a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • First Blush


    The first blush of blue is tinging the hydrangea. They are called “Ajisai 紫陽花” in Japanese, which translates to purple 紫 sun 陽 flower 花, though since they bloom during the rainy season, they are associated with rain. Throughout Japan, there are temples with so many hydrangea, they are called hydrangea temples. Hasedera in Kamakura has some 40 varieties of 2,500 hydrangea. Yatadera in Nara has 60 varieties and 10,000 hydrangea.

    Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, a German doctor from Würzburg who joined the Dutch military, traveled to Japan in 1823 and was posted as a physician and scientist at the Dutch trading post of Dejima, a small island in Nagasaki where the Dutch were allowed to live and trade from 1641 through 1853. At the time, it was the only place where foreigners were allowed to live in Japan.

    Because of his skills as a doctor, Siebold was allowed to travel throughout Japan, and he collected specimens of thousands of plants and animals during his stay. He particularly loved hydrangea, and named a variety, Hydrangea otaksa, after his Japanese wife, Otaki.

  • The Roots of Everything


    Trimming garlic this morning, I ended up with a pile of wiry roots. Their intricate weave, as complex as any urban street system, show the intense commerce that happens just below the surface of the earth: plants negotiating contracts by the second with a host of bacteria and fungi, and the micro organisms that feed on them, exchanging sugars for nutrients plants need.

    Without roots, we would be nothing. No roots, no plants. No plants, no people. Our lives are dependent on these thin, tangled filaments we rarely see.

    The Japanese Stewartia is blooming. I look forward to their blossoms every year. If you look closely at the sepals covering the flower buds, you’ll see that the edges of the sepals are lined with jagged teeth.


  • Mountain Priest, Mountain Hat?


    A single clover blossom makes a lovely bouquet. The first of the potatoes are blooming too. This year I planted potatoes spaced apart so that all summer long and into the fall I can enjoy their flowers.



    In the woods, the dogwood is starting to bloom. They are called “Yamaboshi” in Japan, and sometimes it is written 山法師 which translates to “mountain Budhist priest”, but it is also written 山帽子 which means “mountain hat”. I’d say they look more like hats than priests.


    Yesterday while picking up logs to burn from a friend’s place in the woods, I came across a branch covered with feathery mycelium. The transformation of wood to soil is a slow, exquisite process, cloaked with astonishing beauty. Most of the time all this beauty goes unseen, deep in quiet forests, out of sight, out of mind. Only the mycelia know. The next time you drive by a forest, know that on the forest floor, under a blanket of decaying leaves, mycelia are spinning exquisite art as they convert wood into soil.

  • Where Joker’s Hats Come From


    Is there any doubt that whoever designed the first joker’s hat grew peonies? Someone, centuries ago, saw a peony seed pod and said, “I want to wear that on my head!”



    This time of year, beauty is on full display, blooming iris, heads of wheat forming, their grains forming alternating rows of green beads. “You go left, I’ll go right, you go left, I’ll go right,” and on and on to the very last grain. And green tomato droplets which get fatter every day.


  • Love at First Sight


    On a cool, Sunday morning, it’s refreshing to see the pink rhododendron in bloom. The dogs are off in the woods trying to find something to chase. I’ve come to the conclusion that dogs, at least our dogs, do not have a sense of time. While sitting at the bottom of a tree, watching a squirrel or chipmunk up in the branches, the dogs will spend hours, transfixed. One minute, an hour, two hours, it’s all the same to them.


    I recently purchased some white rice to serve to guests. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten white rice, and I’d forgotten how small the grains of white rice are compared to brown rice. The number of brands of white rice for sale in Japan is endless. The one I purchased is called Hitomebore, which means “Love at First Sight”. Competition to create the best tasting rice is fierce, with new varieties appearing every year.

    The brand names are smile-worthy: Blue Sky Thunder, Charming Princess, Light of the Sun, First Frost, Dream Fulfillment, Water Mirror, Drops of the Milky Way, and on and on. In 2016, the Japan Grain Inspection Association (JGIA) judged 44 rice varieties as A+, 79 varieties as A, and 18 varieties as A-, that is 141 varieties of rice. Somewhere, there must be a rice expert, who by sampling a single grain of rice on their tongue, can tell you the variety, the place the grain of rice was grown, what the weather was during that growing season, and even how many egrets walked through the rice field where that rice was grown.

    The JGIA has a Ranking Map with all the areas of Japan where you can see which rice varieties from that area received a grade A- or higher. Click on an area, and you’ll see where the rice was grown, the variety type, and the grade.



    Curious about the Drops of the Milky Way rice, I looked at their website, and it goes into great detail about the history of the variety of rice, how it was developed, and which rice varieties were cross bred to produce it, Okubane 400 x Hokuriku 208, if you want to know. In 2008, a select few specimens were selected out of 2,000 crosses, and in 2010, these were further refined down to 13 specimens which tasted especially good, could withstand cool weather, had few broken husks, and were resistant to diseases. From 2012 through 2014, the new variety of rice was grown in six different places in Iwate prefecture, and in 2015, the prefecture started promoting this new rice.

    The name, Drops of the Milky Way, was chosen because the shiny grains of rice shine like the individual stars in the Milky Way.

    For your information, the rice variety, Love at First Sight ひとめぼれ, appeared in the early 1990s. Work on the rice variety was started in 1981, the name registered in 1991, and the rice variety was registered under Japan’s Seed and Sapling Law in 1992.