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.

Kakuozan Nittaiji Kobasan (Temple Market)

Today we ventured out in the surprisingly brisk March cold to the monthly temple market at Kakuozan here in Nagoya.




We were hoping it was more like a junky flea market but instead we found lots of fresh food and flowers and gardening plants and tools. Lovely to look at but not the weird cheap stuff Jason was after.
The story behind the temple is really interesting (read about it here) and the neighborhood is rather hip and full of enviable shops (wholegrain bread shop next to a Buddhist alter shop next to a chocolatier! next to a grave stone cutter next to a breakfast diner). One of the shops we visited was this fantastic European and natural toy shop called Yuubo. Such a sweet place where the kids (minus Sebastian who was still at school) played happily for about 30 minutes.

And despite the freezing temperatures and gale winds, Spring is coming. The cherry trees guarantee it...

Considering Contamination

For a year and a half, we have had unreal threats intruding upon our reality. Unreal in how they feel, how they currently affect our daily lives. It is hard to feel threatened by something you cannot see or feel. Yet I would say that we are in crisis mode here. We never stopped having a nuclear disaster, the media just stopped talking about it.
There are some really scary things going on here. Mutated butterflies, thyroid abnormalities in children, trace amounts of contamination showing up in our food supply. If you read this blog, you might lose more sleep at night. You should see the dark circles under my eyes.



I have been particularly frustrated by the idiotic way the government and TEPCO have handled this mess, trying to clean it up with filthy hands. The people have finally begun to vent their anger with dedicated weekly protests in every major city and town (six o'clock on Friday evenings, like clockwork-this is Japan after all). They work under the banner called the Ajisai Revolution which is just so telling of what is going on here. The ajisai (hydrangea) is supposed to bring hope during the rainy season and this movement is emulating the flower in its duration and subtly.

As proud as I am of the people and as much as I love ajisai, I think we need a more radical bloom. Or maybe just leave out blossoms all together and have a radical revolution. The government is not looking out for the people. They are protecting profits, a popular political motive found around the globe. Money equals speech, corporations are people and all that bullshit. Where is the free market here in Japan?
People don't want to eat contaminated food and avoid it but then get either bullied into it or blinded to its existence. In a land where the government infamously over-subsidizes farmers, why could we not just pay the farmers to destroy their crops until the land is usable again? Why are school districts on the other side of the nation finding cesium in their vegetables? Just because something is under the limit does not make it safe.



I worry that more is going on than they are telling us. I worry they are taking the typical shoganai approach to handling this while also dealing with corrupt people to sweep this under the rug.

Everywhere on the planet there are threats to our food supply from corn syrup to GMO foods but I think cesium and cobalt have greater immediate consequences. I support farmers in general but I think this is getting out of hand. We are dealing with substances we have no business dealing with. The government is gambling with our lives, our future in a game that has no winners. 

This goes beyond businesses and borders.

This is not something to be brushed off with the standard "It's not the Japanese way".

This is beyond cultural. It is far beyond criminal.

We have taken steps to avoid contaminated food. All of our food is now obtained from the local organic farmers' market except for certain things that we make sure come from Kyushu or are imported. We are strict vegans at home now though the kids are still eating school lunches. We are keeping our eyes open and trying to stay objective. It is easy to become paranoid when the stakes are so high.

We live here by choice. We chose Japan because we believe it offers our children a great deal of benefits such as a bilingual and bicultural upbringing and living in a society that revolves around family. Though we are always going to be foreigners, we have been readily accepted into every community we have live in and have always been astounded by how kind neighbors, friends, and strangers are to us.
We would like to stay here for a long time. We want Luca to experience undoukai (Sports' Day); Colette to have her own doll collection for Hina Matsuri (Doll's Festival); Nico to graduate elementary school; Sebastian to master kanji and sansu (Chinese characters and math). I want to write stories based here, Jason wants to make a video of Gion Matsuri and be part of the sofubi scene. We have plans.
We have a full and happy life here.

We don't want to go.
But we will if we must.

I am grateful we have options. Most people here don't.

In the end, I know we will do what is best for these guys but I just wish I never had such decisions to make.