Bitter gourd, pumpkin, and long beans...

Been very busy with work lately...

Bitter gourd is standard fare on our dining table... 

My sweeto haato specifically says, 'grow the long type and not the stubby type'...

They are quite easy to grow... at this point of time, we have on record a harvest of 54 fruits...

My missus tried to make this dish (known as Yong Tau Foo in Malaysia) and they tasted, yes, bitter... but good...

Pumpkin too, is a staple for us in the summer...

This season, managed to harvest five of them, totaling 8.1 kilos...

Gave one to a neighbor...

I don't know what it is but the yellow pumpkin seeds I bought from Los Angeles some time ago had never given me any good harvest...

After growing to a certain size, they begin to wrinkle away, and eventually, drop off altogether...

So, I decided to just harvest them young, very young...

We had them with the bitter gourd dish above...

Long beans... I love...

They are a very convenient veggie to grow...

You harvest and they keep producing...

Flowers... of Soap wort, Oregano, Jerusalem artichoke, and Lotus...

Japan is in the midst of the O-bon season, as in All Souls Day...

The university is closed for a full week... 

Put in the two weekends, and yours truly is only too happy to be having a 9-day break...

Which means, an excellent opportunity to catch up with the chores in the potager...

Yes, it is a joy to be able to work in the garden, but still, the heat... ooh, it's killing...

We have been trying to grow this soap wort for a while now...

Am happy to see that they are growing well...

Belongs to the carnation family and has sweet smelling flowers...

Apparently can be used as a mild soap but we haven't tried doing so...

The wild marjoram a.k.a. oregano looks pretty but my missus prefers the sweet marjoram for cooking...

And so is the Jerusalem artichoke... it looks pretty...

We tried eating their tubers but did not quite like their taste...

The mini-lotus flower is doing beautifully in the pond... 

Blueberries, corn, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes...

Oooh hooo... the temperatures these days...

The highs oscilate between 35 and 36 degrees....

Scorching.... burning.... brutal...

Each day during the weekends when I do the garden, I need to change my garden clothes three to four times, alternating between two sets of clothes...

Had planted three blueberry seedlings some years ago...

This year, they are fruiting quite substantially...

Each day, we get to harvest a little bit of the fruits...

We take them with our yogurt for breakfast...

Corn is really doing well, despite being attacked by pests...

We love the taste of home-grown corn so much that we decided to buy more seeds...

They are now beginning to germinate and we hope to see some harvest in October....

Planted only one eggplant this season...

They are heavy feeders and they need quite a bit of water....

Next season, I shall add one more seedling as my sweeto haato is beginning to like eggplants...

As with the eggplant, I have only one zucchini plant....

It is just sufficient for the two of us...

Tomatoes are a regular member at our potager...

We can't get enough of them...

My missus sometimes cooks some lovely Ratatouille with the tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant together with some other ingredients...

Flowers... 'Standing wave', borage、azalea, lilac, black-eyed susan, sumomo...

Note: Am dedicating this post to Malar, who had graciously nominated this humble blog for the 'Versatile Blogger Award'... 

Had been 'itching' for a while to post these flower pictures...

Some of them have been sitting in the hard-disk for many moons now...

This is a wild flower found in the surrounding hills... 

The scientific name is Scutellaria indica...

What a mouthful... again, prefer its Japanese name, タツナミソウ、literally, 'Standing wave' flower?

A member of the sage family...
I took back a specimen to plant it in our potager...

Borage is like, every where in our garden...
Not to say I am complaining...

In fact, I cannot get enough of their pretty flowers...

Mountain azaleas are also thriving in our garden...
They mainly come in colors of pink although some are whitish while others are somewhat orange...

The lilac never fails to bloom in early spring...
They are quite prolific, so to say...

And black eyed Susans... they have very much 'settled' down in a corner at our garden...
I actually prefer them to the sunflowers as cut flowers...

And finally, this series of pictures of flowers of our Japanese plum 'sumomo'...

We pruned this plant last autumn...

In spring, the blooms were plentiful...

And for reasons still unknown to us, the plant decided to die out on us...  sad...

Tomatoes, cucumber, perilla, red shiso, rocoto, Japanese yam...

The rains continue to come...
Yesterday, we witnessed another session of blistering thunderstorms...

And yes, it is the season for tomatoes...
'Momotaro' is the strain...

And of course, cucumbers too...

Been chewing on these crunchies for some time now...

The Korean perilla has taken a really good hold on our potager... they are all over and the leaves are huge...
The 'ama-gaeru' (literally, rain-frogs) are also very comfortable in our garden...

My apologies to Green Dragonette for the long pause in responding to query on what we do with the red shiso...
The only two things we do with the red shiso are to use them as a coloring and preservative (together with salt) for our Japanese ume plums, and to make juice... 
The juice making is very simple indeed...

Ingredients:
red shiso 200 gm
sugar 600 gm
apple vinegar 1 cup

Wash red shiso well, use only the leaves
Put 6 cups of water and shiso into pot and boil for 20 mins.
Remove shiso leaves, squeeze the leaves and dispose
Add sugar and apple vinegar and boil for another 20 mins in low heat
Cool and store in clean flask or bottle in room temperature
Dilute accordingly, add ice or syrup, and enjoy

Grew rocoto chillies for the first time last year, with seeds given to me by a former student from Peru...

They are beginning to produce now...
The flowers are really pretty... the branches and leaves, hairy...

Am growing the Japanese yam again this year...
The root is a versatile and a lovely vegetable to eat... And the seeds ('mukago' in Japanese) that dangle off the vines also make good eating... we boil them together with rice...