menu for July 27th, 2024

Sayuri's note

Tanabata is the star festival in Japan, celebrated on July 7th. Originating from a Chinese legend about star-crossed lovers, Altair (Orihime) and Vega (Hikoboshi) were separated by the Milky Way and could only meet one night a year. To celebrate, we write wishes on colored slips of paper and hang them on bamboo, and eat cold noodles called sōmen. The thin, white, long noodles of sōmen are likened to the Milky Way. Speaking of the star festival in July, our oldest daughter Sarah was born in July. We named her good star, ”星良” (se i ra) in Japanese.

We’ve had dry weather for a long time here and needed rain badly for the garden’s sake. Everyday I would check the radar for thunderstorms, hopeful, but we always seemed to miss the rain. We wanted to avoid using the well water, in case it ran dry, so we pumped water up from the Etowah River to water the plants every morning and evening. 

It goes without saying, when you plant seeds, you must water them and keep the soil moist for the seeds to be able to germinate. So we watered where we planted corn, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and other vegetables. But the weeds come up at the same time as the seeds, so we have to do the weeding too. They grow much faster than the plants we seeded. I felt so satisfied and proud after weeding and seeing my plants well, but the deer and groundhogs can see the plants well too. “Oh deer”. Our battle with them continues. Joe and Etowah put fencing and wire up this month.

At last, it’s raining again. We call the rainy season “tsuyu 梅雨” in Japan. This frees us from having to water our plants in the garden, but creates another problem for tomatoes: water shock and rot. It's hard to keep a balance these days. The main dish represents the Milky Way in the sky and the garden in summer with rain. The sauce happens to be called “tsuyu” in Japanese as well. It takes true love to fight the battles of the garden and pick our homegrown tomatoes, so when you eat the tomatoes tonight, remember the song “Homegrown Tomatoes” by Guy Clark. 

“Only two things money can't buy

That's true love and homegrown tomatoes”

Mernu