Garden Adventure!

I went on a garden adventure.

First off, it's currently natsuyasumi (summer vacation) so I have a lot spare time on my hands. I feel like a loser if I spend ALL day sitting inside watching Chuck, so I tried to think of something to do with my spare time. Something fun, rewarding, that could get my involved with people I met, too.

In the end, and with only a feel gentle nudges from my father, I decided I was going to make a garden.

This is what the front of my house looked like when I moved in: lots and lots of weeds!!

It doesn't really look that bad in the pictures, but srsly, these things were beastly!!

On day one, I rode my bike to Homac (like Home Depot, basically) and bought a shovel and a pair of gloves. (it was certainly an experience riding home with a shovel in the front basket of my bike. At least it was one with a short handle!!!) I started pulling up the weeds. At around 5:00, the Chuu (middle school) Tennis team got done with practice. As they came out of the school the waved and said hello to me from a distance. So I waved them over. They seriously full-on sprinted across the street over to me. I felt so loved!! :D It was awesome! We stood and talked for a while, I asked them about their tennis practice, they asked me some questions about myself and what sort of things I liked.

Then, using my awesome people-skills, I convinced them to help me pull weeds! It was miraculous! Suddenly I had ten~ish girls helping me pull out these horrendously stubborn weeds! And we had lots of fun, too! We learned the names of lots of different kinds of bugs in English, they interrogated me some more (I like Arashi! they were so happy haha). After not too long, we got all the weeds I wanted out, out. They were seriously a life-saver! It would have taken me days to get that all done by myself!! (I also started a compost pile in the back! yay!)

They are so cute!!! :D

Sadly, my soil was... very lacking. Basically a TON of rocks and a little bit of soil.

                                       

But I took a break for Sunday! The principal of Chuu (middle school) had come over and talked to me a little bit about my garden and stuff. And when I got back from church, he had come over and chopped down all the weeds in the back and side of my house! It was amazing! I won't have the time, energy, or money to turn it into a usable garden THIS year, at least, but if I stay for another year, I'm def planting more vegetables back there!

 I spent many hours Monday digging around the hard "soil" with my shovel and throwing out the big rocks. And some of the small ones. Basically for as long as I could stand it, I was tossing rocks out of my garden bed. But in the end, it really didn't look that much different!! Haha

Then came TODAY, and with a bit of a detour I will explain about that!. Matsuda-san (my supervisor) had some paperwork for me to fill out and wanted to show me around Kuriyama some more. So she picked me up around 1:30 and did the paperwork stuff. Then she took me to the Soccer and baseball fields! They are pretty awesome, and apparently named/created in commemoration of some famous south american soccer player who came to visit Kuriyama? I think that's what it said, at least. I actually read the Spanish description cause it was easier to understand than the Japanese!! Ohohoho.
After that Matsuda-san took me to Kuriyama Koen (park) which is quite lovely! We walked around, got to climb a super old coal-powered train and play with knobs, and also visit their tiny zoo (they had MONKEYS. And PONIES. And BUNNIES. And CHICKENS. And a DEER. and DUCKS. Yeah. Super hardcore!!) Then we got some ice cream and just sat and talked for a while. It was very fun. She's a really fun lady!! She likes Arashi and went to a concert of theirs over the weekend so that was fun to hear about. We talked about food and she thought it was SO funny that Ikuta Toma is my favorite Japanese man. And possibly my favorite any-nationality-man. So said it was so amusing that a foreigner would even KNOW of Ikuta Toma, let alove love him. Then I told her that I especially liked his nose and she just laughed. :) It was a good time!
BACK TO GARDEN. Matsuda-san was so very kind enough to drive me to Homac to get the last supplies I needed for garden. I bought 40 red bricks, 10 bags of potted soil, and one bag of manure (AWESOME I KNOW, RIGHT??!!) Then we went to the seed store across the street to buy some vegetable seeds, and then back to the park to buy some cheap flowers we saw earlier. There is simply NO WAY I would have been able to do that on my bike. It would have NEVER HAPPENED. Haha! Anyway, after a few more hours of work, the result was THIS:

Tada!! Sorry it's dark! I finished after the sun set but I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to post~!

I guess it's not QUITE finished yet, because I think I will go buy some more flowers tomorrow to put in the big, gaping, flower-yearning hole in the front there.

I planted vegetables on the long, skinny side. I hope they grow....!

What I planted:

A radish! This one is called "Suwan" which I think might be "swan"?

Red radishes too! This one is "cometto" or "comet" type

koumatsuna. I don't really know what this is but Matsuda-san said it was tasty in salads. My dictionary says it is a "green leafy vegetable resembling spinach." I like spinach. Can't wait to try it!!

chingensai. Again, I have no idea what this is but was told it was delicious in salads! It's also not in my dictionary... haha. SURPRISES!!

And NOW, I am going to heat up the leftover shogayaki I have, watch chuck (or maybe My Little Ponies...) and take a long, long shower. I am so dirty!!!

Best!

JeJira