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.

8 days, 8 days....

Eight days until the wonderful man delivers and installs our a/c. Eight whole days. Today we had to go to the park around 7 am to avoid the unrelenting heat of the day. How did we do it last year? No cooking, lots of iced drinks, fans and more fans, siesta, kiddie pool, showers and more showers, parasols and cold packs. Surviving summer in Nagoya is exhausting.
But summer in Japan? Definitely one of my favorite seasons. Festivals, fireworks, shaved ice, swimming, cold somen noodles, watermelon, sunflowers, cicadas, yep, definitely in the top four. Neck and neck with winter.



Hope you are all staying cool wherever you may be.
xoxo

Heat Island

This is what Nico looks like on the way to school. And on the way home. And, well, pretty much all the time now.

It is hot. Like, really, really hot. Nagoya is nationally famous for being one of the hottest places in Japan because the mountains curve into a pocket to trap heat, with the Ise Bay as a wall so that air cannot escape. Humidity, concrete, no wind plus geography added together equals misery. So we broke down and laid a fairly large amount of yen on the department store's counter and proceeded to whine and beg until they agreed to bring us an A/C. Sorry Al Gore, but it isn't optional this year. We feel bad about it, we do, but perhaps worse about sweating in our sleep.Starting July 11th, our footstep will be just a tad heavier. We said we were sorry.