The sweet smell of autumn...

Ah, the days appear to be cooling off...

The autumn smell is, but in the air...

From the potager, ladies fingers...

Long, slender, beautiful...

Alongside... dried, over-ripe corn kernels that escaped the harvester's eye...

Thin, somewhat 'undernourished' kangkong greens...

Yet, delicious when stir fried with black beans and garlic...

Same goes with the zucchinis...

Merely finger-sized, when harvested... 

Beyond that, they shrunk and turned bad...

'The Pride of India' stands tall in this season...

Blooms so pink, radiant even in the rains... 

And to Diana, this post is dedicated to...

Many, many thanks for the seeds...

of zinnia, sunflower, basil, hollyhock...

and of luffa, amaranth, capsicum, carnation... 

The harvest continues...

Was thrilled to have a week off from the university...

In this 'o-bon' (all souls?) season, the Japanese folks take time off from work to pay respects to their deceased ancestors...

For me, this presents an excellent opportunity for me to spend time in the potager...

Still, the heat is a bit too stifling...   

Which need not necessarily be a bad thing...

For I can sweat it out in the mornings when it is still rather tolerable...

And after my tea break at 10:00 am, I get into a change of gear and head out to the sea...

For the first time since we moved here years ago, I am truly beginning to cherish the joys of  frolicking at the sea...

Each day, thankfully, we have something to harvest...

Pumpkin, which weighed about 1.9 kilograms...

Cucumbers so crunchy and fresh...

Tomatoes so sweet and juicy...

We dug out our potatoes some time ago...

The harvest was not the best we had...

No complains though, as the scales tipped at a little over 3 kilograms...

And my sweeto haato turned the potatoes into this...

A mixture of several ingredients...

Urmmm... simple yet heavenly it was...

Was never successful with water melons, so to say...

But this season, not too bad... 

This one was about 1.6 kilograms...

Just nice for the two of us, for two fruit-courses after lunch...

The bitter gourds are turning out pretty well... 

And as the label implies, they are truly bitter although we should say that 'bitter' stuff is not one of our weak areas...

The watermelon as it was...

Juicy, sweet, and sooo refreshing when consumed in the heat of summer...

Gardening in the heat of summer

Hmmm, must say to you folks that I am more of a (student) 'gardener' rather than a 'blogger'...

I take my hat off to some of you folks who can update your blogs so often...

Anyway, been enjoying dirtying my hands in the potager as usual...

But with this heat... ooh, the mercury hits 33 degrees today...

The heat had my tongue dangling, and my body oozing out sweat literally in the liters...

I must be quite mad to be out in the potager in this heat...

The last time I sweated like this was probably when I worked in the construction firm more than 30 years ago...

My sweeto haato continues to walk the hills in the mornings...
And she found these gorgeous looking wild Dianthus aka carnation or pink....

A check on the net reveals that the word Dianthus is derived from the Greek words dios (god) and anthos (flower)...

And that bug, what's its name? 

I know that bug had been chewing on the young leaves of my cucumbers and pumpkins...   

Everyday, while my better half prepares breakfast, I go out to the potager to pluck off some goodies... Here, we had some (male) pumpkin flowers and a nasturtium flower... 

We eat them together with our breakfasts.....

Those edible flowers, plus of course the tomatoes of the Sicilian Rouge type, cucumbers, sweet basil, dill, parsley...

All freshly picked just minutes before consumption...

We had quite a bit of Japanese plums this season...

Not the 'ume' but the 'sumomo' type (literally 'sour peach')...

We turned them into preserves and we are enjoying it a little at a time with our yogurt... 

Summer is the season of cicadas...

These creatures apparently live most of their lives underground...

We were lucky to see this particular specimen molting right in front of our eyes...

The process took hours, giving me a good opportunity to observe and photograph it...

And finally, I'd like to show a picture of a horsefly...

Like the cicadas, they make their appearance in the heat of summer...

When yours truly is sweating like a waterfall in the potager, the horsefly beckons and bites...

Sheesh, I mean, ouch! 

Often there'd be like 10 of these little monsters buzzing around my legs...

And they bite through the clothes...

I thought mosquito was bad, but the horsefly takes the cake...

Like the mosquito, it is the female that needs to draw blood...

Apparently they need the blood to help them in their reproduction process...

Funny thing is, my wife does not really get attacked by these flies...

Is it because they prefer the 'juice' (blood) of the human male?

Or is it because, as my wife suspects, they find my bodily scent too sexy to resist?

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...