May. What happened in May? Wish I had kept the blog going. I didn’t so I am writing it now – in October.
Probably the biggest thing I remember about May is that we did not, for the first time in six or seven years, tend to rice fields. It was sad a first, as I really loved the work. I always refered to it as my most expensive hobby considering the amount of money and mostly time put into it that could have been spent on paying work. If my hours are taken into account, we could afford to buy the highest quality organic rice in Japan (which is pretty expensive even if Tomoe can get a discount because she does consulting work for the producer).
I thought I would miss doing the farm work, but truth be told, as May came and went, it was actually quite a load off. At first I felt very strange and was worried because I had so much free time, something must be wrong, but soon got used to it.
I do feel bad though, that we did not have a chance to share the rice farming this year with Mona now that she is more aware than in past years. She didn’t seem to mind much.
Still, we were able to attend some planting by hand activities with Mona, and it was really great just to show up, do the fun part, and not have been involved in any of the other traditional “88 steps” of rice farming. I felt the same come September when I got to do some harvesting for only a half day with customers without any of the worry and work of using my own fields.
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It also felt strange with all the nae seedlings out in front of the convenience store and us not having any to plant ourselves. In fact, our garden was pretty much a mess most of the summer and Tomoe decided she didn’t want anything planted there, so it was pretty much rulled by leftovers from last year, and lots of pumpkins.
I remember taking Mona out to ride, and thinking for sure she will be riding without training wheels by the end of this year. That didn’t happen. Mostly my lack of getting her out on the bike, but also she just isn’t so interested in the bike. A bit sad, but maybe someday she will want to ride together with me on a longer trip.
There are so many things that were on the plan to do a lot of with her – running, biking, hiking, fishing, swimming, going to the beach, that never happened. Often
