Kitchen reform

Many, many months ago I listened in on a free webinar by Jacqui and Joanna at Build and Thrive Academy.  I can't remember the exact wording, but one of the concepts discussed was related to how you can make your workspace a more pleasurable space to work in.  There was also a lot of talk about decluttering.  Of course I lay there nodding (it was late at night Japan time!) and thinking I would jump out of bed the next morning and clean out the entire cottage kitchen and make it much more user friendly.  Of course the next day arrived along with the zillion essential jobs that needed to be done that day and the beautifying and decluttering was put off and put off and put off.

Yesterday Tom finally finished replacing the rotten boards on the cottage deck and the sight of him with the electric drill spurred me into action. I got him to put up some wire racks on the cottage kitchen walls and then spent an hour or so hanging all the things I use all the time and putting all the things I don't use so often away in the cupboards.  Gotta love the 100 yen shop at times like this... very cheap space saving solutions!   

Hopefully there will be far less swearing during my next baking session as I will be able to take out bowls etc. without a zillion different things falling all over the floor in the process!

Cookie basket playing

For those of you who don't know, I have a small cookie business.  I currently supply 3 different shops with small amounts of cookies each week on commission - if they don't sell I bring them home and don't get paid.  The business has been building over the last year or so and I now have many regulars who will ask for certain kinds etc. and will buy a pack or two every week.  Bringing home unsold packets is becoming a rarity. 

Lately I have been asked if I can do gift baskets for people.  I am a bit torn by this prospect as my main philosophy with my cookies is that I want people to be able to buy them regularly and eat them like a daily snack, rather than an occasional indulgence.  This to me means reducing the price and also the pretty packaging.  I really hate all the rubbish that is associated with Japanese packaging.   But... I live in Japan where packaging is everything. 

Because I have been approached so many times I know there is a market for more beautifully wrapped cookies, so I have decided that I will take my business in two different directions - I really want to continue with the basic packs I have, but then add in a gift basket range too - on a make to order basis so I don't waste time and money on expensive packaging only to have to bring it home again. 

I love the idea of making things interesting, but every time I try to make proper baskets they end up looking very amateur.  So last week I took some cookies to a friend who is a florist to see if she could give me some basic ideas for making a basket look good.  Today she called me and told me she had so much fun thinking of ideas - playing around with arrangements etc. so I went to pick up the finished products.  I found it really interesting to learn a few of the small tricks of the trade - how to roll up a bit of extra paper to make things stand up, the tiny bit of shredded paper to tie it all, how to use cellophane effectively etc.

Now that I have the basics I will try with different sized bags of cookies etc. and properly drop the soft toys... I just can't justify an extra 100 yen for a soft toy that is likely to be thrown out anyway!  I hope to have a basic range ready just in time for Christmas - anyone who needs something a little different and very special to give to workmates etc... just let me know!

Garden wander

I'll write a proper post about it later, but the moment I am in the middle of helping to organise a new market in our town.  It is called the "Apple Crate Market"and will hopefully be held 4 times a year.  It is a lot of fun to see your dream start to become a reality, but also a lot of hard work and lots of headaches!  Fortunately all involved are very realistic about the whole thing, and realise that it will not be a huge success the first time, but starting small and enjoying the process (while not forking out lots of money!) are our main goals for now. 
Of course in 10 years time we are hoping it will be the best market in the world, with books written about our success, stall holders on 3 year waiting lists, customers having to buy entrance tickets in advance just to get in the gate etc., but for now we are happy if we can get a few stall holders who have the same ideals as us and a few customers who will come and put smiles on our faces!  November 29th... if anyone is in the area!

A lot of the preparation for the market involves computer work so I have been trying to take a few breaks and at least go for a wander around the garden.  I am always surprised by how many flowers there are around at the moment - all self seeded of course! 
Here are a few pictures of things that are going on here at the moment

Today's flowers from the garden

Eggplant

Make shift eggplant house!  Will it last more than a week?  I doubt it, but it was fun to make!

Kiwifruit ready to pick

Passionfruit flowering in the tunnel house

Passionfruit... I doubt they will manage to ripen, but one can only hope!

Beautiful rice fields ready for harvest last week... now all the rice is gone!

One year on...

This time last year we had a junior high school group come to stay.  The day after they left it was my birthday and I treated myself to a trip to the hospital to check out a very sore neck that had been bothering me for a few days.  This was the start of a downward spiral which ended up with me in hospital for close to 2 months dealing with an autoimmune disease.  It took six months, but I got off all the medicine and am now back to "normal".  Because they could never diagnose the cause of my illness I have been a little paranoid that it was environmental factors combined with stress and therefore this season may result in me falling sick again. 
Tomorrow is my birthday again and this year it looks like I will be celebrating with a trip to a coffee shop with a puzzle book to relax while my son is at athletics rather than a trip to the hospital.  I said goodbye to a group of 5 girls today who had been with us for 3 days... I looked after them virtually alone and have come out the other side very tired, but still healthy.  Things are looking up.  In celebration of surviving their visit I've put together a short slideshow of their time here.  We did many more things, but these were the main highlights... most importantly I made it out the other side and am at home to tell the tale!  Long may it last....

Extending the Kingdom

The chicken kingdom has finally been extended and bets can currently be placed as to how many minutes/hours/days it will take for the chickens to find a way out of it!  The other question is whether they will dig under or fly over the fence first.  And if they don't do either of those, whether it will be a ferret or a cat which has a snack first..... 

The fence is all a bit rough, but I am just happy that they will be able to move around a little more and eat all my weeds - saving me both weeding time and money for feed. 

Holy Cow!

Today on the way home from picking up my son I thought there was a fire in the mountains... and then we looked a little closer and realised that it was actually the cedar trees letting off a bit of steam... or pollen in huge quantities.  I have been sneezing a bit lately and thought that the pollen season must be almost upon us... today's spectacle confirmed it.  The tissue companies must love this season!!!!

The chickens are back!

After far too long without chickens they are now back!  We picked up 20 80-day old chickens this morning and they are quickly settling into their new abode.  The punk rocker at the bottom has already established herself as the Queen of the brood and enjoys taking pride of place on the warm concrete steps up to the chicken house.  Hopefully they will grow fast and we will be collecting eggs for breakfast in the very near future!

Back garden day 1

Before

The thing I am looking forward to most about my son starting junior high school in April is not having to go and get him from school at 3:30 every day.  Because we chose to take the kids to a school that is not within walking distance of our house I have spent the last 8 years getting frustrated every afternoon when I start to do something in the garden, but realise I have to stop soon to go and get the kids from school.  Half the time I figure I only have an hour or so and therefore there is no point in actually starting.  Lately I have been trying to change that attitude though and looking at it from the point of view that I have a whole hour to spend in the garden so what can I get done?

Today I started working on the back garden area that has always been a bit of a mess.  I find this area hard as it has never really been a "garden", but is probably supposed to be a Japanese style garden as it is outside our tatami room.  Although I spent a bit more than an hour,  I ended up  pulling out all the weeds, making an edge for the area, piling up all the remaining big rocks that I couldn't smash for the front garden and then smashing up some roof tiles to make another layer of rocks in front of them.  Hopefully I will get around to getting some shitake log mulch in the next week or so for the front area and maybe plant a few grasses or something there.  Anything has to be better than weeds!

Front garden update

As the 5 o'clock siren went off tonight the last of the rocks for the front garden were smashed and a little birdie moved in to look after the area in case some moles decide to come tunneling in.  Not perfect, but an improvement on what was there before.  

Hopefully the carpet and the rocks will keep the weeds away long enough for me to start concentrating on the next problem area on the other side of this room.  There are no more rocks left to smash so I'm thinking I may have to move on to rotting shitake logs to keep the weeds away.... but that would involve a trip to the mountains to collect them.... maybe next week... maybe not...

House within a house

This year the garden is lacking any winter vegetables.... because just as the autumn planting season arrived I was hospitalised and therefore didn't have a chance to plant anything.  The neighbours are very kind and often bring armloads of spring onions or Chinese cabbage, but it is always nice to be able to go into your own garden and harvest your own vegetables.  

Last year I had good success in the tunnel house from about now on, but this year our tunnel house is looking a little worse for wear - with holes in many places, and one door that has basically fallen off.  The new plastic has arrived to re-cover the entire house, but finding time to actually do it is going to be a bit of a problem.  In the meantime I have created a house within a house and have managed to get a few radish seeds to sprout.  Hopefully the spinach and lettuce seeds will also follow soon, but I'm guessing the huge temperature range that they experience each day may not make for a highly successful experiment.  Roll on spring...

Lack of planning

I'm back... actually I've been back home for well over a month now, but I am finally back in this blog spot.  The hospital experience is hopefully all behind me and although I am still struggling a bit with the medication I have to take I am slowly getting back to "normal" life.  I have bi-weekly visits to the hospital where they drain a bit more blood and check that all is okay before deciding whether to reduce my medication a little more or not.  I'm hoping that eventually I will be down to zero, but only time will tell.

One thing that was reinforced for me during my hospital stay was that planning too carefully only leaves you disappointed.....  In 2013 I made big plans to start my cookie/jam business and my mother-in-law died turning everything upside down.  In 2014 I made big plans to start my cafe-style English conversation classes and I got sick and ended up in the hospital for close to 2 months with some still unknown auto-immune disease.  So my big plan for 2015 is to not make any plans!  The only plan I have is to do zero teaching until at least April... and probably not again after that too.  I plan to take each day as it comes and hopefully the direction I really want to head in will become clear.  

This afternoon I decided to spend some time in the garden following my "no plan" idealism.  Unfortunately my muscles may not thank me tomorrow for the direction my no planning took!  First I decided to trim the trees in front of our house as I was sick of them hitting our bedroom window in the middle of the night and waking me up thinking a mass murderer was trying to break into our house.  I forgot to take a before photo, but I gave them a huge haircut, which of course then made the weeds under them a little more noticeable.. which meant I felt the need to remove the weeds.  

And then when I went to throw the weeds in the weed pile I had to walk past the big pile of rubble that we had removed from our old bbq spot and saw the old carpet that was sitting on top of it and thought that perhaps I could kill two birds with one stone by using the carpet to keep the weeds away and piling rubble on top of the carpet to make it look pretty.  And of course cleaning up the big pile of rubble at the same time.  

The main problem with this is that the rubble needs to be smashed into small pieces before it can be put under the trees... and smashing rubble with a hammer takes a long time... and a lot of energy....  Fortunately Emily came to help for an hour and between the two of us we may have completed about a fifth of the area under the trees.  I'm hoping a few more family members have no plans tomorrow and we can make some more progress - otherwise I guess I may need to plan to have a lot of hot baths ready to soak my aching muscles over the next few weeks!

If anyone has any ideas about hiding the septic tank covers please let me know... unfortunately they still need to be accessible as the poo truck always comes unannounced!

Rubble pile