a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: February 2019

  • Is It Spring Now?


    The snow which came at the beginning of February is almost a memory. Just a few patches remain, and today, the pond is thawed, the ice of yesterday and this morning gone.



    The chickens are back on grass, and loving every minute of it.



    Their nests are full of eggs each day.


    Even the fig in the hoop house is budding.


    In 1999, we purchased this sauce dish in Hagi 萩, a small town far off the beaten path in western Japan on the sea of Japan. Hagi is famous for its earthy, subdued pottery. I haven’t used this dish much. I was perfectly happy letting it sit on its shelf and being beautiful. Recently I discovered that it is a perfect utensil for pouring eggs into a skillet. One, two, three raw eggs fit perfectly in it, and when the butter in the skillet is hot, the eggs pour smoothly into the skillet.

    Twenty years ago when I first picked up the dish, did it know that in the future it would become one of my favorite kitchen utensils? Did it know before I did that I would be living with chickens and ducks and need a handy utensil to pour raw eggs into a hot skillet? Is that why it called out, “Buy me,” in Hagi?

  • A Chicken Parade


    The village of Edison held their annual Chicken Parade yesterday at high noon. The quiet village was packed to watch happy chicken owners parade their chickens through the village. It’s a fun parade, all ten minutes of it. I don’t think I could ever take my chickens to the parade. All those people. All that noise and laughter. My chickens would break out of their cage and fly over the rooftops.





















  • It Takes All Winter


    It takes all winter for flower buds to age until they glimmer like starbursts on a frosty spring morning. Fragile, these gobo (burdock) seed pods shatter easily, waiting for a passing beast to rub against them and scatter their seeds. Their spiny barbs latch onto anything. You can’t walk past them without them sticking to you.



    Lavender, mint, oregano seed pods all wait for something to scatter them. They look fragile, but they’re not, surviving all winter through rain, snow, and frosts.


  • Things to Ponder While the Snow Melts


    So what do you do with a doll you have loved for years as a child and are now too old to play with it? If you’re in Japan, you can have a funeral for it. There are Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan which regularly conduct funerals for dolls.

    Things with eyes and mouths can not be thrown away, is a way of thinking in Japan. There is a view that since dolls are in such a close relation with people, that they share our memories and feelings, so throwing them away is not an option.




    At a doll funeral, priests conduct a memorial service for the dolls, thank them for their service, and send them on to the next life after the service. At the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, some 30,000 dolls a year are honored this way and during the funeral huge taiko drums are played, and shrine maidens perform special dances for the dolls.


    In a world awash in conflict, strife, and controversy, it’s calming to know that there are places where some feel so much for their dolls that they conduct elaborate funerals for them. It’s a pleasant thing to ponder as I watch the snow melt.

  • A Two Week Break


    The snowpack is finally melting away, one snowflake at a time. For two weeks the ground has been covered with snow. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a snowpack last this long. Usually, they are gone in a day or two. It’s been a two week break from any garden work.


    The snow has melted enough, the air warmed sufficiently, for the chickens to run free.



    In a few days the grass will be poking through the vanishing snow. The chickens will be back to scratching for bugs and worms.