Pheasants

On our morning walk today I spent some time stalking a pair of pheasants.  We can hear pheasants squawking in the forest and occasionally one will dash along the rice fields.  The males are noisy and quite flashy but if I have seen a female I've probably mistaken it for a quail (we have those too.)

I took my camera a telephoto lens with me this morning and with Tetsu holding on to Choco went out to see what we could see.

"A pheasant!  Hang on to Choco.  I'm going to see if I can photograph it."

"Hold still pheasant.  Show me your handsome red head."

Ah.  There is a female camoflagued in the field.  She certainly isn't as pretty as her husband.

Yeah!  Look at the feather markings on his back.  Just beautiful.  I hope this pheasant couple will soon have little pheasants running around after them.
 

Mom thoughts

Let's see.... A little frustration today.  I spent some time talking on chat with Leiya yesterday.  She is supposedly graduating from college next month but she doesn't have much information at hand.

"Are you really graduating?"

"I think so...  I just have to pass my classes..."

Well, I should hope so!

And the reason I don't know much more (I don't know what her excuse is) is because I am not going to her college graduation...  Hmmm...  I'm not sure that was a good decision or not...  It is hard for me to get away at any time other than summer... May wasn't a great time especially because flights out of Japan are expensive during Golden Week.  But BOTH my children have graduation ceremonies in May...  Takumi from graduate school, Leiya from college.  I really had planned to go to Ohio to hers...

"Don't come, Mom.  It isn't that important to me.  I don't have a car to take you places or time to do things with you while I'm trying to move.  I need to go to job interviews.  I need money anyway if I'm going to try and buy a car or put down payments on a new apartment.  Let's spend the money that way."

My daughter, like me, is so practical. 

So I decided not to go to Ohio... and not to go to the States until July as usual.

With my children on the other side of the Pacific, they have gotten used to making their own decisions and I have gotten used to doling out very little advice...  I'm sure if we all lived closer I would be making a lot of Mom noises and Leiya would be irritated and annoyed.

Leiya is trying to buy a car.  I'm not really happy that my daughter will be out on the roads but she is 23.

"Find some guy who knows cars to go with you!"  (She interprets this as I don't trust her judgement about cars.  Maybe true.)

Leiya is looking for a new apartment.  She talks of house sharing with strangers.

"I don't want you sharing an apartment with boys you don't know.  Find an apartment that has only girls."

"Mom, it's not like I'd be sleeping in the same room with them.  We'd just be sharing the kitchen and living room."

Still....  I hold to not sharing an apartment with boys...  Whether Leiya will take my advice or not is another thing.

It is hard not to worry and not to conjure up worst-case scenarios.

Always a mother...

Salmon and vegetables

Another food post. Another simple recipe.

Tetsu and I eat rice at least 5 times a week.  Everything goes with rice!  Japanese like white rice (and so do I) but I try to put a little brown rice in the pot just to get more fiber in our diet.

And with rice, the most typical meal will be some kind of fish and miso soup.  I'm not much good at cooking fish but with a couple of slices of salted salmon, I almost can't go wrong.

Okay... I could just toss this in the griller and grill it plain (that is how salmon will be served at breakfast). 

Or I could add a few vegetables to out diet.  I decided to add sliced onions, sliced potato strips and maetake, a type of leafy mushroom.  I "wrapped" it all in foil and added a dab of butter and a little sake (the sake steams it all a bit.)

As an aside... I can use the same ingredients and instead of butter and sake I'll mix up a tablespoon of miso with  a tablespoon of mayonnaise and then wrap it all up.  Just a different flavor but very good.

And this is my fish griller.  Almost all Japanese kitchens will grill fish (and other things) with a griller like this.  My kitchen is equipped with gas (and yes, I try to remember to turn the gas off at the valve there every night) and it has two burners and the griller.  If you recall, I bought this new stove appliance last year after my old one gave out.  Most stoves are of a standard size and will just fit into the standard space left in the kitchen cooking area.

My griller is modernized just because it doesn't need water in the drip tray.  With my old griller I'd have to put water in there to keep splatters from crusting on the bottom.  What a mess to clean up!  My new griller is Teflon coated...  Just big enough for two slices of fish... but that is pretty normal too.  I guess big families have to eat in turns...

Ta-da.  I'm not sure how appetizing that looks but I served the fish in its foil wrapping and we added a bit of soy sauce before eating.

Along with the salmon I served a salad, cold tofu (Tetsu absolutely has to eat a block of cold tofu every night) and fermented soy beans called natto.  It's a pretty healthy meal if I do say so myself.

Wednesday with cats

It is Wednesday and that means I have to be out of the house in 20 minutes...

How about more cat pictures that I didn't get included in the "Cat Helpers" post?

Here is Mi on Tetsu's lap.  Mi is just cute.  She doesn't need to be doing anything.  (So Tetsu takes a lot of pictures of Mi.)

I've been letting Velvet sit outside on warm days.  He is connected to a leash so he can't go far but until he gets tangled in the lawn chair legs he is enjoying spring weather.  Velvet is so skinny and getting white and I want to make his old age as pleasant as possible.  He gets more treats and more extras than the other cats.  ("UNFAIR!" they cry.)

And here are Patora and Toi in the cat house.  They spy Velvet on the other side of their screen and are wondering why they aren't allowed in the yard too.

"But you've got the nice outdoor sunlight!"

Triangles, triangles everywhere

I spent some time upstairs on the sewing machine contemplating sashing for my Pine Burr blocks.

I am using the Pine Burr pattern from one of Yoko Saito's books and she has a lovely sashing effect.  Ms. Saito and her devotees do all their piecing by hand but I have other things I want to make in my lifetime so I thought I'd do her sashing on the sewing machine.

Tiny 2 centimeters in height triangles...  It seemed most feasible to make the sashing using the paper piecing technique.

I drew out the pattern on some old computer paper that I had.  I stitched through about 8 sheets of paper with a threadless needle.  That gives me 8 patterns that I can resew until I have enough paper patterns.

I still have a box of little triangles that my friend gave me... and the white triangles I could sew from a 1 1/2 inch strip. (Do you notice how I mix centimeter and inch measurements?  That's why I'm always so confused.)  How many strips do I need?...

Let's see.  If I make 20 blocks Pine Burr blocks at 30 centimeters each...  And I want sashing on all sides...  And for each piece of sashing I need two triangle strips...  GYAHHHhh!   Is that right?  I need 98 strips!

And I have 6.  Should I give up now or go for it?

And I thought doing this by machine would free me up a bit...

Cat helpers

"What are you making now?"

I don't know why Tetsu bothers to ask.  I'm obviously making a quilt.  Isn't that what I am always doing?

"So what's this one for?"

"I don't know.  My time schedule is measured by years so I don't expect this to be done for a year or two.  If you see me upstairs on the sewing machine you can expect a finished quilt in a couple months time.. but if I'm piecing like this you're going to have to bear with the mess for a couple of years."

The quilt up on the wall behind me was at least 4 years in the making.  But it got done!

Actually the reason why I started this post was to show you how I am accompanied by the cats.  That's one, two, three, four cats in stairway formation watching me hand piece.  If you imagine me doing hand work, imagine me with all my helpers.  It gets a little complicated when they start climbing on my lap as well. 

This is actually how Chip would like to spend the evenings.  Chip LIVES on my lap.  The second I sit down, to sew on the sewing machine, to do something on the computer, to teach English... there is Chip, practically an extension of myself.  (Yes, she's here on my lap as I type.)

"Get that quilting board off your lap so that I can sit there, Mom!"

I have yet to use Chip as a pin cushion but I do have to go searching under her for lost pieces occasionally.

Cleo finally went and sat on Tetsu's lap.  I guess Cleo doesn't like having his picture taken.

Random nature

I seem to have taken a lot of random nature photos this week.

Along the road, not far from us, the fields are filled with wild rape flowers.  Japanese do eat these but if the flowers are so far in bloom I think they are past being edible...  Such a pretty splash of color though.

I took this picture on a drizzly morning.  I got wet traipsing through the fields but I got my picture!

This was taking at the peak of plum blossoming week.  These are plum blossoms...

...and these are cherry blossoms.

This is a shot of the tollway heading back to Nikko.  Mt. Nantai is in the distance.  We don't really use this tollway very much as there is only a 5 minute difference between using this road and the regular road when going to the next city...  But I knew from past years that the highway would be bordered in pink by the cherry trees so I paid the $1 toll for the opportunity to take this picture.

Maybe this isn't nature.  It is a "fence" surrounding an old Japanese house.  It is made of densely planted bamboo... the kind that doesn't grow tall, and it is held back by a different type of long bamboo poles.  It was just beautiful!

So the daffodils are out and I've seen crocus.  The plum and cherry blossoms are fading but the rape blossoms are vibrant... and I came across another little plot of land that was just a blanket of dandelions!  Dandelions always make me smile!

I was quite pleased with the success of this picture.  At the top of a very tall, far-away tree, this heron perched itself and watched his domain.  It was quite far away and high up, but Tetsu urged me to try and photo him.  Okay... I have a telephoto lens that isn't very strong... But when cropping the photo in the editing process I find that my heron is still quite sharp!  This season the herons are vying for the best tree top to make their nests.  In the mornings their racket can be heard from the other side of the forest!