カテゴリー: Photograph

I went outside in Friday afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching.

I walked on the road of a river bank.

 

I was looking for something to take a photo. But there were not much to do so.

 

I saw onions were thrown by the road. Probably a farmer thought it as useless. Already becoming soft, it didn’t seem edible.

 

Mountain Sugana-dake was there, behind the paddy field.

 

Iide Mountains was far from here. Snow remains only on valleys.

 

On the way back on a bridge, I saw two birds. Flying and floating. Being capable of two things is great.

 

It was already 5p.m. I have got to get back to my house because I need to cook the supper. I ate a slice of salmon with a bowl of rice in the supper.

It is cloudy today. So the color of the photographs are not vivid.

Pink Azalea among white one. It is amazing that part of branches has flowers of different color.

Even in one flower, two colors are co-existing.

 

Will I be able to eat sweet peaches in summer? I should not expect much. In Japanese, if you have a wish that you are expecting in future, it is said that “A devil is laughing at you”. This tells you that you shouldn’t expect too much in the future because it is uncertain.

 

I didn’t expect the silver berry to have fruits because there is no other silver berry tree for pollination. So, of course, this is only one or two fruits on the tree and it is likely that it will fall without growing.

 

I planted two kinds of prunes for pollination each other. However, there are very few numbers of fruits are on two trees. One tree has two fruits and the other has none. When it successfully turns to be purple, I will put the photo of it, if it happens.

 

They are Tsugaru-Apple. This shows another issue to me. I’ve got to reduce the number of the fruits for the better harvest. I don’t know exactly but it should be one fruits with 20-30 leaves.

 

Strawberry is still green, too.

 

This is just a weed.

If my work for online teaching is not so heavy, I would like to go outside and have a fun in this comfortable season. It is not because of corona virus, but heavy duty for the online teaching that prevents me from living healthy life.

I don’t have any online class on Thursday. However, I know that I have to work through the night today because there are two classes tomorrow. I felt I had to exercise my body, so I took a walk again.

Rice had been already planted in the paddy fields around here.

 

I wish that this small rice seedlings grow and survive. When autumn comes, it will turn to be golden and bring us a rich harvest.

 

There are not many flowers in my house, so this was the chance to take a photo of flowers. This orange one is a popular spring flower in Japan.

 

I don’t know much about this type of flower. Is this a German Iris or something?

 

I think this is a kind of chrysanthemum. And the word chrysanthemum always needs auto-spellcheck.

 

Let me tell ya. I am not a railway geek. I believe that being a railway geek surely ruins boy’s fortune. A boy should never be a railway geek. (Perhaps reiterating it makes a reader suspicious of me, though)

 

Again. I have to pay more attention to a utility pole. When I took this photo, I should have avoided coinciding of the utility pole and the peak of the mountain behind.

These days I work through the night several times a week. I don’t like TV says “tele-working” is new normal and “Online education” is wonderful, this and that. I would say it is too hard for me to spend day to day because I have to make three hundred PowerPoint slides a week. I can’t go outside. Even I cannot find a time to go shopping in the nearby supermarket located in the place of 10 minutes walk from the house. Actually I could not take a bath for several days because I worry I may fall or get a heart attack in the bath. My fun these days is just to look at the garden and take a photo.

 

Because I have to work very hard for online teaching kind of things, I do not have time to manage the garden. So I asked a neighbor to plant something on the garden. He and his friend planted some vegetables already.  The photo is a tomato. The card on the ground says that this is Tomato that is easy to grow.

 

Yellow flowers of tomato.

 

He planted egg plants.

 

The fruits of peach are too many. I have to reduce the number of fruits for better harvest. And comes below are Azalea flowers in the garden.

Azalea flowers last short. When they are gone, the garden will have little flowers. If I had a time, I would like to plant many flowers to make the garden colorful and beautiful. But it is sure that the online education kind of things prevents me from doing so.

It was 4:10 in the afternoon when I finished the online Japanese teaching. I had two online classes yesterday. Since I prepared for them almost through the night, I just wanted to go outside. The sky was clear yesterday, although it had become not so clear when I started walking in late afternoon.

Wisteria flowers were in full bloom in the play ground of nearby junior high school. I think the tree is very old because I think it has been there since I was a kid.

 

A view from the bank that is just behind the junior high school. There is a small ship building factory there. Community paper said that some American people came to the ship builder there to make an old style wooden boat, if my memory was correct.

I think there were many boats that went up and down the rivers in Niigata Plain (Echigo Plain) in the past like 19th century. Of course those navigation are now very rare. But what I thought was that if I devoted to a research about the history of water transportation in Niigata Plain, what would it be like? For example, writing a dissertation about it.  Uh.., it would be just a micro history in a small rural community. No one would be interested in such a tiny issue. I think I will not do a such research, probably.

 

Snow is melting on the Iide Mountains that is located among Niigata, Fukushima and Yamagata Prefectures.

 

I should have paid attention to the utility pole when I took this photo.

 

I was walking on a bridge that was almost the same age as me. The peak of the mountain in the photo is 1,293 meter if my memory is correct.

 

I don’t know this mountain’s altitude exactly. Probably it may be 1500 meter. Its cliff looks like an inside of split bowl. It was said that the cliff was the mouth of the volcano in the very old time, but I am not sure.

 

So the paddy fields are now filled with water. It seems that the rice seedlings have already been planted there.

 

This was the last photo I took yesterday.

And again, this is not my garden but my parents’.

 

White flowers of strawberry. Until 3 years ago I had been growing many vegetables in this garden. A neighbor gave me seedlings of strawberry at that time. Now I don’t cultivate anything, but these strawberries are still alive on the ground. Do I need to sing Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” so that they can last long?

 

Growing fruits of gooseberry. So the gooseberry’s fruits look more beautiful than the flowers. Can you imagine what color these fruits will become? Answer will be shown if I can take the photos when they get color.

 

I found flowers of purple vege-flower (Murasaki-Nabana) on the edge of vegetable field. They are kinds of oilseed and radish. Seeds are sometimes sold as an ornamental plant. I had never planted their seeds. So seeds came from somewhere.

 

Camellia flower. They are almost ended for this spring. I am not sure how to call it, but this single layer petal camellia looks simple. Camellia usually has multi-layer petals. I like this one.

 

Purple-pink azalea. Azalea lasts very short. I don’t know why, but the gardening people planted many white azalea on my parents’ garden, with a little purple pink one. Usually purple pink is preferred, though.

 

So white azalea. They last very short. When they were buds, I wrote that it made me think of vanilla ice cream. How do I call it now?

Although today is a day of spring holiday so-called “Golden Week”, people are asked to stay home because of Corona virus pandemic. I went shopping by walk in this afternoon. On the way I just dropped by a small park.

Might have sung Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park”? Nope. This is a small park in small town in northern part of Japan. There is no man selling ice cream. Even kids are not there because of Japan’s aging society.

 

It was a little early for wisteria flowers to be full bloom.

 

But actually the pink flowers of dogwood have gone already. I think the white one is also almost ended.

 

I am not sure if this tap water is hygienically okay to drink or not. Anyway, I left the park and went to a supermarket to get food for my supper.

I wanted to make the title “Spring Flowers in my Garden”, but actually it is not my garden. I have just stayed at my parents’ home for these several months. I cannot get back to the country where my university is because of corona virus pandemic. Anyway, spring season never stops and the peach flowers have already gone.

 

Coming next would be flowers of azalea. Its white bud makes me think of vanilla ice cream.

 

This is also a white azalea, Doudan-Azalea flowering downward. It seems to contrast to the red leaves in autumn, although we cannot see white flowers in spring and red leaves in autumn at the same time.

 

This is also “Downward flowers” of silverberry. I planted only one tree of silver-berry (or goumi) in the garden. This means that I will not be able to get any fruit in the near future because there should be another silver-berry but a slightly different kind. In order to get fruits, most of fruit trees needs another tree nearby for pollination.

 

Buds of an apple tree. For the pollination as I mentioned for silver-berry, I planted two apple trees in one place. They were Kougyoku and Tsugaru. This photo was probably of Kougyoku’s.

 

Here is another apple’s flower that has already opened. This is Alpus-Otome.

 

This is flowers of gooseberry. Maybe it is safe to say that the fruits look more beautiful than the flowers. If I can take a photo of gooseberry fruit, I would like to put it on this blog.

 

Actually this photo and the below were taken two weeks ago.

 

Yes, this is peach flowers two weeks ago. I am not sure if I will be able to eat sweet peaches from this tree in summer because I am just an amateur about fruit tree growing.