a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

  • Weeds Are Useful


    There are plenty of places in the gardens where the weeds and brush grow profusely. I don’t mind them because they are a haven for many good insects and spiders to live. They come out and quickly dispatch any invading bugs with joy. And the weeds and grasses are a steady source of nourishing mulch for the vegetables, and make great hilling matter for hilling the potatoes.



    I’m getting around to weeding the arugula patches. In a way, self-seeking arugula is a kind of weed. Once it is established, you can’t get rid of it, but then why would you want to?


    A book I am enjoying reading this summer is a collection of 120 thoughts by the actress, Kiki Kirin 樹木希林, who passed away in September 2018 at the age of 75 after living with cancer for five years. She played in numerous movies and television shows. One of my favorite of hers is Sweet Bean – あん, made in 2015, where she plays an elderly woman who shows up at a small shop and teaches the shop owner how to make the most delicious sweet bean filled pastries.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJnLW_tTgAE&w=560&h=315]

    After her death, a number of books have been published about her thoughts on life. In the book I’m reading she writes, “It doesn’t matter if there is one person, two people, or ten people around, if you’re a lonely person, you’ll be lonely.” She also says that now that she is old, she is often requested to come and talk about being old and death. When interviewers ask her what she thinks about death, she says, ”I‘ve never died so I don’t have a clue about death.”

    Even though she was often asked to make speeches, she was surprised that there are those who claim to have been saved by listening to her speeches. “That’s dependency disease you know. You need to think for yourself,” she writes.


  • Why Didn’t I Think of That? First In, First Out Done Easy


    The drakes are lost. Both of the hens, Snow and Emma, are spending most of their time on their nests, incubating their eggs. Without their mates, the drakes meander, not sure what to do, or so it seems. Duck world is so different than chicken world. Drakes and roosters have different world views. With roosters it is, ”I am the king, and how many hens can I bang?” With drakes, it is much more complicated. Drakes and duck hens converse, quarrel, make alliances, and play.


    Solcion has come out with an innovative canister. It has lids at both ends. The idea is that you add things from one end, and use them from the other, so that you are always using the older product first.

    The lids are different colors so you know which end to use when adding products, and which end to use when pouring out products.


    Take coffee beans. When you come home with fresh coffee beans, but still have some coffee beans left over in the canister, you add the new coffee beans from one end of the canister, flip it over, and so when you pour out coffee beans for your next morning brew, you’re using the older beans first, and the newer beans stay under the older beans. It’s the first-in, first-out principal of accounting in practice in the kitchen. Just don’t shake the canister when you add new things.

  • Early Summer – Dreaming of No Waste


    Today’s clouds are a welcome relief from the early heatwave of the past few days which gave us a taste of July and August in May. The yellow dandelion flowers have turned into fluffy white balls, which float away with the slightest breeze.


    You’d never know that the woods are full of chickens, their favorite place to be. It’s not until you hear their alarm calls, that you even know they are there.


    The cherry blossoms have become baby cherries. Another month or so and they will be plump, sweet, and irresistible.


    I’m getting bountiful rows of pulled weeds clearing the garden beds. They should make good potato beds. I’m covering them with gunny sacks with holes cut out for the potatoes to grow through. Come mid summer I’ll find out how well this works.


    Working in the garden and woodland, I’m in awe that nature never has any waste. There are no garbage piles in nature. Everything that is made can be reused, recycled, composted.

    There is a small town in Japan, Kamikatsu (no English on the town’s home page, but fun to click through anyway), on the island of Shikoku, which has a goal of becoming a no-waste town by 2020.


    They recycle 80% of all their waste. They have a recycling center where the townspeople bring their waste, and sort it, not into simple categories like paper and plastic, but into many categories. For example, there are 9 categories just for paper products. There is a chart of 1,152 items, from aluminum-coated paper candy wrappers to whiskey bottles to dresser mirrors, listing which bin to put each item.

    Try as they might, they can’t yet get down to 0% waste because of the way products are manufactured. To get to 0% waste, they need companies to rethink how products are made and packed, and to design 100% recycling into the products before they leave the factory.

    It‘s inspiring to see a small town in the mountains of Japan taking on the goal of reducing waste to zero. Their efforts have attracted attention from around the world. How different things would be if producing zero waste was taken for granted, and it was the way everything was made. Nature does it. Why can’t we?

  • First Potato Celebration


    I celebrate the sighting of the first potato sprout. Yes, this will be a good year, comes to mind when I see new potato leaves. They are a sign that it is time to start gardening in earnest.


    A lot of things are in full bloom by the time the first potato leaves poke above the spring earth. Elderberries with their space-age white odd spiky flowers.


    Before they turn their salmon colors, salmon berries are green. Even ripe, they can have a bitter bite. Eaten at this stage, they might make you cry.


    The trilliums are carpeting the forest floor with their big, green leaves. Most of the trilliums here are white, so the pink ones are always a surprise.



    I never know what awaits me in the coop. A hen trying to tell me she laid a dozen eggs. Three hens crowded into two nests, one on top of the other. It’s impossible to be bored.

  • Goodbye Frost


    Looking at the weather forecast, it’s safe to say that yesterday’s cold morning was this spring’s last frost. There was just a touch of frost on a few low-lying leaves. A soft, goodbye kiss as frost walked away. In the fall when it returns, the first frost will bring as much joy as it always does. Strange how something can happen every year, and still be wonderful.



    I like tulips in the morning when they are still asleep, all bundled up. I’ve never paid attention as to when they close at night. Do they wait until it is dark to close, or are they bundled for the night’s sleep by the end of dusk? Do bees ever get trapped inside a tulip for the night? No matter how old you get, there is always more to learn.