Purple corn... purple eggplant...

Hosted a student from Peru who kindly brought some purple corn for me all the way from the hinterland of Lake Titicaca...
He has since left for home but his kindness lingers on at our potager...
Edgar, thank you very much, if you are reading this...

Tried planting some seeds last summer...
The corn plants have this purple 'veins' in the stems and leaves...
Cute... I thought to myself...

They grew and grew... stopping at about almost 3 meters?
Happy and happy I was...
But, happiness was short-lived as the typhoons came by...
All the plants broke into two...  except one...
And this is the lone, precious-precious fruit from the 'harvest'...

Luckily, I had saved some seeds for a second round of planting, which I did last July...
I had always believed that plants, like humans, have some kind of 'thinking' mechanism in them...

This second batch of purple corn plants 'decided' to start flowering at about 2 meters or less...
A response to the upcoming cold season, perhaps?
Happiness returns... as the ears begin to appear...

My suweeto haato had not been very fond of eggplants...
Until one day, she came home with a bunch of long and lanky eggplants after visiting her youngest sister in Kyushu...
Somehow, her taste buds changed from then on... and eggplant dishes began to show up on my dinner plates...

Meanwhile, I had only grown eggplant once before and I was not very successful with it...
Why, for they are heavy feeders...
And I am not a very good feeder of fertilizers to my plants...

Now, late last summer, I accompanied my suweeto haato on one of her daily (well, almost) walks in the hills...

There is this plot of land midway up the hill, that is being used as a landfill for some construction firm...
We often see a medium sized truck hauling all sorts of debris up there to be dumped as landfill...

The unobstructed view of the Japan Inland Sea from there is really beautiful...
We imagine that after a certain amount of landfill, some big shot company president will come over and build his fifth summer holiday villa or something like that...

Anyway, while walking pass the landfill, a little plant caught my eye...
And I knew it was an eggplant seedling, growing 'wild' amongst the debris...
I dug it up and just then, I discovered a second seedling...
Took them home, knowing that it was a little too late to start planting eggplants...

Three months or so passed... and woah... it is harvest time for purple eggplants...

Ok, please allow me to dedicate this post to Connie Nakamura...
She has just moved to Japan from Saipan and is planning to try her hand at vegetable gardening...

I am much humbled to be at the receiving end of what she had to say of me (or my potager blog?)... and it is indeed an honor to be requested by her to act as her 'mentor'...

For a 'student' of gardening, I still am...

Yet, it will be my pleasure to be part of this exciting adventure in life...

May your garden blooms a thousand blooms....
And fruits, a thousand fruits...  :)

Bountiful peanut harvest...

Had been fooling around growing peanuts in the potager for about three years...

The last two years had seen harvests that were, hmmm, pitiful... to say the least...

Today, the leaves showed some signs of yellowing... 

So, decided to do some harvesting... 

Was thrilled to see the scales tipping at 3.3 kilograms...

Immediately called my third sis in Malaysia...

Advised me to put the peanuts out to dry...

The roots too, she suggested to dry...

And make peanut root chicken soup later on...

While harvesting the peanuts, discovered a radish root 'hiding' within...

Topping off the rainy and cloudy weekend, a neighbor brought over some 'yuzu' citrus for us... nice...

Cosmos from a friendly neighbor...

Saturday today started off cloudy...
The potager was wet from the heavy rain yesterday...

Could not really work on the wet soil...

So, filed the teeth of the chain saw to get ready for the upcoming wood collecting season for our wood stove...

And changed the rotor-blade of the grass cutter machine...
Many of the blades were chipped due to inadvertent hits on rocks and pebbles while cutting the grass...

Later part of the morning, began to work on the slopes...
Am using wood recycled from the stone masons to make 'terraces' along the slopes...

Was pleasantly surprised to receive some cosmos flowers from a neighbor the other day...
Along with the chrysanthemum, the cosmos is probably the most representative of flowers in Japan for the month of October...

Am linking this post to the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for the first time...

Wonderful autumn days...

It is days like these that I wish would last forever...

The temperature throughout the weekend was a pleasant mid-twenties...

No rain, no wind... heavenly it was...

And the moon at night... wooh,  so bright and lovely...

Spent the weekend doing a wide range of activities in the garden...

Last year, raccoons came by to rob us of our sweet potatoes...

Luckily this year, there was still no sign of them coming...

Anyway, harvested some of the sweet potatoes in our potager...

We had four types: Anno (left), which has orange flesh and is really delicious... Naruto Kintoki (right top), which is the main type sold in the stores around here... and Murasaki imo (right bottom) which literally means purple sweet potatoes... have yet to harvest the fourth type, Beni-azuma...

Read about the rose hips in Tanya's Lovely Greens blog...

Then asked my missus to harvest the rose hips from the wild roses in our property...

The hips are tiny, less than one centimeter or so...

They taste sourish and we shall be having them as tea, eventually...

Tried growing some hyacinth beans this year...

They have flowers that resemble those of wisterias...  

Apparently, they make good curries...

Will certainly request my missus to give it a shot...

Lantanas have taken a liking to our garden...

My missus bought only one pot some years ago but it seems that they since self seeded...

We can find them in numerous places in our garden...