Chopsticks of Doom

Two and a half years ago, when we moved from our apartment to the house we are in now, Dustin bought me a young Japanese maple tree. We planted it in front of our house and I have been a bit doting and over protective ever since.

Our brave/crazy friend Danielle who biked home with our maple as well as two other
bushes in her bike baskets.

In the late spring and early summer of this year, I noticed a dozen or so small, green limpet like things munching away on my maple leaves.  I pulled them off and disposed of them before they could do much damage. I didn't find them on any other plants in my garden though. 

About a week and a half ago, since the weather has cooled down a bit, I noticed they were back on my maple and this time I didn't really bother about pulling them off right away. Partially it was laziness and partially it was not really caring if the leaves get chewed up a bit since the tree will be shedding its leaves soon anyway. During that time they grew much larger and more caterpillar like. 

I finally decided to do something about them when Dustin brushed past the tree and instantly had a bad skin reaction. He said it was an itchy, painful burning sensation like fiberglass rubbed into your skin. The spot where he had touched the caterpillar stayed red and puffy for a few hours. 

The tree was pretty infested with these wee beasties and quite a few were at Rosie's hight, so I decided they needed to go. 

They always hang out on the underside of the leaves. Unfortunately for them, their
neon green colour doesn't blend in too well and they are easy to spot.

When William got home from kindergarten today, we decided to tag team this problem. I wielded the chopsticks of doom while William put them down for a dirt nap.

Always happy to oblige

In the wake of their destruction

Before you think I am a completely cruel and heartless killer, I did do a little research on this species before I obliterated them from my garden. The species is Parasa lepida, or the Nettle Caterpillar, and they are a nuisance invasive species in Japan. I may have felt a small twinge of guilt wiping out a native species, but the ecologist in me feels absolutely no remorse about assisting in removing a poisonous, exotic pest.

I am curious if they will show up again next spring but if they do, William and I will be ready for them!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

The ever changing, unpredictably of the seasons from year to year and how that affects plants and animals is something that I find endlessly exciting. I am one of those people that remembers within a week, and usually within a day or two, when flowers first open, shoots appear, or trees bear fruit from year to year. I may not always remember to grab my phone as I head out the door, but I can tell you exactly when the wintersweet down the street first started flowering during the past four winters. I am sure this natural inclination is what pushed me into studying ecology. So let me take you on a tour of some of the things growing in our garden this summer.

This year I decided to utilize a bit more of the space around our tiny yard and experiment with a few plants I have never grown before. In front of our house I have a small flower bed that self seeds itself with four o'clocks each year. This year I decided to plant okra, hot peppers, and shishito peppers amongst the four o'clocks. 

Before coming to Japan, I had only eaten okra breaded and deep-fried or in Cajun dishes like gumbo. I sort of liked it, but it would never have been on my top twenty list of plants to grow or even buy. It could be my love of natto that made my palate accustomed to sliminess or trying a new way of preparing okra (blanched and salted) but now I absolutely can't get enough of it. I would be satisfied with a whole bowl of okra as a meal. Okra was not just a delicious addition to our flower bed, but an aesthetically pleasing one too, since the flowers are absolutely gorgeous. 

light yellow and deep burgundy okra flowers

Shishito is a pepper that I have rarely bothered buying because they taste like bell peppers and are a fraction of the size. However, I was guaranteed by the lady at the plant store that these shishito were very spicy so I decided to give it a go. I have decided that they are absolutely fascinating peppers. Most of them have no spiciness whatsoever, but very occasionally there is a spicy one. I'm not sure I would ever grow them again, but they do produce quite well and since they aren't so spicy, the kids don't mind them.  

Shishito

I also planted a few hot peppers because, as anyone who had ever had a meal with me knows, pretty much everything is better with some heat.

Hot peppers ripening

We also seeded a couple of pots of basil and oregano.

Cilantro is something that I have tried to grow multiple times without too much luck. Dustin and I absolutely love and you just cannot buy it in Japan at least in our area. Every time I plant it, I get a pot of gangly, pitiful looking cilantro plants that never seem to bush out. We do get a meal or two's worth and that is usually enough for to help stave off the intense cravings until I can plant some more. 

We also planted tomatoes on our side yard in our usual spot next to the compost bin. Within no time they turned into a dense tomatoey jungle that began to trail over the side of our wall and into the ditch. Our neighbours often come by and give me gardening lectures about how I should trim every side branch off to turn them into tall skinny tomato trees, which is how everyone seems to grow tomatoes around here, but I find that the plants just produce way less when I do that. Last year I was very careful about pruning but it was the worst tomato harvest I'd ever had. This year I only pruned occasionally, mostly let the tomatoes do their thing, and had huge yields despite the all the rain. I actually tried weighing all that I harvested over the summer and somewhere around 25 kilos I stopped bothering. All this from only 3 plants!  

Our house is right next to a small train line and the whole strip beside the train tracks used to be filled with vegetable gardens. About a year ago the neighbourhood was given a letter from the city saying we weren't allowed to plant gardens in this space. The majority of people complied but there are still a few gardens here and there. When my brother was out visiting in May, he encouraged me to feign ignorance of this letter and clear some space to grow some more vegetables. I pretty quickly caved to his bad influence and now have a sneaky secret garden. I decided to plant only short, non obvious plants, that couldn't be seen quite as easily from the train or street. So I chucked in a few sweet potato vines, cucumber plants, and peanut plants (which promptly died). I am curious to dig up my sweet potatoes soon and see if they grew!

In Retrospect

Is it a bit late to do a recap post on 2012? Maybe, but you'll have to forgive me as I reminisce about the highlights of the last year.

2012 was a year of calm and stability compared with the storm of change that was 2011. This was our first full year in Japan and full of positive experiences and growth. Both Dustin and I have become more comfortable and confident in our jobs, Dustin teaching and me managing our household and family in a foreign country. Even the simplest things can be complicated here, mostly because of the language barrier and different systems, but we have managed to find a secure rhythm and routine to life over the past year.

Last year at this time, William was 9 months old. I was still dealing with him waking every 3 hours, breastfeeding, and all the energy that must be devoted into entertaining/corralling a young, super active baby. People always say: "Enjoy these moments because they grow up way too fast!", but these are people whose children are already grown and out of the house. When you are up all night with a sick infant or just had your bookshelf dismantled by little grubby hands, you kind of wish they would grow up at least a little bit faster. They do grow up though, and over the course of the past year William has become much more independent, self entertained, and capable. He was also sleeps though the night! Woo hoo!

I can't believe he was so little!

William has developed a true affinity for Japanese food.

Theo has grown so much too. November 1st marked his first full year of yochien and his Japanese has gotten quite good over that time. He now even talks in the local Hiroshima dialect as well as standard Japanese. He has become extremely close to his brother, always making sure that he is entertained and well looked after. I feel so lucky to have two children who don't just put up with each other's company, but seek it out and enjoy it.

The last day of school, March 2012

Best friends beating the summer heat

We were also able to escape the tiny confines of our apartment and move into a house that is just the right fit for our family. If I were to pick one event this past year that has had the most positive influence on our lives it would be this move. So much stress and annoyance was generated by being squeezed into cramped quarters and having no personal outdoor space for our children to tear around in. We love this old house!

We also left behind bit of the summer heat and headed back to Canada for a family visit. This will probably be the last trip we make back west for at least a few years, so it was good to see every one. 

While we were in Canada, I was able to spend some time with my sister and her newborn daughter Josephine. This is my first niece and I am so glad that I got to meet her!

We were also able to rent a garden plot in our neighbourhood, which is something we have been wanting to do ever since we got here. This picture is pretty old, since we have already been harvesting veggies from our garden for a few weeks now.

Through Dustin's work, our church, and random chance we have developed an amazing group of friends over the past year. We have met so many loving, supportive people and I can't imagine what our life in Japan would be like without them. Sniff, sniff...I love you guys!

Overall, 2012 was a fantastic year. Welcome 2013, if you are anything like your predecessor we are in for some good times!

Home Sweet Home

view from the street

It has been almost a month since we moved to our new place. We have all settled in well and are really enjoying the extra space and privacy. Our neighbours, who are all elderly, are extremely curious and friendly and are always stopping by to drop off a vegetable or two from their garden and to chat with the kids. The only snag we have run into is with our internet. After waiting four weeks, we were called by the internet provider and told, for some reason we couldn't quite understand, that our house can't be hooked up to their system. We now have to figure out some way of getting internet, either by changing the type of internet we will receive or going with a completely different company. Either way, it means that we will be waiting at least another 1 - 2 months for internet. This will be the longest that we have been without internet service in over 10 years and has been a bit of an adjustment not being able to use Wikipedia to settle our ever occurring disputes and feeling cut off from our friends and family back home. Our friends in the area have been generous in letting us use their internet when we need it, so I am going to make a point to put a blog post more often than not in spite our solitary confinement.

peering through the fence that Dustin built

So here is the catch up on what we have been keeping ourselves busy with in the past month. The first two weeks in June were spent unpacking and getting our yard set up.  Before we came, the yard was a patch of bare earth with an opening to the street and two bushes. Our first order of business was to build a fence to close off the yard and keep the children from running into the street. Dustin attracted the attention of all the old men in the neighbourhood while he built it. They kept stopping by periodically to see how far he had gotten and give him advice and praise. While he did that, I made a flower bed by the front window and a vegetable patch in the side yard and got all of the assorted plants from our apartment balcony into the ground. I also got our compost bin set up which pleased me to no end. Those of you who don't compost may think I am crazy, but for those who do, I think you share my inexplicable joy in watching food scraps decompose.

digging out the smallest of the three tree roots

The second weekend in June was taken up by removing three stumps from the yard, building a bike shelter, and planting grass. Some of our fantastic friends came over and with their help hard work we were able to get everything done in a weekend. We had hoped to put sod down on our yard since we didn't have much space to cover and didn't want to go through all of the time and hassle of growing grass seed. When we went to buy it however, there was only a few small, half dead bundles left in all of the garden centers we went to. The sod here is very different than what we are used to in North America. Here they sell a stack of eight 30 cm x 30 cm squares tied in a bundle. The sod that we bought had been sitting for over a month at the garden center so it did not look too great by the time we got it. When we bought sod in Canada, it was cut that day and rolled into big healthy green rectangles that were about 60 cm x 150 cm. Not many people plant grass in Japan, or have very much space to do so, and this was reflected in the health and quantity of sod available. So in the end we sprinkled grass seed over 3/4 of the yard and put the half dead sod on the remaining 1/4. We were pretty lucky that the weather turned drizzly for a week and a half afterwards and I didn't have to waste water while the seeds were germinating.

our baby grass growing in

The bike shelter that Dustin built has a living roof on the top of it. We still need to put a bit more soil up there and plant some nice hearty succulents in it. 

the top of the bike shelter waiting to be planted

There are still a few more things that we would like to do outside, but for the most part it is just being patient until the new grass fills in. As a point of reference, here is a picture that I took before we moved in and another of nearly the same angle that I took yesterday:

Before

After

Sometime soon I will take some shots of the inside of our place and put them up. After only four weeks it really is starting to look and feel like home!

Mushroom Logs

For my birthday a few weeks ago, Dustin got me the coolest present: two shiitake growing kits! I absolutely love mushrooms, to eat and just in general, so I was pretty excited to get them growing.

Contents of the kit

The kits included a log about 40 cm long that has been seeded with spores, a plastic bin for storing it in while the mushrooms are growing, a plastic bag for keeping in moisture, a plastic wedge for standing up the log, and instructions. The log has circular spots cut out of it in regular intervals where the mushrooms are supposed to sprout from.

First, the log was soaked in ~16° water for 24 hours until it was completely water logged. I then drained the water and propped it up in the white plastic bin and wrapped the whole thing up in a plastic bag to keep in all of the moisture and humidity. It has to be kept at a temperature range between 14° and 22° while the mushrooms are growing. Our bedroom and living room are the only places we heat in our apartment, and outside is far too cold, so I opted for sticking it in our bedroom closet.

After a few days of forgetting about it, I noticed a few little white bumps emerging from some of the circular grooves. In no time at all, they have been swelling to lovely little mushrooms. It should take another week or so before they reach the perfect size, but I amazed at how fast they have been growing!

Mushroom log before soaking

Circular spot "seeded" with spores

Incubator bag

About to sprout

Baby mushrooms!

The great thing about these logs is that mushrooms can be produced multiple times before you have to throw the log away. After each two week mushroom growing cycle, you allow the log to dry out and "rest" for about a month and a half. Then you can soak it again and start over. You can also buy super large 2 meter logs that have been seeded with spores but I am not sure if Dustin would be too happy with me shoving those into our closet!

Knitting Needles of Doom

Years ago, my brother and I realized that we had very different views about gardening. I love plants and watching them grow, but the edibility of the plant has very little bearing on whether I like it or not. In my opinion, beautiful flowers, interesting leaves, and fruit are all an equally good reason to grow a certain plant. However, my brother couldn't be bothered if the plant doesn't produce something he can't eat or use. If it doesn't put out for him, he won't put out for it.

I have been a bit reminded of this discrepancy since my mom has been up north visiting us. She has been more or less knitting constantly since arriving. She has started, stopped, finished, and changed countless projects sometimes all in the course of a day. Usually the projects are leaning into the bizarre realm, like the Wizard of Oz themed blanket(?) that she is making at the moment.

Possibly I don't get the joy of creative knitting; to me it should be strictly functional. You make a sweater, pair of slippers, or hat. You do not knit the whole royal wedding. Maybe one day, 35 years from now, I will pick up knitting and realize that I only have the desire to knit little fluffy Cthulhu dolls, wooly parasites, or internal organs, but for now I wonder what it will take to get my mom to make me a simple cable knit sweater.

On the other hand, Theo has been loving the weird knitting. He has been enjoying his dozen doughnuts, little flying pig, and rat. I must admit that I do like my TARDIS Kindle cover and Dustin has been pushing for a little felted Yoda hat for William. However, I think I might start hiding her knitting needles if she starts knitting things like this: