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Recent Posts
- Why Aren’t Blueberry Flowers Blue? May 2, 2021
- One Bloom to the Next April 28, 2021
- Bird Song April 23, 2021
- The Last Freeze April 17, 2021
- Surprises Every Day April 8, 2021
- Cherry Blossom Blizzard April 4, 2021
- Trivial Events Lead to the Spectacular April 1, 2021
- Frosty Cherry Blossoms March 31, 2021
- All Shapes and Sizes March 25, 2021
- What It Looks Like on the Other Side March 22, 2021
- March is Pink and Yellow March 21, 2021
- I Could Watch Clouds All Day March 12, 2021
- Happy and Sad at the Same Time March 5, 2021
- Life is Full of Mystery February 27, 2021
- Walking Through a Poem February 14, 2021
- The Trip Home February 9, 2021
- Pandemic Skies February 3, 2021
- Never a Dry Moment January 30, 2021
- Red Sky at Dawn and Dusk January 20, 2021
- More Marvelous Than Fairy Tales January 18, 2021
- Red Dawn January 14, 2021
- Is It Still Winter? January 12, 2021
- Winter Skies January 4, 2021
- Happy New Year! January 1, 2021
- Stories Untold December 28, 2020
- Blink and You’ve Missed It December 22, 2020
- Chatty Mud Birds December 20, 2020
- Getting the Mail December 10, 2020
- Soothing is Good December 5, 2020
- When Life Returns to Normal, I’ll Miss Blue Skies December 1, 2020
- Blue Skies in November November 21, 2020
- Sunshine Is Just Beyond the Clouds November 17, 2020
- Winter Returns to the Hills November 14, 2020
- A Squirrel’s Fate November 8, 2020
- November at Last November 3, 2020
- November 1 and No Swans November 1, 2020
- First Frost October 23, 2020
- Too Wet to Burn October 18, 2020
- Eyes Wide Shut October 13, 2020
- The End of Flowers October 11, 2020
- 20201010 October 10, 2020
- Am I Growing the Wrong Grapes? October 6, 2020
- Fog and Less Fog October 5, 2020
- First Blush of Fall September 29, 2020
- A Perfect Fall Day September 27, 2020
- Blue Sky to Rain to Shaggy Parasol September 26, 2020
- Six Short Weeks September 24, 2020
- 317 Days for a Miracle September 23, 2020
- We Can Breathe Again September 22, 2020
- You Can’t Help But Be Sad September 13, 2020
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Monthly Archives: December 2016
Year Passing, Year Coming
It’s still a virescent world, moss soft and fern green. But not for long. A light snow is falling, turning everything white. In the woods a brilliant, yellow Heterobasidiomycetes caught my eye. I went looking to see if anything was … Continue reading
Posted in Reflections
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Lab Girl
I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. Lab Girl is an autobiographical book by scientist Hope Jahren. She intermingles chapters about growing up and the challenges she faced in her career as a woman scientist, among chapters about … Continue reading
Posted in Reflections
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Out of a Winter Garden
Today’s rain has washed most of the snow and ice away. Surprise, underneath the cold snow, the winter vegetables stayed as fresh as ever. The sprouting onions are as fresh as spring time green onions. There’s no need to truck … Continue reading
Posted in How Things Grow
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No Escaping Beauty
There is no escaping beauty. Sometimes it explodes in front of your face when you least expect it, like this morning when I stepped out onto the back patio and beauty flooded the sky from horizon to horizon. There was … Continue reading
It’s Been a Long Time
It’s been five years since the chickens have had so much snow to run around in. Most of them are new to this and would rather not. The snow fell from early morning through much of the day. Even if … Continue reading
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! The calendar says New Years is still eleven days away, but today is the beginning of the new year as far as I am concerned. This morning, at 2:44 am Pacific Time, you could hear the earth … Continue reading
Whole Wheat Anpan – A World First?
Hmm, the an, sweet bean paste, I made brought back memories of a staple of my childhood, anpan あんパン, buns stuffed with an. Anpan are always made with the whitest, fluffiest dough imaginable. What would anpan made with 100% whole … Continue reading
Posted in Reflections
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Pastures of Swans
The swans are on pastures by the hundreds. Here a flock, there a flock, everywhere a flock. Swans are constantly moving in small groups from one flock to another. What is that all about? Is the grass better over there? … Continue reading
On a Gentle Snow
A gentle snow fell all morning. As I watched the snowflakes fall, I thought about the stories that each flake could tell. In their short lives, snowflakes have a lot of excitement. One moment they are tumbling tens of thousands … Continue reading
Posted in Reflections
Tagged adzuki beans, あん映画, gentle snow, Sweet Bean movie, the story of vegetables
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It’s a Small World
Impressed with the Shimonita onions I saw on TV, I ordered some seeds from Japan. They arrived yesterday: Thunder Emperor 雷帝 Shimonita Onions 下仁田ネギ! Much to my surprise, on the back of the package, it says that they were made … Continue reading
Ice is Alive
If you watch long enough, you can see needle ice growing out of the ground. It’s as if it’s alive. The hoarfrost grows too, prickling the leaves and branches. December cold turns nature into a fairyland of ice.
Shimonita Onions – 15 Months to Grow
All around the world are special vegetables, and yesterday I heard about a leek type onion which is grown in only one small town in Japan, Shimonita 下仁田. It takes 15 months from seed to harvest. They are planted in … Continue reading
Shh, the Garden Is Sleeping
The garden is fast asleep under a blanket of snow softer than down. It’s been four years since we’ve had a snow this thick. It’s not a heavy snow by no means. Eight years ago we measured the snow by … Continue reading
Posted in How Things Grow
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Winter Bites
Winter bites leaving its prickly white teeth everywhere. Step outdoors on a frosty morning, and winter bites your cheeks and nips at your nose. You know you’re alive on a morning so cold.
Posted in Happiness
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Farewell Green?
Snowflakes danced in the air off and on today. Will the coming deep freeze mean the end of green? What will be left to pick for fresh salads by the end of the week? The kale and cabbage will survive. … Continue reading
Posted in About My Chickens, How Things Grow
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A Remarkable Hen and Her Family
MiAsa Hime 美朝姫 is an extraordinary mother. Her chicks are more than three months old and she still spends her days with them and roosts with them at night. I’ve never had a mother hen attend to her chicks for … Continue reading
Posted in About My Chickens, How Things Grow
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Way Off Topic – a Long Way from Here
Having grown up in Japan and having hitchhiked, biked, and ridden trains all over the country as a boy, literally, at eleven years old I took to the roads hitchhiking for days at a time, traveling over a thousand miles, … Continue reading
Posted in Happiness
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