Spring Harvest Festival vol.2

　Many bunches of komatunas, pak-chois, and spinaches were harvested at this Festival. My daughter and her friend enjoyed dealing with chores like washing and packing the vegetables. I'm happy they were involved in my gardening activity.

My spinaches

The kids were washing komatunas and spinaches.

  Takeru, my daughter's freind, didn't get used to dealing

  vegetables.

My first pak chois seemed to bolt soon so we had to harvest them

despite their smaller size. I should have thinned out more of them.

-- from iPad

Spring Harvest Festival vol.1

 My family and friends of my kids gathered in my garden plot last sunday and enjoyed harvesting onions, komatunas, spinaches and pak chois. Most of my vegetables except from my potatoes are ready to be harvest and especially my onions have grown well so I have to harvest all of them (95  onions) before they will bolt. 

My daughter were struggle to pull out my onions, which were rooted deeper than I thought.

My daughter: "I can't pull it out!!"

Most of my onions are so big in good shape that I and my wife could have confidence in growing next onions.


My wife and daughter were preparing the onions for long term preservation with cutting their leaves.



All of the onions are left under eaves of my house. We will knot 2 or 3 onions with vinyl cords and hang them out.


-- from iPad

The Green Aid

I send today's harvest, bunches of komatunas, spinaches, pak-chois, and onions, to my friend in my university days who lives in Kamakura, near Tokyo. I've heard his family has suffered the shortage of vegetables caused by the ban on commercial distribution of vegetables produced in the radioactive-contaminated area.

Especially, most of spinaches which are consumed in Tokyo area are produced in Ibaragi and Fukushima pref, where are devastated by the accidents of nuclear power plants. The Japanese government decided to limit distribution of spinaches as well as other vegetables.
Consumers,including my friend, in the Tokyo area have been facing difficulty to buy vegetables.
And the consumers feel it scary that they might buy radioactive-contaminated vegetables in their local shops and they seem to seek other suppliers of vegetables outside the areas to get "safe vegetables".

I and my wife packed the vegetables in a cardboard box and send it with a courier service. I hope my vegetables may help his family.





-- from iPad

My potatoes have germinated!

 I found some of my potatoes have germinated. I wonder how many potatoes I would
harvest this summer!

-- from iPad

Harvesting my onions

 Onions, which I've been looking forward to harvesting since I planted them last year, are big and ripen! The grasses falling down shows it's time to be harvested.
 Today I harvested 6 onions and brought some to my mother and my younger sister. My wife is also so happy that many onions are successful since onions are so multipurpose that they can be used for various dishes.







Growing onions are easier than other vegetables I harvested, I believe. They need less care like watering and giving fertilizers.





Those are today's harvest.

①　6 onions
②　10 spinaches
③　8 pak chois
④　10 komatsunas





I believe the best way to enjoy fresh onions is shown below! That is sliced bonitos with sliced onions. Say sauce with citrus juice was added as condiment. Oh,,yummy!




-- from iPad

Cherry blossoms are blooming fully!

 Dear my blogging friends,
 Thank you for your warm words. I and my family are OK and I decided it's the time to restart blogging. 
 Today I visited local river banks where many cherry blossom trees are planted. It's the first outgo for me since the funeral for my father ended. The walking on the river side with seeing full-blooming cherry blossoms was so refreshing for a change.





Some areas of the river banks are designed for allowing people to go down to the edge of the banks and to enjoy feeding wild carp and seeing the cherry blossoms closely.






 The carp were waiting for their feed in the water. They know people along the bank will feed them.
















 I feel it comforting that I saw many kids were playing with their parents under cherry blossoms trees. That reminds me of a memory with my father who played with me long time ago and makes me sentimental. But what would my dad say me now? I believe he would say "Hey, cheer up, son! I'm always with you."



-- from iPad

My great dad

Dear my blogging friends,

It's very regrettable for me to announce that my father passed away today at the age of 62 and that I will have to be absent from blogging for whole of this week since I will have to host the funeral and to care my mother who was sadden with his death.

My father was a policeman for 35 years and he enjoyed his retirement for 10 years although he suffered his kidney failure and lung cancer.

I'm very proud of my dad and his attitude toward enjoying his own life with overcoming those deceases.

I believe his soul never die and his soul will always be with us although we can not hear and see him.

-- from iPa