Grandson plus Spring(?!)...plus Food

This post is a little bit about 3 different topics… Genetics, spring in February and a new dining experience in our house.

When it comes to the genetics part of the story…how about this strapping young specimen dribbling down the court!  At 16 years of age, Emmett Lee is really into basketball and he looks the part too!  Could be another Steve Kerr, only better looking, at least in our opinion.  I’m wondering if he takes after his Papa?  Not likely, as I wasn’t very aggressive sports-wise…

Talk about intensity!  He’s going in for the kill!  Emmett’s mom, Amy, snapped both of these photos… We think that Emmett has Amy’s intensity when it comes to things he loves to do.

Now onto the topic of spring...

Our lone Forsythia bush, just planted last fall, is still a bit scrawny but it is in bloom.  Wait, isn’t it February?  It was blooming by mid-month!  We have had an exceptionally mild winter and our plants are not waiting for mid-March…

Knoxville’s average low temperature in January is 29.1 F and the average high temperature is 47.3 F.  This January 24 out of 31 days were above the average high, with a record 77 F one day and 6 other days in the 60s.  As far as low temperatures, Knoxville only recorded temperatures below the low average 9 times.

Our Lenten roses were blooming as well.  They’re doing better this year now that the trees next door were cut down for a new home.  They still should have enough shade to help them through the summer heat in East Tennessee.

The Lenten rose is a perennial flowering plant…a species of the buttercup family.  The plant is native to Greece and Turkey.  The common name…Lenten rose…relates to their tendency to flower during Lent.

Our various nandina bushes have taken off too!  Lots of color to please the eye… Nandina, heavenly bamboo or sacred bamboo is native to eastern Asia from the Himalayas to Japan.  Despite the common name, it isn’t a bamboo but it’s an evergreen shrub that can get fairly tall (7 feet in some instances), and it normally consists of unbranched stems growing from ground level.  In Japan, there are nandina gardening clubs…

Nandina is extremely toxic to birds and animals.  If birds, like cedar waxwings overindulge on nandina berries, it can kill them.  Do you live in ‘deer country’?  With its naturally occurring phytochemicals, this plant is commonly used in rabbit and deer resistant landscape plantings.

FYI…Nandina is considered to be an invasive plant in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.  It is important to only buy and sterile plant varieties anywhere in the southeastern United States.  

This bush with the compact little orange-red flowers is a very compact hybrid flowering quince.  The “Texas Scarlet” is a small, spreading, deciduous shrub with a plethora of fiery red flowers in clusters.  They are early spring bloomers but they’re at least 2 – 3 weeks early, even for East Tennessee.  Heavy rains have knocked off many of the blossoms.  February 2019 was the rainiest February on record and it looks like this February will come in as the second worst. (Still beats the heck out of snow!)

FYI…These shrubs are drought tolerant, can grow in poor soil and they can thrive with full or partial sun.  The deer in our neighborhood don’t seem to bother them much.

If you live in Tennessee, here’s a source for a list of deer “resistant” plants and shrubs.  (Note the word “resistant”!  A really desperate deer will eat almost any plant…even going so far as to eat holly leafs and then spit out the berries) Nothing is perfect but you can find some guidance at:  http://www.deerfriendly.com/deer/tennessee/tennessee-deer-resistant-plants.  For a similar plant listing for all other states in the USA, go to https://www.thespruce.com/deer-resistant-gardens-1402490.

Laurie took this photo of Tellico Lake from our upstairs balcony early one recent morning.  Note the fog out on the lake.  Warm air vs. cold water! The lake is fed by nearby mountain streams and rivers and the water is much colder than the air down in the Tennessee valley.  At the time of this writing, the Smoky Mountains have several inches of snow on them and we’ve had mountain rains for a couple of months now…

Sometime ago we’d picked up a jar of Patak’s Chicken Tikka Masala Curry simmering sauce.  When we ‘rediscovered’ it in our pantry, Laurie suggested that we should buy some boneless chicken thighs and give the sauce a try.  So we purchased a big package of thighs and picked up another jar of the curry sauce.

A couple of days later, Laurie cut chicken into chunks and she marinated the pieces in the sauce for several hours.  Then she put it into the oven at 275 for 2 1/2 hours or so.  This was the finished product as it came out of the oven.

Before our special entree, we had a wedge salad of our design.  Iceberg lettuce, with large cherry tomatoes, blue cheese crumbles and Italian balsamic salad dressing.  A very satisfying salad indeed.

This was what our entrees looked like.  We served the chicken Tikka Masala over balsamic rice.  I liked it a lot but it was a bit too spicy for Laurie.  I’m guessing that it won’t be a regular menu item at our house… I do have some leftovers…and I’m looking forward to enjoying them.  However, this is one dish that I’m not dropping an over-easy egg on for my breakfast!

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave