More than 2.41 million viewers!

 It's been 15 years since I started this blog. I was surprised to find the number of viewers exceeding 2.41 million. Of course, it must be the cumulative total number but not the total number of individual visitors. Still a big number. It has increased significantly for the past few months. Even 20K viewers a day! I appreciate all of you visiting this blog.

Since I quit ham radio, I wanted to substitute this blog to the communication on the radio. A few good friends are actually visiting here from time to time. Still only a limited number of them. If you are new to me or an old friend, please leave a word or two in the comment. Don't forget put your call sign and, if not a ham, your name to it. Let me know how you knew of this blog as well. I won't advertize it any way but am curious to know how this tiny blog is known to you.  

I don't think I could carry on this blog for a long time now. But, as a proof of existence on this planet, it will be pleasure to converse with you through this media, especially if we share something old in the past.

Thank a lot in advance!   

A few photos of the garden/farm

A few photos from my garden/farm.

 Already started planting vegetables for this winter/next spring. This is a white radish grown from seed. Not much pest damage. No chemicals nor fertilizers. Only compost made from pulled weeds.

Burdock plants have grown like trees this summer and have shed some seeds on the ground. A few seedlings have grown from them. Lovely ones. I have transplanted a couple of them to a farm ridge. So far, it has been rooted. Wondering if they will grow like their mother plants.

Marie gold is flowering as if it was their time now. At a corner of the farm. As told before, they work against some kind of nematodes damaging vegetables. Not only for that practical use but also for appreciation. There are a number of big bushes of this flower everywhere in our lot.

Started gardening/farming as a kind of hobby. Nowadays, considering of spending several hours in garden/farm without beind tired of, I feel it has become the main job for me. Having been a pediatrician?  What is it and where has it gone? 

 

Sweet potatoes harvest

It is the time of harvest of sweet potatoes right now. As already wrtten in a previous post, a kind of Commelina with violent fertility has been growing everywhere in the farm. It bears own "seeds" in roots in the soil. Carefully sorting out it among sweet potatoe plants, I should keep the seeds out of the soil. This is an imported kind of Commelia, they say. Sittin along  the farm ridge, I go on doing that work for a few hours a day. 

Another not very grateful news is that the harvest of sweet potatoes is not what it was expected this year possibly due to the long lasting rain in the end of summer. The harvest is still good enough for us as the savings for a year ahead. Yes, I am half seriously worrying that the possible famine or terrible inflation could strike us in the near future.

Our government plans to grow sweet potatoes for the people in case of a bad famine all around the country or even in the world. The food self sufficiency rate is as low as 36% and, considering of the cost for the agricultural materials mostly dependent on import it will become 10%. Horrible number isn't it? Rice storage could be depleted easily. Sweet potato, as they say, is a good crop to fill the caloric requirement for the people, even compared with rice. It is an advantage sweet potatoes won't require much fertilizer. However, beside that it takes at least several months to grow and harvest it from scratch, it won't grow well in humid soil and high ridge in the farm is necessary. It could be eaten by bugs and its growth depends on the weather etc as well.  I am afraid they reckon it as an easy going project. Whenever growing it in my farm, I feel it is not a very easy task. 　

The sweet potatoes harvested will be stored for 2 or 3 weeks until they get more matured and sweeter. Then they will be served for cooking, mainly as the material of miso soup or of tempura. Steamed sweet potatoes are also good. I will bring some of them to a couple of old friends.

Another farm ridge of sweet potatoes is waiting for me to be harvested soon, at least, before it gets frosty.

The oligarch around Trump

The oligarch around Trump. Don't they realize the economic disparity would cause serious instability and even conflict in the world. 

Recently, I learned the hatred against communism/socialism permiated in the US derived from the Civil War. The capitalists in the south didn't accept the idea of losing slavery which had been their asset. It seems the precursor that people hate sharing the commons discarding the right of private fortune. Of course, the failure of the communist countries after WWII etc were another factor. I believe, at least, social security and medical service should be based on the idea of socialism.

Looking at this photo of oligarch around Trump, I could not help thinking the society in the US is going forward to the opposite direction.

 

Passing another milestone.

It is my wife's 74th birthday. We have celebrated it with sushi. Otherwise, nothing special. She has had a bit of beer tonight. It is quite unusual. 

Both of us perceive our age from time to time. Forgetfulness and difficulty in remembering are looming to us. Proper nouns are escaping or won't come up in our mind. We smile bitterly each other whenever we experience such a situation.

Oh, no. That's not the message I should write here now.

We are growing old together. Hand in hand. Until the journey of life ends. Year by year, I feel the spirit of the poem by Browning more and more real.

She has worked hard as a wife, a mother and a psychiatrist. Her life should be admired. At least by me who know how she has lived. Right now, having been free from her clinical duties, she is absorbed in attending a sport gym where she enjoys sports as well as comaradie with a few friends. She cares for plants and flowers at home. Sometimes pulling the weeds together with me.

May she be blessed with good health. And this life will last long.

At the med school hospital campus where we served residency, with our son.

 

 

Struggle with weeds

The weeds in the yard/farm should be ecologically diverse. They used to be at least before this summer. However, this year, they have been only two kinds growing in our lot. Their growth rate and amount are beyond my experience in the past.

One is Himeshiba, that is, Digitaria Ciliaris in academic term. The other is Tsuyukusa, that is, Commelinales or Dayflower. 

The former is a kind of Poaceae. Its growth is so fast that it overgrows most vegetables. They bud in non homogenous way. If they are cut or pulled away, some of them tend to grow later. Growing one after another, they seem to ridicule us pulling them. They prolierate like nuts.

One of the mechanisms the former's vigorous growth, I have learned recently, is allelopathy, that is, producing substances to suppress neighbor plants growing normally. I knew some plants had proproduced allelo chemicals but never expected allelopathic plants close to me.  It may be why this kind of weeds grow in cluster or even cover the ground all around. THe withered or even dried ones still show allelopathy, as biologial researchers say, 

The latter are clusering in wet area on the land. They bear "self pollinating flowers" in the soil. They turn to be seeds beneath the ground. It is not enough for us to cut or pull them. But we should carefully dig out those seeds in the soil. Very troublesome. The plant itself is an annual grass but the seeds are told to survive for years or even for decades. The plant could grow roots even after being pulled out. When I find a cluster of this weed, I am almost withered before they are. 

I just wonder what has brought extuberance of these particular weeds. I am afraid it might be related with the global warming. Warming might be beneficial to those weeds which used to come from tropical area. If this guess is correct, this phenomenon may be carried on.

A friend of mine, a farmer, told me to use heribicides. He is spraying a glyphosate related herbicide in the garden. Or, as he told me, it is impossible to control those weeds. Some weeds are becoming resistent to glyphosate, as he said. I am not willing to use herbicides especially, glyhosate for the next generation, even though I am not sure who would take over this land.

It could be a problem for the next generation how to do with the proliferating weeds. 

I would go out with a sickle and struggle with the weeds. Destined to defeat? I have still already planted potatoes in the weeds flourishing farms.　

How to spend free time

When I decided to quit ham radio, I had no clear plan as for how to spend free time instead for the future. Not necessarily voluntarily, I have been kept busy caring for this property. Of course, now, I am not able to go out with own physical issues and family duties as I used to years ago. No complaints about it. Even though this anticipated situation came a bit earlier than I expected.

I thought I would have much more free time without ham radio. It was not the reality but I have been quite busy at housework. Concentrated on pulling the weeds growing like jungle for hours, I am not bored with it. Often forgetting how fast time lapses away. I often recall my aunt and my parents who have established and maintainted the small tuberculosis sanatorium at the very same place we are living in around WWII. I have mentioned about that in previous posts. This property belonged to my maternal ancestors before that. Even though not conscious awareness, my devotion to this land might be related with almost subconscious responsibility for those who lived in this property. In my aunt's bio, there are descriptions of a number of patients having spent their very last days in life here, together with a few personnel caring for them in poverty, including my parents. That sanatorium has never been remembered by othes but is almost totally forgotten. So far as I am allowed to live here, I would take care of this land by myself. 

I am trying to catch up with the vast repertoire in classical music I have never listened to. Lately, I focus on the keyboard music. It is the genre I have not been so enthusiastic for. Bach's famous works or Beethoven's sonata, not only the last few.  

A transcription of an organ work by Cesar Franck has attracted me. I have listened whole of or even played a part of his Piano Trio OP1-1 and Piano Quintet in f minor. I love both so much. Otherwise, the famous violin sonate in A major has been one of my favorites since school days. Franck was a non prolific composer even though his works are all masterpieces. Classy as well as emotional in modern sense. 

That transcription is here;

Mesmerizing. The will and emotion of modern times are stayed ahead in the form Bach used to establish.

So, being conscious of the time limited for me, I would go on working in the lot and listening to music. Weeds are waiting for me now.