More real life

So a while back now, there were those posts about the vegetable patch, and the bounty, and the bottling, and the trying to find new ways of eating zucchini, and so on.

I've been feeling a bit bad about these posts for a while now, in case you were still under the impression that I was managing The Good Life while working full time. I am not. Not at all. And especially not now that I'm the sole gardener, with our neighbours having temporarily moved to the other side of the world.

Last year I tried, but rain. Which meant first, weeds. And second, slugs. I have never seen so many slugs. I'm not sure what happened - did their numbers build up in the previous years to a suddenly evident plague? Or was it because the field next door wasn't mown until very late in the year, meaning an extra quarter acre of prime slug breeding habitat? All I know is it was nightmare material. You'd walk out and there'd be giant crawling slugs everywhere, really, just everywhere.

I tried beer traps, I tried snipping all I saw in two. It made no difference to their numbers. It was very dispiriting, but I took heart in my species' track record with extinctions and moved it up a level.

That's a good half kilo there, and I collected several bags like this. I didn't manage an extinction, but it helped. But the rain also meant, third, not that many weekends where I could actually plant anything. And then fourth, tomato blight. Add in me not having much time to harvest what there was, and everyone else who forgot, and there was not much bounty last year.

But! 2014 was a new year and I was ever hopeful! I started well, I really did - for the first time ever, I cleared the entire area of weeds, and then only planted what I figured could reasonably manage.

Only then, rain again, and slugs. Bags and more bags of slugs. But still it was going well, until around mid-June, after which we were either away or had guests or were doing something every weekend until mid-September.

Of course, I was very happy to be away and have guests and have done something else than endlessly tend to the vegetable patch ... but still, it was a bit of a shock when we retuned from Japan to find: 

Well, OK, so it actually doesn't look so bad from a distance... but let's get a bit closer.

That's the onion section, overrun with strawberries. Can't see the onions? There's actually quite a lot of them...

There's one! 

Poor, poor overgrown then blighted tomatoes.

Broccoli gone to seed. Though to be honest, I did get one harvest - this was meant to be the second. 

This was perhaps the most cruel. A broccoli stump, in a slug protector, completely eaten by slugs. And to add further salt to the wound, overgrown with weeds. Dandelions, for the most part.

Did you know artichokes have pretty purple flowers? I certainly didn't. (Leeks have pretty purple flowers too, it turns out.)

Flowers long gone to seed, taking over the rocket.

And finally at the back, a raggedy sunflower forest.

So there you go, another not very successful year. Maybe 2016?

Japan -Day 3

After yesterday's rush, we had set the alarm to be sure of not missing breakfast today. Our kids took full advantage of the extra time and varied buffet. They started with pancakes and croissants, moved on to onigiri (rice wrapped in seaweed)... and then discovered that the soft-serve ice cream machine was operational. I have to admit, my initial response was a hearty parental no when they asked, but then I figured, why not? There were three very happy children that morning.

After breakfast we had a couple of hours' drive to our next destination, Niseko.

Not such a long drive, only our kids are not that good in a car. They - predictably - muck around and fight and make a lot of noise. We - predictably - hiss and yell for them to be quiet. Eventually we do get a sullen silence following the threat of a Very Nasty Consequence, but by then it's a bit of a Pyrrhic victory with misery all around. Not fun, not fun at all. Thankfully this trip was rendered bearable by Humphrey the Hamster! Audio books = bloody life saver, I tell you.

Niseko is a ski resort near Mount Yōtei. Mount Yōtei is big. Verrry big.

It didn't take so long to get there, but then we had to get around it to our hotel.

What a lovely welcome! We actually saw this at many of the hotels we stayed at, but this was by far the most prominent, being right as you walked in.

Apart from the hills being volcanoes and not, well, regular hills, Hokkaido looked disconcertingly like Switzerland a lot of the time. Including inside.  

After checking in, we asked for information on easy nearby hikes. The receptionist very helpfully got a map and pointed out a couple... that were 15 minutes long. C managed not to be too rude when he said we were looking for something a big longer and that we would figure it out ourselves.

But first, lunch. The hotel was out of town, so thought we'd head towards the start of the hike and hope to find something on the way. My stomach sank a little when the first place we saw was a little curry house - Japanese curry is not my favourite. But this turned out to be a real curry house with real curry - yum!

Yoko left us at the trail head. The rest of us set off into the forest, with the aim of ascending Mt. Niseko Annupuri, a few kilometers away and 500m up.

It was hot. We sweated. I sweated even more than normal, thanks to a bout of hot flashes triggered by coming off the pill a few weeks earlier. As an example of how hot these hot flashes are: normally on a long flight I am wearing at least 3 layers - the last one a fleece - and wrapped up in two blankets, and still a little cold. On the trip to Japan, I wore a tank top the entire way and was still uncomfortably hot a lot of the time. So, I was pretty hot on this walk.

Shabolz's parents, Micheline and Jean-Paul, were also hot and stopped about half-way up. The remaining hikers made it to the top in less than 1 hour 40 min - not too bad for the first walk!

The summit (1,308m) - we could just barely see Mount Yōtei in the afternoon haze. If you click on the picture and angle your screen the right way, you may be able to glimpse it too.

Looking along the old crater to the second peak. With every step along the path came a rustling from...

... grasshoppers! Lots of them!

What goes up must come down, so down we went and back to the hotel for, of course, a hot bath. (No picture, sorry.)

In the evening we met up with friends of Shabolz and Yoko, and went out for yakitori and okonomiyaki. Yum yum yum!

Well, yum, yum yum for us - our kids were less enthusiastic.

There wasn't even any edamame. Oh well.

Then it was back to the hotel for a nightcap...

Ume-shu, mmmmmm. And a cool bartop, no?

... and bed.

Regular-life interlude

I don't do much describing of our regular weekends here, but I have friends who are doing this at the moment, and they came to see us over the weekend and very nicely described everything we did. So if you're interested, here was last weekend:

Friday night (we are at the end)
Saturday
Sunday

Not every summer weekend is so action packed, but trampolines, BBQs, tresse and some kind of visit with friends and/or family generally feature in there at least once. Also slugs, more prominently that I'd have ever imagined.

Japan - Day 2

In Japan in summer, the sun rises at 4.15am. We did not rise so early. In fact, even though we went to bed a good 11 hours before breakfast ended the next day, we barely made it in time.

After hurriedly eating, we set off for the nearby jigokudani - Hell Valley. It wasn't the most hellish Hell Valley we've ever seen, but still quite steamy and stinky.

.

I spotted a sign that seemed to say fire forest walk, which sounded like lots of fun... only then we realised it was actually a warning about forest fires. D'oh.

We did do a short walk through the forest though, along a hot stream.

After a nice foot soak, we headed off to a reconstructed Ainu village museum. Lunch was traditional Ainu food - acorn noodles with deer and vegetables, and a kind of sweet potato pancake. Despite this being very yummy, the kids opted for plain rice.

The village was interesting - though had a looong way to go in terms of animal cruelty. Dogs and bears in small cages might be authentic, but are really not necessary.

 Hair clips, on the other hand, may be necessary but are not really authentic.

Ditto for crocs.

Lukan with his godfather, Shabolz.

We thought we might stop for a swim in the sea on the way back, but driving along the coast road we were quickly reminded that Japanese shorelines are often concrete blocks and ports rather than beaches. Oh well.

The sunset was quite lovely. 

Back at the hotel it was onsen time then dinner time - where we discovered that the buffet was exactly the same as the night before. A different menu wouldn't have changed much for our kids though; all they wanted anyway was edamame, rice and ice cream.

Then it was back into the bath for the nightly fireworks (they weren't on the first night as it was extremely windy). Well, you didn't have to be in the onsen to see them, but Shabolz was taking the kids and I figured it's not every day you get the chance to see fireworks over a lake while soaking in a steaming hot, nicely scented, rooftop public bath.

Just before heading to the onsen, I'd actually discovered it was forbidden to take photos. Pffft. I mean, how could I miss such a fabulous Facebook opportunity?

There was a bit of noise again from the men's bath next door, but it was easy enough to lie back and ignore it. Well, for me - Shabolz had a harder time of it. He turned his back on the 3 kids for a minute only to turn around again to a full on shower hose water fight. When I asked the kids later who started it, the response was, well it just kind of happened naturally.

Afterwards, doubly clean now, it was bed time.

Japan - Day 1.5

Seriously, the last time I posted was in April? And between my summary of last summer and now, when the next summer already feels over, there were only 3 posts in total? Life... slow down already!

Not that there's been so much to blog about. I mean, I've done the "I hate nagging my kids all the time" posts, and so even though I'm still nagging, I can't really write more about that. You may have gathered also that I'm prone to fretting about my parenting abilities... the issues haven't really changed, same old same old, nothing new to write about there either. I've spent a lot of time in the garden too, but again - blogged that already, a lot.

We have had some excellent holidays though. So, in an effort to keep the blog alive, but mainly as a way of remembering our trips in more detail, I thought I'd record them here.

First up, Japan, given that it's the freshest.

So then. Japan. Hokkaido, actually - a place we'd both wanted to go hiking for a long time. I'd imagined going when the kids were a bit older, but then we found out our friends Shabolz and Yoko, with their son Andy and Shabolz's parents, were going this year for their family holiday. We asked if we could tag along. They didn't say no. Then we proposed an itinerary, including a number of hikes we wanted to do. They didn't say no. And even better, Yoko booked all the hotels and found cheap flights and cheap car rental, including for us. They are keepers, for sure.

We left early on a Saturday morning and some 15 hours later arrived in Tokyo at lunchtime on Sunday. (No Lukan spews on the plane, but then he suddenly vomited in baggage collection. I managed to whip out a bag in time though.) This was 1 hour later than planned, which meant we only had an hour to go through immigration, get our luggage and then check in for the flight to Hokkaido. We were very relieved to make it to the check-in queue around 30 minutes before the flight departure... but despite making ourselves known about which flight we were supposed to take, we had to stay at the end of the queue. 10 minutes went by and we were still in the queue... another 10 minutes went by and we were still in the queue... 5 minutes went by and we got to the check-in counter... and somehow we still made the flight. Phew!

Bonus - a Mt Fuji sighting!

90 minutes later we were in Sapporo, where we had to go through a bit of a kerfaffle to get the car. Nothing major, just the document-heavy and time-consuming Japanese process. Sardinia two weeks before - keys and one piece of paper in 5 minutes. Japan - keys and a whole huge dossier after a good 40 minutes.

But actually it was lucky we could hire a car at all. Just over two weeks before, C had realized that our driving licenses are not valid in Japan: he needed a translation of his, which would take 3 weeks, and I needed an international license, which required the submission of a real photo and the sending of the license to me. You got some fam-lee that can help ya, luv? was the response when I called about our predicament to ask if please, pretty please I couldn't submit everything electronically, including a photo? Luckily I do indeed have family: my lovely brother responded to my please, pretty please by printing out all the necessary documents, going to the NRMA and sending me my international license. C also begged for his translation to go a bit faster, and got it in time too.

Anyway, we finally got the cars and headed off towards our first hotel, on Lake Toya:

We hadn't had lunch yet but figured we'd eat on the way. Only, the way was all forest. Forest, forest, forest. But there was a scenic view point with a restaurant and happily, Japanese scenic-view-point food is edible. And especially happily for Lukan, who hours before had said he wanted edamame and only edamame (steamed soy beans), the restaurant had a vending machine selling edamame.

And so begins what would come to be called the great edamame shortage of 2014

From the scenic view point it was only another 20 minutes to the hotel - which was even more scenic, being beautiful and right on the lake.

It was very windy, and so very wavy.

Because natural beauty can always be improved by kitch. And noise. Good grief, this boat headed out every couple of hours with a blare of music and babble... and next to no passengers.

The hotel had a rooftop onsen so it wasn't long before the yukatas and slippers were on...

... and we were happily soaking.

My soak was slightly disturbed by some rowdy children in the next door men's bath.

Then it was dinner in the hotel restaurant (edamame, rice and ice cream for the kids)...

Love, love, love the Japanese custom of eating in your hotel-provided dressing gown.

... and, after a long Sat-unday, bed.

Valium. I need valium.

I have mentioned before that I don't like dandelions. Which is a problem as Spring around here is dandelions. Roadsides and backyards and vineyards and entire FIELDS full of dandelions.

I can just about tolerate the flowers, kind of, as long as they're not in my lawn. But the puffs. I truly despise dandelion puffs. Even the sight of just a few gives me the heebie jeebies.  All those nasty little weed seeds threatening my property. A full field of them? *shudder*

And then there's the puff blowing. Sure, it looks like innocent childhood fun. Sweet even. But what it actually is, is stained clothes. Dandelion-juice-stained clothes that will never be stain-free again.

And of course, it's those weeds-to-be. Fistfuls of them, stripped off by hand, gleefully flung about. Such as into Lukan's hair, because he wanted to be a dandelion puff. Not that I fear they'll sprout on his head, of course, but it's not like combing seeds out of his increasingly long, fine, easily knotted hair is exactly fun.

Non-grippy flowers in hair - perfectly fine. Grippy dandelion seeds - not so much.

Today though, today really did not help my dislike of those puffs. Because here is where they were flung:

All over my vegetable patch. My painstakingly weeded vegetable patch.

Deep breaths happening over here, people, deep breaths.

Sunday snapshot