It’s gonna be great – we’ll have hundreds, maybe thousands of white poinsettias for kids to paint – as well as protective gear to keep their little outfits tidy – so come on down and get in the Christmas Spirit!

As we prepare and set up our booth for the big show we are also installing over 75 real live Christmas trees around the center-complete with lights!

And our booth will have lots of fully decorated trees and ideas as well as special “show” pricing – there will be ornaments and garland and wreaths and swags you can buy and take with you and we will also have on display our Holiday Arrangements (you may have seen them on our Holiday Unwrapped 2009 brochure we mailed out last week) – so come on down, bring the kids (and $5 of course-proceeds benefit Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club). Tell ‘em Di sent you!

Speaking of poinsettias – you know it’s an old wives tale about them being toxic, don’t you? Well, although we don’t recommend you eat them, they are NOT poisonous.

Here is a pic of a poinsettia painted by a 73-year old!

How about a blue or purple poinsettia?

Can’t get down to the Convention Center this weekend? Don’t despair – visit our garden center at California and LaSalle and see all our poinsettia varieties – here’s a sampling!

We’d love to see you!  And you’ll love seeing all the new product coming in almost daily!

Ready to do some gardening? We are!

March 31, 29 inches - in the background are Sally & Phill and that's Bryant way way back there!

Here is Mr Stinky and his pal, Tammy, on Friday 3/27 - he is 25" tall

5pm on March 25 - he's 21-1/2 inches

9am on 3/24 Mr Stinky is 18" tall

Interesting Foliage during Summer Months

Here’s a little left-over something from my Chicago days. One of my flat-mates’ father was a missionary who traveled the world. He brought a funny tuber back from India that many years later he shared with me – funny potato-looking thing with a very bizarre but interesting growing pattern. He called it an Indian Stink Lily. Many years later and thanks to the internet I have been able to find out about this curious plant – Amorphophallus – also known by many other names including elephant foot, voodoo lily, Telinga potato, corpse flower, and dragon flower just to name a few. When this plant blooms it exudes a fragrance not unlike the smell of rotting flesh. And how funny to receive a plant with such a phallic shape from a missionary!

Mr Stinky on 3/17 - St Pats Day, 1 day of growth!

My one tuber has multiplied many times over but I have only had one bloom before this year’s attraction – that other bloom was in my living room – the March after I received the tuber – before I could smell any foul odor coming from it, any dog guests I had immediately lifted their legs upon entering my apartment. Well, no more doggie friends until this thing is done blooming, but after a day of smelling it, I had to put it out on the back porch to let it die back in the cold. According to Wikipedia, “these are typical lowland plants, growing in the tropical and subtropical zones of the paleotropics, from West Africa to the Pacific Islands.   None of them are found in the Americas although a remarkably similar but not closely related genus, Dracontium, has evolved here” and can be found on the West Coast.

I have planted the tubers directly into my Saint Louis gardens and forgotten to dig them up to bring in for the winter – only to have them reappear around late May – wintered over in the garden! Of course it is too cold here for them to bloom outdoors but they will act like perennials even though they are purported to be tropical or sub-tropical – St Louis weather is really not any kinda tropical (well, perhaps a bit tropical in August).  Here are a few more pictures of my plants’ really unique foliage.

Eventually they create an umbrella shape

Top view, before the leaves canopy

Some very strange speckled stems!

Mr Stinky's Flower stalk, not open yet - and growing 3 to 4 inches a day! This photo is shot in our greenhouse today, 3/24/09

Usually I dig them up and pot ‘em and put them in the basement to winter over, but this year I put them near a South facing bedroom window and about a week ago started to see a bloom coming! Well I own a dog and wasn’t going to put up with that leg-lifting business again so I brought Mr Stinky to work. His bloom as of today has not completely formed and he’s growing 3 or 4 inches a day! Come visit him at our garden center at the corner of California and LaSalle – come soon, I’m sure the garden center helpers are going to make me take him away once the “odor” arrives! While you are here check out all the new spring items coming in, we have some wonderful hand blown glass hummingbird feeders and other giftware as well as tons of growing things coming in almost daily!  Here are a few pics for you!

Azaleas

Our new pottery line includes pots with saucers and matching birdbaths.

Red and Yellow Stemmed Dogwoods

Marigolds (buy one for each tomato plant!)

Yarrow Plants

For years I have searched for information on my VooDoo Plant but have never found foliage or flowers that look like mine – until today, check out Martha’s blog here for more info and photos – I wonder if she got her’s from a missionary!  It looks to me that we have the same variety.  I’m planning to put a photo up daily chronicalling Mr Stinky’s bloom so check back!

Red Velvet Angel Food Cake - Great Color!

Did I tell you I got selected to be a home-cook tester for Cook’s Country magazine recipes?  Cook’s Country is a spin off of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS. In the midst of the madness of the Valentine’s floral holiday I got an email with my first recipe – I have to make the recipe and fill out a survey by 2/23 – rather than wait until this weekend, I finagled leaving work a little early today and stopped by the grocery and picked up some red food coloring (- I needed 2 bottles, and they only had one, I took every bottle of every color off the shelf, and finally found a second bottle behind all the yellows!) I want this red food coloring because I thought the plain angle food cake recipe sounded a little boring (!) A N Y W A Y, I had decided to make it with a twist – I turned it into a Red Velvet Angel food cake.  Have you ever had Red Velvet Cake?  It’s a chocolate cake basically with a lot of red food coloring in it.

Since I had decided the recipe was boring (as I mentioned above) I went to the grocery store and bought 2 bottles of red food coloring to make it a red velvet angel food cake (added cocoa also) ($2.50 per bottle! geez, that *&^%&*^’s expensive, I could have bled 2 oz, but it might not have made a red cake) it’s a beautiful color – can’t wait until it comes out and I can go do the survey – I wonder if they will kick me out for altering their recipe!!!

Before I could get my beautiful batter into the oven I remembered that Wally told me to print 100 things for Mark at Anmar Photography – ooooops, I’m in trouble, forgot about it.  Hope I don’t get fired! 

Here’s the recipe they sent – I mixed 3 tablespoons of Dutch process cocoa with 2 bottles (2 oz) of red food coloring and the vanilla and added it to the mix where it says add vanilla and mix well.  This is a recipe for  an angel food cake I don’t know if you’ve ever made one but it includes 12 egg whites beat until they are very big – I got some great height out of mine and as I go to put the batter into the oven I can’t get the friggin door open! I figure my oven thermometer has fallen and wedged in the door somehow so I’m shaking the darn thing and shaking it and I notice on the panel it says “door locked” – I had accidentally hit the auto clean button! 30 minutes later I can put my cake in, it deflated a little – not a whole lot – but who knows if it will work!

About this time I figure it’s happy hour and time for a cocktail, I get my Maker’s Mark and splash of Cointreau poured and open up one of those cute little bottles of ginger ale and poor it in and it doesn’t bubble, friggin ginger ale is flat! and it’s a new bottle! and it’s the last bottle!

I’m having a day I think. I’ll try to save you a piece of cake! The batter is delish and such a great color!

Here’s the cake right out of the oven, those little framed portraits in the background are Richard and my Paris Metro Pass pics from 1988 – cute, huh!

Out of the oven at last!

GOAL: Angel food cake from the supermarket bakery is dense and chewy – more like a very sweet sponge cake. We wanted a classic angel food cake with light, pillowy texture that melts in your mouth like cotton candy. Since angel food cake relies on a tricky technique and laborious steps, we wanted to take the fear out of angel food cake and simplify the technique to produce a cake with heavenly texture every time.

Cooling Down - Not as tall I hoped!

ANGEL FOOD CAKE
Serves 10 to 12
If your angel food cake pan does not have a removable bottom, line the bottom of the tube pan with parchment paper and gently tap pan upside down on counter to release it from the pan. Do not grease the tube pan before baking the cake or it will not rise properly.

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (4½ ounces) cake flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1¾ cups sugar
12 large egg whites, room temperature
1½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. PROCESS SUGAR Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Whisk flour and salt in bowl. Process sugar in food processor until fine and powdery, about 1 minute. Reserve half of sugar in small bowl. Add flour mixture to food processor with remaining sugar and process until aerated, about 1 minute.
2. BEAT WHITES With electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until frothy, about 1 minute. Increase speed to medium-high. With motor running, slowly add reserved sugar and beat until soft peaks form, about 6 minutes. Add vanilla and mix until incorporated.
3. SIFT AND FOLD Sift flour mixture over egg whites in 3 additions, folding gently with rubber spatula after each addition until incorporated. Scrape mixture into 16-cup tube pan.
4. BAKE Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean and cracks in cake appear dry, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool, inverted, to room temperature, about 3 hours. To unmold, run a knife along interior of pan. Turn out onto platter. Serve.

What can I say! I’m a monkey who can bake and knit hats!

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Wigger's From Otter Box's Sock Monkey Hat

otterbox

Fields of Poinsettias

The Garden Center is a riot of color right now!  So many poinsettias!  If you are in the city, plan to make a trip to Florist Row and the Walter Knoll Florist Garden Center -

Red Pink Red

Close Up

Friendly Staff - ALWAYS!

Many Sizes

Traditional

RED RED RED

Pinks and Greens

Pink and White

Feathery Pinks!

Red and White

Beautiful Pinks

Green!

with Santa!

You can read about Pointsettia care and feeding or visit our web site wkf.com for more of our holiday selections

Our garden center is chock full of bloomers! But I won’t mention any names!

Some of the new Flowering Plants

We have a been busy over the at the Lasalle Garden Center this winter,

there is a new automatic door, completely new sales and checkout area, new lighting,  and much more.

Come by and check us out. We’ll be waiting on you!