Wildflowers in the morning

It is the weekend again and we chose to stay at home, take a long morning walk, do yard work and go out for lunch rather than drive around the countryside looking for something to do.  Tetsu and I both wonder what is going to happen to our weekly schedule when he retires in a couple of weeks.  We already are rather aimlessly going through life...

So this morning we walked about 30 minutes south of us which seems like a long walk but I realize that a group of school children make this walk every morning to come to school and then most of them probably walk the same distance home in the afternoon.  I should not groan about the long walk!

Tetsu did a better job of taking pictures than I did.  The morning dew on the weeds alongside the road.

Dandelion fluffs also along the road (the fields are a bit raised so it is easier to get this low perspective).

 More wild flowers.

 And some wild clover.

Tetsu always has to take a photo of me photographing something.  Just to prove I take pictures?  I seem to squint when I photograph, don't I?

At our turn around point is a block of land cleared away with all these little statues.  Not really ojiso-san which are child statues but we stood and looked at these awhile and wondered what they were. 

Some man who was also out walking came up behind us an offered an explanation.  He said that these were statues that were scattered around the fields and in the hills and the community decided to put them all together as a sort of memorial spot.  He went on to explain the history of our country community, how samurais did this and that, how the creeks and bridges got their names, even the mythology of how the god of one mountain forgot a boulder he was carrying on top of one of the local hillsides!  A very historically informed man!

(He also explained how he sometimes talked to space people which made me step back a bit but it turned out he was making a joke and trying to make the point that we are all part of the universe and we are all citizens of space... space people... so he was talking to a couple space people, Tetsu and me, at that moment.  Joking in the Japanese language sometimes leaves me a few steps behind everyone else...)

We said goodbye to the friendly man and Tetsu and I stopped at a way-side 7-Eleven and bought a couple of coffees and then went and sat by the rice fields to watch the herons and ducks.

The man, after his 30 minute walk around, found us again and gave us another informative discourse about the history of the local food customs.  It was an educational morning!

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EXTRA!!  EXTRA!!!  READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

Queenie over at Queenie's Needlework has started a Stumpwork tutorial!  I have asked her to do a tutorial since she first gave me one of her absolutely splendid Stumpwork cards.  She is a busy person but she has found time to write up some instructions and I set to work immediately.  I see, this morning that she has posted a second installment of the tutorial so I'll have to get to work again but anyway, you might be interested in creating your own Stumpwork.  

This is my first attempt at post number one.  Head and Neck.  That looks like a head and neck doesn't it?  On to lesson number two.  The Nose!

Unpopulated

On one of the last days of Golden Week Tetsu and I began the day with a walk and then breakfast outside in the yard (using Tetsu's nicely rewoven chairs!)  After some yard work we went off looking for places where we wouldn't find many people.

 On our walk we found lupines.

The lupines that I was focusing on.

The poppies are out.

And... what are these?  I don't know but they are in all the forests and around the fields.  This one is happy without even having a happy face painted on.

Breakfast in the yard... and it is a very small yard!  That is my car behind me and Tetsu's car is behind that one.  And on the other side of the fence is our neighbor's house and his parking space for two cars.  Why oh why I don't know but last week the neighbor cut down two very tall trees that separated our yard from his car parking area.  Now we get to look directly onto his two cars...  This is the neighbor who isn't particularly chatty and now on Saturday or Sunday mornings HE has to say hello to us when we are having breakfast outside and he wants to get into his car.  As he runs from all conversation with the neighbors I'm guessing he regrets cutting down his trees!  We will try to plant something a bit bushy to ease the divide between our houses...

And this was breakfast.  Salad, scrambled eggs and sausage, a banana and fried rice!  (And coffee).  The fried rice was an afterthought.

Then off we went in search of no people...

In some ways, finding areas with no people is easy... because Japanese urban areas are very densely populated, while the rest of Japan has unusable/uninhabited land.  But during holidays, all those people who live in the cities like to go to the countryside or at the very least return to their home towns and villages and then the cars back up and the touristy areas are overrun. 

"Roughly 70% of Japan is mountainous and the country has a population of 127m with 93% of those people living in the 30% of the country that is suitable for building.  That leaves just 6.5% of the population living in the rural/mountainous parts that constitute 70% of the country."  --  Quora Internet Site

 The greenery is amazing.

We went off north of Nikko city and hiked back a bit to a waterfall.  Where is the water coming from?  Where is it going?

We also made a stop at a touristy dairy farm where ice cream was being sold in abundance but we didn't see any cows.  Why no cows on a dairy farm?

What we did find were monkeys!

Often when we come to this farm we've seen these wild monkeys that live in the mountains.  I spotted 5 or 6 of them in a deserted camp ground and I walked closer to see if I could get their pictures.  The monkey in the foreground has a baby clinging to its chest.

 She sat down to eat some dandelions  You can just make out the darker baby.

As we watched, another tourist approached from the opposite side of the campground, I suppose like me, she wanted to take pictures.  But she got too close to the monkey and he/she made a dash at her.  The tourist held her ground and stamped her foot a few times to startle the monkey and Tetsu and I called to her as we walked closer to her side hoping that three humans would be enough to keep the monkeys at bay (we were still outnumbered by monkeys though...  I forgot about that).  The girl backed up to us and the monkeys went on with their lunch.

Wild monkeys claim my interest much more than any monkey in a zoo does but the Nikko monkeys are too used to humans and they are notorious for grabbing handbags and climbing into cars looking for food.  From afar, cute.  Not so cute when they make a dash for you.  So we managed to avoid people and found monkeys instead.

An unsuccessful New York Beauty

What is going on around here?  Not much.  This morning I have sloshed through the rain to get to the crosswalk and back (three or four groups of children didn't walk to school).  I have come home to a hot cup of coffee and some Bible and prayer time.  I have studied my Duolingo Spanish (372 consecutive days!),.  And I have cleaned the house according to my Fly Lady schedule that I only haphazardly maintain.  I need to go take some recyclable garbage to the neighborhood trash station but as it is still raining I'm not inclined to carry bags of bottles and cans to a station three blocks away...

I have billions of nature photos again as Tetsu and I had gone out and about this weekend and found flowers in abundance.  But you are getting tired of nature photos aren't you?  Maybe tomorrow.

Upstairs in the sewing room (which I plan to get to after blogging) I have consolidated some of the blocks that have been on the design wall for the last 6 months.  I had made 10 blocks from Ulas free New York Beauty patterns but as there were only 10 I had thought I would try making some of my own or could find some others on the Internet but alas, my interest in this project waned...

One reason has been that I have definitely NOT been happy with my attempts nor my results.  It is rare that I feel that a piecing technique is really beyond me but this one became a point of suffering each time I worked on a block.  10 blocks were about as far as I could go on this!  The main reason for the problems was that I could not get that small inner corner arc to lie flat!!!  The larger arcs I managed with some pulling and pushing but the small arcs are unacceptable to me...  They are all angles and jutting lines but this was the best I could do.  I had hoped that with each block I would get better but no, from beginning to end the blocks were a consistent discouragement...

I also got stingy with my background fabric and didn't want to cut across the width of fabric and have waste so I cut out my larger pieces here and there some actually on the bias!  Stupid, stupid, stupid I know!  So in the end, even the large arcs gave me problems!

I finally decided that these dumb blocks needed to get off the wall and the only way that was going to happen was to make two more to get an even 12 and so I just chose to duplicate two of Ulas patterns in different colors.

Everything is now sewn together...  The layout does not call to me.  I spent a lot of time rearranging blocks but never could get satisfied and in the end just connected the blocks and rows.  I still don't like this project but I need to get a border onto this, quilt it and call this a finished learning experience.  What I'm going to do with a small quilt that I don't much like I don't know...

And for some unknown reason I have another pattern that I BOUGHT that uses lots of similar New York Beauty blocks...  Will I ever attempt that quilt or is it already bound for a give away box?  Not this year!  That's for sure!!!

Boys' Day

Today is Boys' Day in Japan and although we contemplated going off and about as Tetsu has had to work most of Golden Week, we decided that since most of the rest of Japan is moving about during Golden Week that it would be wiser to stay near home. 

We took instead a leisurely stroll through the rice fields, ate breakfast outside and now have been doing yard work.

About a thirty minute walk from us is a small temple that is famous for its wisteria tree.

Every year we walk over to see how the wisteria is blooming.  Some years the blooms reach to the ground. 

This is not considered to be a great year.  Still, we hit it just right right for full bloom!

I have read that changing the angle of a photo gives interesting pictures and so I tried sitting down and shooting upwards. 

And this is the result.  Was that worth sitting on my bum and creaking to a standing position again?

The bumble bees were hard to catch sitting still but I got one picture.

 A curtain of purple.

We'll visit again next year.

On the way home we found many farmers out planting their rice fields.  Tetsu isn't the only one who works most of Golden Week. 

The fields are being flooded and the rice shoots are being taken from their hot houses to be planted.

The Boys' Day carp are flying high!

This was a colorful display sailing over the fields.

And the ducks are very happy that the fields are flooded now.

As are the herons.

In my house I have a few Boys' Day decorations up.  The funny little ones on the left there are made from silk worm cocoons.  I think I remember making up a little kit of them at a children's workshop one Boys' Day...

These were little printed origami papers that were being given away somewhere.

After being folded they are inserted into a pair of disposable chopsticks that one breaks apart to use.

A clever little craft that any child can make and I brought home a couple sets to make and give friends.

And this is my small Boys' Day quilt that gets put up in our entryway every year. 

 

Eventide

It is easier to get out in the evening just when the day is waning.  The days are longer and the weather is nice out and I don't mind a long walk before starting to cook dinner.

Just weeds hanging from a branch.

More wheat in the evening light.  (Blue camera adjustment)

And from the top of the overpass we get a beautiful view of Mt. Nantai and the rice fields that are starting to be flooded.

Actually I took this picture through my car's front window on my way home from somewhere last evening.  The cars behind me were already annoyed that I was stopping on the edge of the road and so I didn't feel like I could leave the car to take pictures.  It works.

Yuma-kun on his bicycle does better.  He still sends me SCADS of sunset photos and it is hard to choose just one or two from the scenery he sees on his way home from school.

 A tree and a rice field...  Yuma-kun's interpretation.

 And here is Yuma-kun's shot of Mt. Nantai.

 I just like the light.