Massive, vicious Typhoon Number 6 hits Shikoku

Massive, vicious Typhoon Number 6 made a straight hit at Shikoku on 19th July...

We had just returned on the 18th, after spending a short break at Malaysia... 

Our plants began fluttering in the winds...

Oh oh, I knew we had to do some harvesting or else...

Quickly grabbed some amaranth, red and green...

Some tomatoes, and an ear of a baby corn...

The Malabar spinach, red and green... 

such a handsome looking vegetable...

The green ones are really fleshy and chewy...

Had purchased some Burpee cucumber seeds on our trip to Los Angeles in March...

When we returned on the 18th, the cucumbers were dangling all over the plants...

All in all, we harvested 19 cucumbers, weighing about 5 kilograms...

My missus could not wait to pickle them...

Urmmm, I love pickled cucumbers...

Prior to leaving for Malaysia, had harvested the 'mountain peaches'...

Made fresh juice out of them... 

The blood-red color... 

that is original... absolutely no additives whatsoever...

They tasted sooo fresh and gooood...

Oooh, can't wait for next season to harvest them again...

'Mountain peach', loquat liqueur, butterflies...

We have what the Japanese folks call a Yama-momo tree in our garden...

Literally, it means 'mountain peach'... 

I prefer this name to that of 'wax myrtle'...

It is a tall shrub, and a beautiful one at that...

Its fruits are small, about one centimeter in diameter...

And they look a bit like raspberries even... 

Except that they have seeds inside...

They taste quite sweet, with a tinge of sourness in them...

The little butterflies visit our herb garden often in this season... 

It is a joy to observe them hopping around the flowers...
This one is sucking nectar from the flowers of the curry plant...

Cathy@home asked about how we made wine out of loquats... 

Well, we don't really make wine out of them, so to say...

Rather, we 'flavor' the wine (with the seeds)...
In Japan, we can easily buy jars specifically designed for this purpose...
They come in 4 liter jars, and the jars are filled with 1.8 liters of 'white' liquor...
With this, we make liqueur out of them...

I am fond of eating the flesh of the loquats...
I keep the seeds, drying them under the sun...

While they dry, they emit a very nice almond-like scent...

My missus put about 800 grams of the dried seeds and about 300 grams of rock sugar into the jars...

And we let it mellow for about a year...

This one has been with us for two years...

I do not consider myself a drinker but I do take a tiny cup of this liqueur once in a while during dinner...

Apparently, the seeds of the loquats have elements that suppress cancer...

I regularly eat about two seeds per day with my meals...

They taste good, anyway, and it would be a waste to throw them away...