Random spring pictures

Tomorrow morning after crosswalk duty, Tetsu and I are heading off to Japan's Narita Airport and catching a flight to Detroit via Chicago.  We will arrive in Detroit the same day in the evening!  From there, our two week adventures begin!

So, before I leave I wanted to get some of the random photo files I have onto my blog.  Sorry, lots of miscellaneous photos today.

We came upon some wild ducks that had discovered the flooded rice fields.  There is a slim week or two when the fields become flooded and before the rice is planted.  The ducks love swimming around and even when the fields are planted they will still paddle between the fresh stalks.  As the rice becomes thicker and fuller the ducks will hide out along the banks and many will begin laying eggs and raising families.

Oops.  Got too close and I scared them off.  They flew a short distance to another flooded field.

And here comes a tractor set to plant the flats of rice.  The machine goes through the flooded field and some gadgets pulls off a few stalks at a time from the blocks and push them into mud.

Planting is going on elsewhere too!  Tetsu has planted a vegetable garden!  Our neighbor who has quite a few fields, has this one unplanted and isn't planning to do anything with it this year.  Tetsu is only going to use a FRACTION of the field but he has tomatoes and cucumbers and eggplant and pumpkin and okra planted...  We will see what will come of this new endeavor.  One problem is that the field is a five minute walk from our house and it has no water supply.  Instead of walking, Tetsu fills a tank with water from our house every day and goes over to his new field by car.  John and I often follow on foot to see how the garden is growing.

John is checking out Tetsu's garden (and happily jumping up to greet Tetsu getting his jeans all muddy!)

Of course taking off for two weeks to Detroit isn't going to be great for the garden but it will have to bear up without Tetsu's watchful eye or hauled in water...

 After visiting Tetsu's garden we walked another 10 minutes over to the elementary school.

It is a nice little country school...  Lots of colorful play equipment.

John playing amongst the playground tires.

The school even has a wisteria tree on the grounds!

John is hiding behind the flowers.  Speaking of John, he went to the vets this evening and he'll be boarding with them for the two weeks that we are gone.  I hope he doesn't forget us!  He lived at the vets for nearly a year before coming to us so I don't know if he is happy to be back with them or will be missing us...

Okay... I've got to stop!  I am taking my computer to Detroit but whether I'll find time to blog or not I don't know...  If I don't check in you'll know I'm having fun with my family!!!