Putting an end to the career

My wife has decided to close her psychiatric practice this Septemember. 

In our engagement days, at first, she would major in otolaryngology. Before we knew each other, she seemed to plan going back to home and work for a certain administrative agency office there. 

I whispered my wife to major in psychiatry. I thought it was more suitble for her than surgery related subjects. Being aware of that or not, I might want her to go to that speciality on behalf of me. Psychiatry has been the speciality I was thinking for my own. There was a renowned psychopathological researcher as the professor at the Psychiatric Dept. at the school where we were going to serve residency, whom I had admired before entering the med school. He was a graduate of the same med school as we did. 

She has been a bookworm since young days. She loved reading novels. By the extention of interest in human beings in novels, I thought, she might enjoy working for psychiatric patients. Those days, she used to be more respectful to what I said than at present or she might have her own idea for determining her speciality. She has chosen psychiatry for her profession.    

This photo was taken at the campus of ICU in Tokyo. Possibly in spring when preparing for the doctor licence exam. A shy girl. She might get mad at me if she knew this photo was posted here.

Anyway, we started our residency at a med school nearby here in 1978. She has been so busy at both work and home chores. I still remember she was staying up all night before presentation to the staff at the Dept.

However it might have been busy days for us, we have felt it was worth working hard. Everything was new to us. Time sure flew like an arrow. This photo, I have already posted somewhere in this blog, was taken at the med school campus when we were expecting the first baby.   

I have never asked my wife if she was happy with the career she had. She worked at a couple of big hospitals. It took her an hour drive from home to the last work. As I started own prctice nearby here, I told her to do the same. My experience was a bit of help to her starting her practice close to the med school we spent residency. Colleague and younger doctors at the Dept. of Psychiatry have kindly backed her up in the beginning. 

She always went for work carrying a number of bags like this. Taken at the exit of our house more than ten years ago. 

It is more than half a century for her since studying medicine in Tokyo. And twenty six years have passed since she began her office of psychiatry. It is a real long time. Now, preparing closing her office, she has been kept deadly busy writing a letter of introduction to another psychiatrist for each patient, who would take over him/her. It is like writing his/her biography. She has been doing with him/her for 10 or even 20 years. Not an easy task. She complains of the number of the charts piled on the desk to wirte such letters every day. But I am sure, when looking back of this work later, she might realize it has been summerizing her career by herself. 

In advance, good work has she done! It is not the end of our journey of life. The other chapter of life be blessed good health and happiness for her.

 

Harvested vegetables cooked Beethoven's last piano sonatas

Harvested vegetables have been cooked. This is the potatoe cooked with chicken and bean. A lot of potatoes have been harvested this spring. Potatoe dishes may be continued for a while. 

The last batch of garland chrysanthemum is cooked with spicy dressing. One of the first batch of tomatoes is added to it. This hot spice tastes great for blanched leaf vegetables like this garland chryssanthemum or spinach etc. It has motivated me to plant those vegetables now. 

It will take sometime to gather in next batch of tomatoes. Sweet potatoe plants have been planted. On the other hand, pulling weeds is still keeping me so busy. As told before, it is like whack-a-mole situation. They are growing like mad. Mowing lawn is another task for me. 

Consequently, I get deadly tired early in the evening. I always go to bed as early as 8PM in our local time. 

It is an enjoyment for me to listen to music before going to bed or in the bed. At present, the last 3 piano sonatas of Beethoven played by Horoszowsky is the piece which I most frequently listen to, possibly written in another post before. Horszowsky plays them with most tenderly comforting way. Not virtuosic manner but as if intimately talking to me. 

These sonatas are amazing as well. Needless to say that they are monumental work in the genre and are often called as New Testament in the piano works. Whenever listening to it, I always feel they were composed in the atmosphere of freedom. From what are they free? Every fetter or needless bond in the society. And also it seems Beethoven was free from the traditional sonata form. Slow movements with indication of espressivo or cantabile were prefered. No30 and 32 are ended in piano as if they were still going on, on the contrary to his ealier works which always ended with assertion of forte chords. I was happy to know Glenn Gould had told almost the same thing in this performance with short lecture of No30 sonata.  

Freedom from the fetters or bonds around oneself necessarily brings solitude in the society. Whenever listening to this piece, I picture Beethoven composing it before his instrument without being able to listen to it but just for confirming performability. He should be lonely there. The other composers' works in their late ages also give me the same impression. Beethoven's works make me feel as if playing in the heavenly sky. Yes, that should be the end of our journey of life.

Horszowsky plays it like this;

Rain, hydrangea and crape myrtle

It is a lull of the rainy season today;I have started writing this post a few days ago. I have spent the morning hours at the lawn pulling the weeds there. 

It may start raining soon again. The rain is always fine drizzle without making big puddles on the ground. Typical rainy season had been like this in the past. It has often been replaced to torrential rains like tropical shower for the past years, causing disaters like floods or land slides. 

After I wrote the phrase above, we had a bout of torrential rain last night. The trend of global warming is still going on, I am afraid.

                                               

We, Japanese, are accoustomed with quiet rainfall for this rainy season. It rains quietly. The raindrop is hardly visible. We could notice rainfall when stretching a hand out of umbrella and feeling fine raindrop on the palm. It is our aesthetic consciousness for this season in a year. The weather change due to the global warming is extinguishing it very soon, I am afraid. Our descendants may read the literature or poem dealing with the traditional rainy season as a kind of aliens.

Hydrangea is the flower typical for this season. One of them in our garden is ready to bloom fully. 

In the back yard, between a Judas tree and a crape myrtle, a summer camellia is flowering quietly as well. It will take a month or so before that crape myrtle bears beautiful flowers.

Some weeds are vigorous betwee those trees and the house. I used to use herbicide

at such a place years ago. But never since I learned about its effect on soil and contmination to us. They won't grow much in September. Not too long from now.

Several years ago, our government has estblished a national identification number system named "My Number" abbreviated as MN below now. Now they are hurrying up linking a lot of functions and personal informations of the people into it. The process is too hasty and sloppy. A lot of errors in the system of MN are being revealed at present. Linkage of our personal informations could be, once they are leaked, utilized for crime. A "single" identification number system such as MN will help dictatorship as well. The history of NAZIS tells us that. 

So I am feeling more swealtering and suffocated with the atmosphere in the society than in the real weather. 

Rich farm amidst the rainy season

Gardening and farming are still keeping me quite busy. It is a routine work for me to go out and see what happens with the vegetables and the fruits early in the morning, whether raining or fine. And I am inclined to lie on the bed around 9PM.

Succeding green pea, of course at another spot of the farm, kidney bean is growing vigorously. You may see weeds growing around it on the photo. It's too laborious to pull them. And natural farming says it is useful for grass mulching later. They may attract insects harmful for vegetables as well. That is why I let them grow so far as they won't disturb the vegetables grow.

Sweet potatoes are taking over potatoes which have been already completely cropped out as shown on the photo below. These seedlings are home grown from sweet potatoes. Rooting is pretty good compared with commercially available ones. There are spontaneously growing vegetables from seeds from the plants last year, such as tomatoes or white radishes. They are invariably vivid and easily growing. As if they are accoustomed with the environment in this place. Without any scientific evidence, I guess it's an adapttion process through epigenetic mechanism.

This fall, a lot of sweet potatoes are expected.

Several plants of tomatoes are growing and even bearing some fruits already. The big issue is the rain continuously coming on in this season. I might have had the farm ridge higher in order to keep them on the side of dryness. In wet circumstances, they could easily get illnesses, I am afraid. Without a green house, it depends on the weather. I just wish they will survive this wet season.

A big success with broccolis. Not much damage from the worms of cabbage whites this year.

The most important thing I have learned this season was that each variety has the best timing to sprout in a year. I have tried to get okra sprouting earlier in a year without much success. Recently, a few seeds have sprouted in pots like this. Only a matter of the temperature. Those originally from tropical areas are quite critical for the environemental conditions, I learned. 

Another example of spontaneously grown vegetable. A pumpkin growing at a corner of the garden. Very vivid already with a fruit. The size of leaves is remarkably large. Just a miracle why such a plant grows in this way. 

Apples are also growing. A dozen or so. May we enjoy them this fall.

Oh, it may be boring to most readers. Before finishing this post, here is a photo of boxful potatoes recently harvested. I would send some of them to my friends and family members. Some will be used as seed potato in this fall.

One of the most popular dishes in our family. Omlet featuring newly harvested potatoes. With red wine sauce.

 

This is how I am getting along nowadays. Besides such fun things, I still feel quite disgusted at what is going on in the Perliament. Almost dictatorship. Without much arguments regarding issues and validation for legislative facts, a number of serious laws are being voted as the government wants. Such as immigration law, the law regarding expiration date extention for nuclear plants, the financial resources law for military expansion etc. Every law is against the human rights for people, whether immigrants or own people are involved with. 

When I was younger, I could not put up with such absurdity going on in the politics. i am much more calmed down as for such problems. But I still go on speaking out against thing irrational in the society even if it is only a small voice.

Breeze rustling the leaves of a perssimon tree

Inbetween the days of rain and drizzle, it was fine 3 days ago. I was so glad to find a plant of taro was sprouting. It's been a few weeks since I planted it under a persimmon tree. Uttering "Welcome to the earth" to this tiny sprout, I have carefully pulled the weeds around it not to have them bother it growing.

It was the time when I heard breeze had blown over head causing rustling sound among the leaves. It was exactly the same experience as this. Being startled, I looked up there and found the perssimon tree's young leaves slightly swinging with the breeze. I might be coming closer to the world of eternity it belongs to.

I could be annoyed and even angry at the legislations by the government. One of them is to build a budget for further expansion of armaments including long range missiles, to get armament manufacturers subsidized and even to export such weapons overseas, while more and more people are becoming poor and one in six children could not take enough meal. Lost financial discipline, the government has been dependent on economic finance in collaboration with the Bank of Japan. The latter could hardly deal with the inflation since they could not rise the interest rate due to astronomical amount of the national bond issued. I could really be insane at this mess if I were a bit younger. But at present, I believe all I could do is to protest them quietly and just to see what would happen. Now things are up to younger people. 

And I would be pleased to stay peacefully in the breeze.