Flowers to chew on...

This pic shows a salad mix prepared by my suweeto-haato...
The usual stuff like peas, red turnips, onions, cucumbers...
Plus, edible flowers like the blue borage, the red nasturtium, the sinewy, beige (?) rocket, the pink geranium... and the yellow chrysanthemum...
All these (except peas and onions) were from the garden...
Tossed in olive oil, they were quite a delight for the senses...


Ages ago when I first landed in Tokyo as an airline crew, I had my first taste of 'hiya yakko'...
Cold tofu, that is... and so, a summer dish...
It shocked me, actually, to feel the cold of the curd...
But you get used to it...
Here, combined with that green stuff freshly plucked from the garden, and spruced up with sesame seeds and soy sauce... hmmm... oishikatta...


Am blessed, thinking that I can enjoy home-made bread each morning...
This one, pizza-toast, should I say?
Onions, bell peppers, shredded cheeze on wholesome bread...
Topped up with dashes of tomato sauce...
And toasted to perfection... (well, almost...)


And, one of my all time favorites...
Tomato-based spaghetti... preferably combined with seafood...
This one was meat, though... but still with some sweet basil leaves thrown in...
Wooh, equally yummy...

Autumn delights

Mid to late autumn is the season when the morning sun rays are well positioned to light up one of our three stone lanterns...
This lantern sits right in our view as we chew on our breakfast goodies each morning...


Your truly is not much of a vegetable gardener as yet... the dry summer almost killed the eggplants but the autumn rains save the day for us... so, we got to taste these plump looking fuits...


Plus, of course, our favorite bitter gourd, and the loofah which made good soup... oooh...


These are Jalapeno peppers... not that spicy so to say... but they are quite meaty and delicious to savor...


For some years, I have failed to produce any pumpkin from the garden... but this year, woah, 14 pumpkins big and small... cooked one small one the other day, and hmmm, wholesome, chewy, and not overly sweet... we are keeping them for winter consumption... waaah...

FLOWERS OFF THE GARDEN 2

The so-called 'sakura-zensen' or sakura-front is advancing towards north Japan...

Where I live, the petals have almost all fallen off at this point in time...

What's left are some sweet memories and some images taken of the 2007 spring blooms...


This pic of the 'jewel' was taken from a low angle... the previous pic was bit too dark... so, this is sort of a 'revenge' pic...


Yours truly taking a break from working the soil... as can be observed, the sakura tree trunk is quite immense... woaaahh...


Another angle of the same 'jewel'... taken in the early morning hours when the sun was just beginning to smile... at the background are terraced padi fields... they look pretty in any season...


These are yama-zakuras... hill or wild sakuras, if you like... pic was taken from the newly-built sun-deck... I could lay for hours, just gazing at these glorious hillsides...


The house with the red-tiled roof... pic taken from high up the hill slopes... sakuras at foreground are wild ones while the partially hidden 'jewel' is just to the right side of the house...

FLOWERS OFF THE GARDEN

Spring is such a lovely time to be in the garden...

Besides rolling on the soil and making a mess out of myself, I sometimes take time off for some little pleasures in talking to the flowers...


This is a close up of Oshima Sakura... the tree is like a large bonsai sitting in my garden... its fruits are like black cherries... taste kind of bitter sweet... and the color of the juice is deep purple...


We gaze at this lovely Shidare Sakura tree each morning when we have breakfast... little robins and nightingales come around to suck nectar off the flowers... characteristic of the shidare is its willowy flowers...


These are peach flowers... we only get to enjoy the flowers but not the fruits as they need at least two trees to cross-pollinate... may look for Ms. Peach to pair up with this guy...


These flowers come from a pear seedling that we just bought... obviously we will not get to see any fruit as the other pear seedling came flowerless... maybe we can sink our fangs into the fruits in three years' time (alreadea counting my chickens)...


This specimen comes from the Somei-Yoshino Sakura tree a.k.a. the 'jewel in the crown' of my garden... may be wrong, but this specie is perhaps the most common sakura specie in all Japan... more pics of this jewel in next post...