RED RINGS

With winter approaching, the garden is a mess.

The spinach sprouts are pretty well organized, thanks to the expertise of winter spinach with its rich green history (it even grows under the snow), there are also a couple of rows of winter shungiku, a Japanese green that's very tasty fried up on its own or in miso shiru on a cold day; but cypress and cedar logs, and me-high mounds of branches from the four south roadside trees the power company was glad to cut for free (they were imminent snowbreak threats to the power lines that ran through their heavy branches) are now piled fragrantly here and there in the garden at the convenience of the lumbermen (who were willing to cut the trees but not to cart the result away). And the branches take forever to rot, so no compost there...

It took ten years of shady winters till we finally gave up and realized that it would be worth it to get more sunlight on house and garden in the season of cold, when sunlight is gold. Still, we stood in a large shadow of regret as we called the power company and asked; they were glad to comply, and with alacrity, before the snows. Though we are welcomely ringed by about 60+ tall trees (cherry, plum, peach, oak, cedar, cypress, chestnut), in light of the prospect the thinning was a wise decision: what a difference with more light (just ask Goethe)!

The brighter garden is now in sunlight for all but a couple of hours at each end of day, and the house is bright throughout, even when the sky is cloudy and the grandchildren aren't here. What's more, now I'll be able to plant a variety of fruit trees in select and sunlit spots where they won't shade the garden. There's also a 2-meter-tall Bay sapling with very savory leaves (obtained as a mere slip of a sapling from a long-time Japanese gardener in Kyoto), hungry for a strong taproot and armfuls of sunlight, that I'll move to where the new light falls; when more fully grown, the Bay will also serve as a bit of a windbreak to the garden. Some new fruit trees too, when I get the time after the house is all caulked and painted and I grow some years younger.

Haruya came and took many of the logs for their restaurant cooking fire; we prefer not to use cedar in our own woodstove, it burns too fast, smoky and spark-poppy compared to the hot and heavy, clean-burning windfall oak and beech we get for free...

But first I cadged for myself two thick and hefty wood-chopping sections of beautifully grained cypress; what a difference that makes in the firewood chopping ritual! I love just staring at the beauty of years of time in those widening red rings, instead of chopping firewood...