A missing comment

Scrolling down the previous posts in this blog, I found a comment by John AC4CA to a post regarding music of Piazzolla. Just did it by chance. It was a short but still considerate comment. I have mistaken reading it. Very sorry for that. It was 2017. As already written, he has had his wife in a facility due to her Alzheimer and was living alone at home. Whenever we met on the radio, we talked about music which we were playing as well as listening. He loved playing piano and said Chopin was his favorite. In each conversation, again not long enough but very impressive, I felt, even though he had lived a solitary life at home, he had himself fullfilled with ham radio, birdwatching or music. Of course, seeing his wife Jackie at the facility as well.

I should have talked to him more, especially on how he has grown up. He told little about such a thing. Suffering from neuroendocrine tumor, which has become treatment resistent year by year, and having his wife in a facility as told above, he must concentrate on the life at present. No room to recollect the past, I believe. 

How has he felt on Piazzolla? I have lost the chance to ask about it to him. Sorry but there have been full of such mistakes in life. He has passed in Feb 2023.

One of my Piazzolla's favorites. Already uploaded in a past post. 

I would ask anyone who would give me a comment in this blog as follows. I am trying to answer every comment and please be patiently waiting for that. If you have not got any answer from me, it could never be anything other than my mistake. Please identify youself in a way we both could understand if possible. If you are new to me, add that in your comment. Any comments will be much appreciated. 

On a rainy day

Having posted on poor growth of sweetpotatoes at a field last month, I found there were a little bit better harvest of sweetpotatoes in the other fields recently, despite of apparently overgrowth of the vine. It is always miraculous how they grow and are cropped. Before it gets too cool, the rest should be cropped. I should go on working hard in the farm.

Plants of taro are ready to be harvested as well. Potatoes, spinach, broccoli or carrots are growing. They may be harvested by Dec. 

The global warming is becoming closer to us. The summer vegetables have been affected by it. I have seen several vlogs of farmers who complain of poor harvest of summer veggies. They have been sold at higher prices at store. The fall/winter vegetables should be planted, they say, a week or two later than ususal. It seems the winter is coming quicker than before. The summer has been directly taken over to the winter. No long break of fall this year. 

Early in this hot summer, rice was run out at stores. There are a number of reasons why it has occurred. One of them was the relative crop failure due to the abnormally high temperature last summer. The price of rice has risen even by 50%. That high cost is still carried on despite newly harvested rice is in the market now. The cost of rice has been kept irrationally low. Rice farmers have had hard time with the cost for years. On the other hand, the main food for people in our country, rice, should be reasonable. It is an issue that politics should handle with. It should be argued at the other post.

I would point out that the government is trying to replace rice plants to a new spieces or its crossbred descendants. It is a newly developed one which absorbs Cadmium, Cd, much less than previous old spieces. 

As a researcher in agriculture says, there is an area which is polluted with Cd. The national agricultural research center has developed a new rice spieces, which irradiation of heavy particle beam inactivated the gene responsible for absorption of Cd. They are trying to replace the ordinary species to this new one or its descendants. Cd pollution is limited only certain areas in our country. The new species has another serious defect. It is genetically lowered in absorption of another mineral Mn. Mn has an important role in in photosynthesis as well as resilience against pathogens. When this new species is grown, they should add Mn as a fertilizer component. Relative Mn deficit could cause growth issue and liability for infections. Those new species might not grow well in global warming. 

Irradiation could damage the other genes unknown yet. It may cause the other serious issues. Natural selection occurs in a long time scale. Our ancestors have chosen species which work well for us. Artificial gene manipulation with irradiation could result in "magnificient" failure in the future. 

Why do they popularize this new species of rice in our country? To get more money! The farmers, subsequently the consumers of such rice, should pay for the pantent. There should be other factors involved in this new rice species. They are invariably related with money!

OK, that's about it. Even though I won't renew posts so often, I am getting along fine. Today, the rain has kept me indoor and let me write this post.  

Excessive vine growth of sweet potato and a dish of the hypertrophied vine

Plants' growth are told to divide two phases, nutritional growth and reproductive growth. In the former phase, a plant grows individually at its trunk, vine or leaves. In most cases, the latter phase follows it. It leaves crops or fruits. 

The former growth is accelerated with meteological factors and low carbon/nitrogen ratio in the soil. High nitrogen from too much fertilizer is often a cause of this phenomenon.

In the excessive vine growth with the sweet potatoes, the latter, that is, too much fertilizer won't be the cause. Regardless of the remnant amounts of fertilizer, it has occurred in the same manner at different fields. Another evidence that the weather, most likelily the hot spell in the past spring/summer, may be the fact some of Marie Gold planted at different places of the garden, of course, without any fertilizer has shown the same excessive growth of the trunk/leaves. They have bloomed very few flowers. The typical case is shown in the following photo. The two trunks have grown large in unusual way while some flowers are out in the other few plants. I have never seen this overgrowth in the past.  

This is only a hypothesis that global warming is influencing our tiny garden/farm. But we should be careful about such a thing. We are the crops brought by the reproductive growth of the crops. If those crops grow only in the nutritional growth but not in the reproductive growth, it may cause famine.

Last night, I have cooked the overgrown vine of sweet potatoes with chicken as this photo shows. My wife at first prejudiced that it could have been like a menu people used to cook in the war time without much food. But she was pretty happy at this dish when it was cooked. This recipe was published by a lady in Shikoku, my wife's birth place, as an old one from ancestors.    

 

Failure of sweet potato growth

It is the time to harvest sweet potatoes now. As a conclusion, the crop was not very good this year. 

Excessive vine growth has occurred. They say it is due to excessive fermentation and/or too much rain. One of the fields was due to hyperalimentation due to the remnant of fertilizer for the previous vegetable. I am not sure what has brought the problem at the other fields. A climate issue? It is beyond my capability to avoid this excessive growth in such a case.

Some of the poorly grown fruits were bitten by bugs. Vegetables or generally any plants have a system of immunity against such infestation of insects. Those subnormally grown ones are liable to the problem. 

The other day, I was surprised to know, in the case of famine or of war involving our country, our government had a plan to have golf course or school grounds converted to farm and to grow sweet potatoes. The self sufficiency rate of food is only 38% now. Considering of importing the farming materials like fertilizer and its resources or seeds etc, it drops below 10%. This fact has not well known to the people. The government won't do with this subtle crisis without such a terrible plan to grow sweet potatoes. 

As my experience with growing sweetpotatoes this year tells, it is not easy for amateur instant farmers to grow such as sweet potatoes which is told to be a rather easy crop. I would propose the administration officers/politicians to grow sweetpotatoes at the garden of the Diet by themselves.

Now some people are aware of this issue but still only a minority. Food security issue is going on in our country in subtle and serious way.

The over grown sweet potatoes's vine.

 

A T shirt and hectic days

It was 1991 when I visited Cambodia for ham radio operation of XU0JA, usually regarded as DX pedition. After a Hungarian team had operated there, the station was managed by a girl named Sokun, personnel of PTT. I happened to know her operating XU8DX by hersel n 15m SSB. She did not know anything of ham radio. It was necessary to support the station XU8DX there. In 1990, I asked Atsushi JF3NRI and James 9V1YC to visit there and to bring some support items like the PA tubes of the amplifier etc. They have done a good job. It was my turn to visit there a year after. I have spent a hectic as well as pleasant week over there together with a couple of JA friends, JH1OJU and JH0FBH. It was only a few years after the civil war had ended. There was curfew in Phnom Penh. I still remember the streets were vacant after the curfew from PTT to the Hotel Cambodiana where we stayed. I have already written about our trip there a few times already. 

Some friends were supportive to us. Eric W6DU, the president of NCDXF, has prepared T shirts with the logo of NCDXF for us before departure. We have worn it all the time throughout the trip. Mine has been found deep in a drawer recently. This is it;

My call as XU/JA1NUT was printed above the NCDXF logo. But it has disappeared in this 3 decades. XU0JA QSL is here. 

It was the days when I was crazy with DXing. With some free time and finance, I could spend much time for ham radio. This was one of the events I devoted to those days. 

Honestly, I sometimes wonder if it was a right decision or if I should spend time and energy for the other things in the middle of my life when I was able to do anything I wanted. Such as restarting practising cello earlier and so forth. I know it is of little use to reflect the past in that way but such an idea of reflection still often comes up in my mind.

I find myself trying to balance my mind convincing myself it was meaningful for me to have had good company through ham radio. Eric was one of them. Blood boiling experience in ham radio was also priceless for me. In this chapter of my life, the other pleasant things like farming or listening good music are being prepared for me. I should never complain of the past.

Now this T shirt is worn by me while I work in the farm. Another hectic days.