-skinned salsify, golden rutabagas and ivory parsnips into quaint peasant food, more curiosity than staple.

Thankfully, a resurging interest in seasonal, local eating welcomes these colorful root crops back into our kitchens. Read the rest of this entry »

Sure it won’t be the showiest plant in your landscape, and if you’re lucky, many of the leaves will have holes in them by the end of the month, but planting some perennial milkweed (Asclepias) in your garden can bring longer lasting delights than just a few blooms. Sure the flowers are interesting and the seed pods are terrific for crafting. But most importantly, the broad leafed plant plays host for the yellow and black striped Monarch caterpillars, who voraciously work their way through the leaves, seeming to double in size each day. The caterpillars themselves are lovely, and their jade green chrysalis trimmed in gold look like tiny jewels. But the real delight is the lingering garden visitor in autumn colors of oranges, rusts and blacks, who will migrate to Mexico, and just may return next year.