Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts

1.8.10

Strolling

It was kind of weird weather today, but still good enough for a walk. Here are some photos:




The little white dots you can see under the trees are flowers like this one here.



Through the mountains in the background of this photo is the back way into town. With the rock slide closing off the road through to Kaneyama until September, it's now the main road into Aizu Wakamatsu.




I love these bendy-bottomed trees!
And somebody's growing shiitake mushrooms here in the next photo:



And, not really related to cooking or looking, but I learnt a new word today thanks to Nick Cave. Murine. The Oxford Dictionary on my computer says that it means 'of, related to, or affecting mice or related rodents.' Thanks Nick.

11.7.10

Veggies Ahoy!



Nothing worth reporting on has been produced in our kitchen in the last few weeks, so here's the next best thing - potential future meals from our backyard! Y and our neighbour ploughed up the yard a few months ago and planted many things, some of which are now almost ready to eat! Hooray! I did my best to cleverly photograph just the vegetables and not the weeds, but it turned out to be an impossible task. At least it's proof that we don't use herbicides I suppose. So, we have eggplants, yellow zucchinis (which M was devastated to discover only LOOK like bananas), and shishito (somewhere between a chilli and a capsicum). Tomatoes, chillis, pumpkins, and cucumbers are still on the way. It was a long cold winter this year - there was apparently still snow on the ground in May - which means everyone's vegetables have gotten off to a slow start. That is to say in practical terms, that cucumbers are being given away by the handful, not by the bucketful like they were this time last year.




The hydrangeas have started flowering around here at last as well which is really exciting. I never realised how much I liked them before. When I went to take some photos of the ones in our garden, this is what I found though! I got totally distracted and never got around to photographing the flowers! I'm going to have to go and find out what it's called now.



And here, with nothing much else to distract my attention, I ended up taking some flower photos. These are the hydrangeas flowering at the Shinto shrine next door to our house. It wasn't really great weather today, but you get the idea. Aren't they just ever so pretty?

16.10.09

Pickled Chrysanthemum Petals

I am so excited about this, pickled chrysanthemum petals. I saw them in a book I bought a little while ago and thought they looked amazing but had never had the chance to try them. Someone brought them along to the Harvest Celebration yesterday, and we were even lucky enough to score leftovers! They are pickled in vinegar, sugar and salt and only keep for two or three days. It took a little while to put my finger on what the taste reminds me of, but it turned out to be soap...! In the best possible way I guess. What a beautiful thing to take home. I wish I could take better photos.