Enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of first-time parenthood. Progress on the vegetable garden and other ramblings of a gaijin in Japan’s least populous prefecture.
I was thinking of giving this post the title of adekun’s arse smorgasbord. It’s really been a two pronged assault. Firstly, my wife decided to quite wisely store my garden clothes outside in the plastic ‘bunker’ along with the biting insects. The other more lately, is the onset of warmer weather and with it mosquitoes. I guess the worst of it followed the aforesaid carrot picking when I unknowingly donned my trousers.
Anyway, early March I got told to cut down the four tsubaki (camellia) trees in the corner of the garden. An irritating type of caterpillar is overly fond of them, little Mr Investigator might meet with similar results as his father when playing in the garden. It’s a shame to have to do away with the trees. The upshot is the veg garden has greatly increased in size and somebody else’s tired knees get saved from the weeding.
Before: (Last year and a little mulch)
After: (It does look a bit barren)
Last Monday was hot. I bought most of the summer vegetables, a replacement spade and a compost fork (hurrah). Just as the last plants were going in (early again) the next day it started to rain. What great timing I thought, only it was so heavy and lasted until Saturday night. Toyama gets a mention again; the news Wednesday morning reported pictures of drifts (I think) 4 or 5 metres high. Today, the plants look okay and the potatoes planted where the trees were have emerged. As it’s been dry a day, digging started again.
As mentioned before it has been windy and rainy the past week. The sakura held out for the sakura matsuri (cherry blossom festival) on Saturday. Cloudy early on, it soon warmed up. We walked through the park, through wafts of pink petals and barbeques.
A little further to the south, the following afternoon was spent around Shoyama. Countless trees line the river.
It’s hard to portray in a couple of photos, especially being overcast. I had a really nice time despite sneezing myself inside out.
I’m probably going to regret not going hanami last Sunday. Since then, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. The last few days the rain has been heavy and I wonder if there will be any sakura blossom left on the trees. It’s good for the garden though. No amount of rain was going to turn around my carrot’s fortune. I think it’s apparent with everything else this year, being frugal with the organic stuff (through want of more) has stunted or slowed it. The cores of the carrots had turned woody. Yesterday, under a pale sky, in moderate drizzle, they got yanked out. The roots got their whiskers scraped off before going into the compost bin, whilst the tops got scattered on the ground. The most direct route to the thankfully good asparagus can perhaps be likened to that of a scene from Palm Sunday. As it got even wetter outside, I took the best specimen I saved and performed a simple vegetable autopsy. Running a knife around the circumference, down the front and back, and with a twist…
