Happy Equinox!

Hooray! It is the equinox! That means I can shave off the beard!
Or so I thought. When I mentioned it at the table at dinner, the whole family said "No! We like the short bearded version better than shaved!" so I remain with fur on the face until it just gets too hot to bear.

In other equinox news- here in Japan, it is a national holiday! How about that! We made pizza, planted my potatoes and cleaned up the yard a bit. A very satisfying equinox.
How was yours?

I Hate Wild Boars

It all started about a week ago.
The dog started barking like mad. I thought, maybe it is just a cat or something, and went back to reading my book. But the barking continued, so I went out to check. When I got down to the dog, I heard something very very large moving away from my taro patch. Oh no... I thought. The full moon shone down on a pig about the size of a small house, waddling away from my beloved elephant ears patch... Speaking of them, WHY COULDN'T I SEE THEIR USUAL 150CM HIGH SHAPES?!!?!?!?!? I let the dog loose and he chased a pig four times his size into the bamboo.

The Taro Boar Disaster Aftermath

I hate boars.

The next day I harvested, or should I say salvaged the last 10Kg or so. I suppose 10% is better than none... It doesn't feel like it when you look at though... Then I took the dog for a walk down past the bottom garden. WHERE WERE MY FALL POTATOES??????

I hate boars.

Then I noticed that the net fence I lent our friend who is gardening on a little patch by ours...I thought:
WHERE WERE HER SWEET POTATOES?
and also
HOW MUCH CAN ONE BOAR EAT IN A NIGHT?????!??!?!?  Whew, I guess he only ate about 1/5 or so. I felt a stab of jealousy that she still had at least some crop. Then I felt bad that I was jealous. I am a complicated kind of guy.

Boars love sweet potatoes.

I hate boars.

I was able to reduce some of the damage by tying up Mocha the wonder dog near the garden. He is a heck of a good mutt. He got some extra special food and a longer than usual walk.

His head isn't really that big. Otherwise he would fall over all the time.

Potatoes are planted!

With the help(?) of my youngest, I got 60 chitted potato cuttings into the garden, on top of a generous helping of two year old leaf mould. Whew. Next up, sunflowers!

My "Kita-Murasaki" (Purple North) potatoes are in, and they are Goooooooooood!!!!
The girl and I harvested them on Wednesday, and they were in the hash browns by morning. Ummm..... Hash purples....
We also harvested a bunch of "Andes Gold" (a russet) and "Kita-Akari" (Northern Lights) all from the same keyhole bed.

Making that bed was so easy! I took the seed potatoes, and set them on the close cropped grass.... well OK, close cropped weeds. Where was I... Oh yeah, I placed them in concentric circles (except for a foot wide path) and just covered them with 10cm of my compost (which has soil in it, remember?). Then I added about 20cm of leaves I collected last fall with the boy. They had one weeding about a month ago, and that is it, aside from having the dog do some watchdog duty to keep the wild boars away. Easy and effective.