Sabbatical Garden

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.                             
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have decided to reframe this past year and have declared it to have actually been an unexpected sabbatical. And because every sabbatical needs a purposeful project, I believe that we can claim our vegetable garden as such. It was and continues to be an experiment in self-sufficiency, botany, chemistry, and even perhaps spirituality (if you count singing to your plants a form of prayer, as I do). 

This morning I was looking at the scene below and felt a surge of pride at our little vegetable patch. Our garden has been the manifestation of the one word we decided to work on for this year: tenacity. We have learned that just because something looks like a withered brown stick or a piece of wet tissue paper does not mean it is dead. In fact, patience and love do triumph in the end. This may seem commonsense to my wise readers but for me who is always ready to jump instead of to sit still, it has been a very valuable lesson to glean from my sabbatical.

Anyway, without further ado, let me show you around our garden, as it is now in mid-July. 

We chose the backyard instead of the original garden space in the front of the property because:  
 a. it's easier to keep an eye on the kids and b. it's rather gorgeous.

White and yellow Italian strawberries, grown from seed. It took them forever to get beyond the little sprout stage but here they are, looking rather lush.

Our okra forest.

Sorry for the blurriness. We have two types: Alabama red (seen here) and Star of David.

An okra blossom. I did not know this until I grew okra but essentially the okra is the blossom, curled up. Something quite lovely about that besides for being such a delicious vegetable. 

Eggplant patch. 

Edirne striped eggplant. 

Asian eggplant.

Watermelons!

Moon and stars watermelon. 

Tomato forest. About 50 plants with a mixture of black plum and purple Cherokee. We are harvesting at least a quart of tomatoes everyday now.

Pepper patch.

Chocolate bell peppers. They will turn a purplish brown and be rather sweet.

Wenk's yellow hot pepper. Mildly hot. 

Italian cowpeas. They are finally getting the hang of the trellis. 

Japanese climbing cucumber. Currently the caterpillars are feasting on this luscious vine but it is a determined plant.

Colette's sesame plants. We actually have a row of these at the back of the garden that are still only a tenth of this size. Colette planted these when she was helping in the garden and did her part to water them everyday. That girl has quite the green thumb, ne?

Okay, so it is hard to see the veggies for the weeds here but this is our green onion patch. It is quite prolific despite the weeds and has been our source of negi goodness for a few months now.

The fields of greens. Well, this was our greens patch, kale, mizuna, rainbow chard, and collards. Until June we were eating salads with every meal but they could not survive the 97 degree days. The collards are actually still trucking and there are some experimental edamae and shallots buried in there.


Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them. -A.A. Milne
Since we have sandy soil, we found that most of the weeds are helping the garden. They also attract pollinators so frankly, I am fond of the weeds. Even the stinging nettles that I despised as a barefoot child are welcomed in our garden.

How does your garden grow

It has only been a couple of weeks since we started our gardening venture. I am so glad to have brought this into our lives. We all get so much pleasure in watering the plants and watching them thrive. Colette is the Queen of the Watering Can so I have to get out there before she does in the morning to make sure all the plants get watered. And she has learned the valuable lesson of not crushing the plants, or plucking them out of the ground. Now she is very careful and hardly ever plays with their dirt. Sebastian is pleased because the sunflower seeds that he planted, most of the twenty(!) seeds, sprouted and are zooming up in all directions right now. Jason even contributed to the mix by adding that lovely little hydrangea with the perfect antique blue tiny blossoms.

It is an addictive habit, this gardening stuff. This weekend we plan to add eggplant, shiso, rosemary, and salad greens. And we will be starting a little compost container to use all of our kitchen scraps, perhaps using the bokashi method. It is part of my goal of cutting our garbage production in half.

The best thing about this experience has been involving the kids in every step. They already have a natural interest in all things growing (and all things in general, of course) and the boys get to do a little gardening at both of their schools. Colette is happiest when she is digging and using her hands so this new routine of ours is perfect for her. I do worry about their attitude towards the natural world living in a human curated city that is heavy on the concrete and light on the green. This balcony garden of ours has given us a tiny corner of botany and ecology, of responsibility and togetherness. I just wish we had started it sooner.

Summer Project: Gardening

Now that I have caught my breath, I am ready to begin tackling my epic maternity leave laundry-list. This mega list has its own sections and subsections. I won't share all the glorious details with you since I don't want to bore you or jinx myself. But I think I am safe sharing the section headed Summer Projects as they are kid-related and I suspect that is what most of you tune in for.

I have wanted to start a little container garden like, um, forever. Being a band of traveling gypsies, it is hard to overcome my resistance to putting any kind of roots down, literal or otherwise. Now that I am home and have more time to consider things properly, I decided that there was no time like the present for starting a tiny garden. Mainly because gardening is good for the kids on many levels and because we live in the hottest concrete jungle in Japan so we really need that bit of green.


So here we have tomatoes, peppers, basil, bitter melon, and sunflowers. Each kid has their own plant to tend: Nico chose the pepper, Colette has the basil. Sebastian's are the sunflowers, his favorite flower being a summer child. Also, we can use any seeds from the flowers to feed the hamsters later.

I am caring for the tomato and bitter melon. The bitter melon will hopefully stretch upwards on the netting, their lush vines forming a 'green curtain'. It is our contribution to setsuden, energy saving in a reduced-nuclear Japan. Another summer project in the making.

Nature Girl

There goes the little nature obsessed Colette, stick in one hand, pebbles in the other. Our speed as pedestrians is hampered by her desire to stuff her pockets full of rocks found on the side of the street. Every evening, I empty her pockets of the day's treasures, knowing I will have to repeat the procedure again on the morrow.

Before when she was restricted to the stroller (for convenience's sake) she would pluck every leaf or flower that came within her reach. Like a true naturalist, she would then dissect (read: shred) the procured specimen and examine it with all of her senses. Now that we have released her from the bonds of the stroller (to prepare her for walking slowly at my side when Luca is strapped to me) she is free to collect as many samples as she could ever want. It is amazing how even in this concrete-coated landscape, she manages to find such a wealth of blossoms, stones, and insects.

As the temperature continues to rise, I can begin to imagine our summers with three budding naturalists eager every morning to get outside into the lush, buzzing day to hunt for beetles and preying mantises, cicadas and geckos, and perhaps just a few more rocks to add to an already abundant collection.

Shopping as we do...

We went for some supply shopping (running out of cleaning supplies) and arcade game playing. The mall is not too far from us so as much as I am not a fan of triple decker shopping complexes, in the winter an enclosed area that meets all of our random needs is quite nice.

The mall wasn't so crowded, as most people were probably at home cleaning and preparing for the New Year. The only place that was booming, really, was the supermarket. Traditionally Japanese people like to make special bentos called osechi filled with all sorts of auspicious delights that will make them healthy, wealthy, and wise for the coming year. Everything is made ahead of time to allow for the cooks of the household to have a reprieve from their duties.
We have discovered that in the city people are more likely just to order their osechis instead of slaving over the stove for days before the holidays. Some people just make a few of the dishes that they like, particularly the black soybeans and mochi. We don't really make anything besides for the ozoni, a soup that everyone eats on the first morning of the New Year. It is supposed to warm you up when you return from the midnight visits to the shrines and temples.

There was another side to the crowded supermarket, less festive but practical. The shops will be closed for the holiday, the only days when they close for the whole year. This is something that we have learned the hard way requires attention. In super convenient Japan, you become really soft as a shopper since if you forget something then you can always go to one of the hundreds of convenient 24 supermarkets and convenience stores in your neighborhood. Thinking ahead for your next three days' meals and other necessities can strain your creativity if you are such a soft shopper, as we are.

This brings us to another resolution. We are going to give up our soft, city ways and adopt a more traditional method of planning our (healthier) meals. Recently I discovered a Saturday morning organic market on my way to work and last week I took Jason and the gang to see it. He was, as I expected, impressed. All sorts of lovely vegetables and foodstuffs that you cannot find in the stores, right there being sold by regional farmers for the benefit of us urban-dwellers. We had tried to order a veggie box from a local organic supplier for a bit but since it is a bit of a gamble we often wasted a lot of the contents (particularly if it was a good week for something like onions). I also like the idea of taking the kids down to see the loveliness in person and run around with the farmers' kids and other young customers. And since it is only two train stops away, I think it will blend into our weekly routine quite nicely.

2012 is all about living the life we want and I think including this reformed habit will make the coming year and all those that follow full of health, a little more wealth, and hopefully a bit more wisdom.