Yukari's children Stephan and Fabian.Dashing JuJu has already set off for school
After teaching the course Yukari was scheduled to teach, I was lucky to have the chance to WWOOF for a couple of days with Arnaud and her three children.
I did only my favorite things - streamlining storage in the kitchen, and cooking. The children were enthusiastic, have-a-go cooking companions, and we made new things such as fried rice, things they can cook themselves, enjoy eating, and feel proud of.
What I most enjoyed was sorting and re-labeling the Tea Collection.
One of Yukari's ambitions must have been to have Every kind of tea - there must have been 40 0r 50. Packages were a jumble of luxurious, mysterious, forbidding and inviting, many picked and dried from the DesJardin garden, such as the lemon myrtle. I could read the Japanese labels, and vaguely knew if it was to be steeped or boiled and strained, so Stephan and I re-labled things in English, with instructions. If you don't know how to use it, you don't really own it. Now its even harder to sit down to a cup of tea though - all these new choices!
I did only my favorite things - streamlining storage in the kitchen, and cooking. The children were enthusiastic, have-a-go cooking companions, and we made new things such as fried rice, things they can cook themselves, enjoy eating, and feel proud of.
What I most enjoyed was sorting and re-labeling the Tea Collection.
One of Yukari's ambitions must have been to have Every kind of tea - there must have been 40 0r 50. Packages were a jumble of luxurious, mysterious, forbidding and inviting, many picked and dried from the DesJardin garden, such as the lemon myrtle. I could read the Japanese labels, and vaguely knew if it was to be steeped or boiled and strained, so Stephan and I re-labled things in English, with instructions. If you don't know how to use it, you don't really own it. Now its even harder to sit down to a cup of tea though - all these new choices!
Nice big chooks in the movable chicken tractor.The mystery of the dissapearing little bantams was found one morning - as a bump in the tummy of the snake, having an after-dinner nap in the (other) chicken coup.
I awoke to potted blooming water lillies outside my cottage. My balcony lillies just don't get enough sun to work up to flowering.
The Fabled Banana circle. Arnaud found a nearly-ripe 'hand' of Bananas, which He cut down to yellow up in the cool shed, away from predators. The idea of the circle is that the mulch and leaf litter all collects in the center, enriching the soil rather than blowing away. Surely some other reasons though...Arnaud freezes the bananas, and then blends them into 'icecream', a 100% fruit thing that the children love.
Hey Arnaud - maybe this is the solution to your eggplant/fussy children problem.
Pools, ponds, dams, galore, and I never reached the edges of this semi-tropical paradise, with only two days. I still havn't seen the artists studios they built for renting out, haven't entered some of the food forests.
A groundcover of sweet potato, to keep out the weeds, keep in the moisture. I saw pictures of these growing in water tanks on the roof of a high-rise in Ginza. The leaves scramble everywhere in just a few months.
Multiple functions. Everything has a few uses, and one of them is usually pleasure.
Snake 'guarding' the raised veggie beds from birds. Chicken enemy in the morning, gardening ally in the afternoon. Life is like that.I'm very much looking forward to seeing these fun, curious and beautiful children again, hopefully in Melbourne this January.
Thank-you Yukari, your brought so many treasures into this world, in so few years.
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