The Happy Farmer

When we lived in Maine, we had our "coffins" for our raised bed gardens. Mark built them, filled them (no easy task as they are 4 ft above the ground and soil is heavy), lovingly planted in them and...... I weeded. We did get tomatoes, herbs, zucchini (who DOESN"T get zucchini) and strawberries. But we also fed many bugs and wild critters in the neighborhood. So now we are in NoCal where the growing season is basically all year round. AND we have a (by NoCal standards) HUGE back yard. So my Happy Farmer is at it again. Only this time, he has made little graves.....

Yes, we now have three "beds" for all sorts of veg to be planted when the soil is the right temperature. Now, you may be squinting at this picture wondering what that little white thing is in the center plot..... And the board-sort-of-thing in the first plot..... well, those are my artistic embellishments. I put a "hand" coming out of the grave and a "headstone" with RIP over another. Mark did not laugh and just quietly took them away. No sense of humor in MY farmer when it comes to serious veg planting. And the circle with the pointy bush? That's our Christmas tree/Rosemary bush that we transplanted minutes before it completely died. The side toward the house is all dead with a few new sprigs bravely sprouting out the top. The remainder of the space is for herbs. Mark now owns cute little red women's rubber gardening clogs (it helps to have little feet and we couldn't find any men ones) that he leaves upside down by the back door. He left them right side up one night and they filled with rain water. He marches out to his patch and studies the soil and checks for weeds. Just to the right of the picture is the section of the garden used for square-foot gardening. Mark has made a very attractive pattern of little squares using bricks that are stacked behind our garage. Each little square will hold a veg and will be harvested and replanted. He even has a book that tells you how to do this. Unfortunately, the NoCal bugs and critters are VERY happy with Mark's efforts. Mark started seeds in little peat pots held in a big tray with a plastic lid and safely growing on our deck. But every time he transplants a baby chardlet, it is quickly eaten. He has sprinkled slug bait around. No change. So he threatened to get some "poison" to kill the whatevers that are eating HIS veg. I vetoed this as I felt it might kill US before any whatevers were harmed. We have also learned that if you plant seeds - even flower seeds - in the ground, you must cover the area with chicken wire. We watched the birds (WHO HAVE A BEAUTIFUL FEEDER FULL OF DELICIOUS SEEDS) pecking in the garden AND flower box and EATING ALL MY FLOWER SEEDS. And the squirrels like to dig in the garden dirt too. But my happy farmer is not daunted. Each weekend, he slips into his little red clogs and surveys his crops. And maybe, if we are lucky, we might even get a veg or two.

NOTE: for those of you not familiar with "The Happy Farmer", check out this 44 sec video. It was a Suzuki piano/violin song our kids banged/scratched out long ago....
Click here to hear

Japantown History

Ron, my neighbor, is a wealth of information about this area. He grew up here and has lots of stories. But when Mark and I walk into Japantown, two blocks away, we are able to read about another side to the stories. Our Japantown is one of three left in the US - one in San Francisco and the other in LA. The members of this community speak about Japantown and its history with pride. I visited the oldest ongoing department store in San Jose - a store in Japantown that sells fabrics (why I was there of course) as well as other Japanese products. The woman working there told me of several of the celebrations that will be happening this spring, summer and fall. Not only are the residents that you talk to informative, but along the street are benches with images and stories carved into their surfaces. One building that I pass every time I walk to the Farmers' Market is the old Ideal Laundry. The "handsome, two-story fireproof brick building, erected at a cost of $30,000" (taken from the story on the bench) was founded by I. Tsurukawa. Brick seemed to be a very popular building material as many of the buildings burned - some due to normal fires and some to arsonists who weren't very friendly toward the Asian community. The building has beautiful blue tiles below the front windows. And its history since the laundry can be seen in the other signs attached to the facade. The before image is from the bench.

Another sad chapter in Japantown's history is the period during WWII. Anti-Japanese and Chinese feelings were always present in San Jose. I'll share stories and pictures of our Chinatown in another blog. But after Pearl Harbor, all Japanese on the West Coast were rounded up and taken to internment camps. In our Japantown, most residents were taken to Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming from 1942 to 1945. And in May, 1943 residents of San Jose passed a resolution opposing the return of the Japanese. An image from granite monument in Japantown:

 

According to Ron and my pet nanny (whose husband is Japanese-American and whose Japanese parents lived in Japantown during this period), once the government released the Japanese and they returned to Japantown, they began to rebuild their community. Many of today's businesses were started with with repatriation monies. And fifty years after the war, Japantown is a colorful center of Japanese culture.... and, of course, food.