Having #2 in the title means we have a #1. Looking back to May 20, you can find a blog talking about seeding¹ pumpkins for Jack-o’-Lanterns. (I also talked about the pumpkins a little bit in the blog around the Obon time.)

  Now it’s been 5 months. Will has been working on the pumpkins really hard. During the summer, he went to the field 3 times a week on average², carrying water from home. Literally all the time, he was thinking about pumpkins.

  After the scorching³ heat of the summer and the rainy days late in September, finally the pumpkings seemed safe to be left alone, but we really had gone through⁴ some difficult times in the last 5 months.

  These were the pumpkins that Will grew in our pumpkin patch⁵ and on the bank⁶ of the canal⁷ in front of our house.

  However, it was not easy to grow them and keep them nice in the humid weather. We lost about half of them. When the stem is damaged, they go bad. When a bug⁸ makes a hole, they also start rotting. What a shame!⁹

  These are pumpkin flowers — Have you ever seen them? The male¹⁰ flower is on the left. The right one is the female¹¹ flower has a bulb¹² underneath it.

  Now we have 4 huge ones and 1 medium one. This is a photo that I took when we brought 3 huge ones from our patch. For the biggest one, we needed 3 adults to move it! I bet it must weight close to 70kg. (I’m going to weigh them, and report how heavy they are in the next blog.)

  I had lunch with my friends from university recently. We three were close friends at that time, and since then we have been keeping our friendship up by meeting once a year.

  We always bring some little presents to each other.  It’s always fun to think about what to bring, imagining how they would like it. This year, I made them each a smartphone bag.

  They gave me pretty paper napkins, a spicy sauce souvenir¹ from Malasia, a kitchen towel enbroidered² with my initials, a handmade wall display thing and a handmade broach with Lisa Larson’s cat, Mikey. The other day, I put this broach on my shirt, on a spot I ruined³ with my iron. It was perfect to hide the spot!! I can still keep wearing it. (Thank you, my friend!)(The pouch was another handmade Mikey thing from her before.)

  That day, we ate at an Italian restaurant, Notti Vago. I had been interested in it and finally I made it! It was a fun restaurant. The food was nice, the portions were quite⁴ generous⁵ and amazingly the price was reasonable⁶!

  After eating, we dropped by⁷ our friend’s shop called Howdy — and said "Howdy!" and checked how he’s doing. Then, we, us three, promised to get together⁸ again next year and said good-bye.

  It’s so nice to see old friends and have fun, isn’t it?

  Sorry that I didn’t write a blog for a while. The reason was our kid came back with the future member of our family and I tried to spend as much family time as possible. We went out together. I cooked some fun Japanese food. I tried to do a lot of things with them in addition to¹ my classes, and writing a blog got pushed to the back of the line² (even though I tried…).

  Since this month I will upload just one blog, I will prepare this blog with a bit more photos than usual. Please enjoy some highlights from our life recently.

  Soon after they arrived, we went to Yamagata and visited the jellyfish³ Aquarium and Haguro-san, and saw a cedar⁴ tree which is more than a thousand years old, and the pagoda⁵, which is the oldest pagoda in the Tohoku Region. The view from the tea house in the middle of the mountain was breathtaking⁶! We saw some very special birds called aka-sho-bin (ruddy kingfisher) on top of the mountain.

  We went to the Japanese garden in Rin-no-ji Temple and enjoyed walking around the quiet atmosphere⁷, looking at very picturesque⁸ scenes. When I was young, my parents and I often visited there, but not for the last 20 years or so. It’s nice to go out and see the beauty of Japanese culture sometimes.

  Of course, we went to Matsushima. Here my dream came true! We sat down at a cafe called Le Roman with some drinks, enjoying a nice summer breeze outside and the great view of Matsushima. After this, we visited Entsu-in and Zuigan-ji.

  We did many more fun things. — We had breakfast at a family restaurant with our friend. We saw Blue Impulse. We went out to see the Kizuna Matsuri. They went to Kokubun-cho (without me). Our friend invited us to their house and we had a wonderful time, and more … We had a very nice family time together.

  Not only that, when we have guests, we have one more thing that we always enjoy. we always enjoy seeing our life through their eyes. Even our super normal slices of life⁹ look special. It opens our eyes and we feel we should cherish¹⁰ our super normal life…
 
 

  Our Halloween has already started! You might wonder what I’m talking about. It’s not the season yet. Well, some people might already know that we, actually Will, grows his own Jack-o’-Lanterns. So that means we’ve got to get started¹ now!

  He bought pumpkins seeds² on the Internet in February. Nowadays the variety which is called Atlantic Giant is available in stores, but we don’t see many other varieties.

  Then he long-waited for the warm season and planted the seeds in pots in mid-April³. About 2 weeks after that, we started seeing the center of the pots heaping up⁴, telling us there was some activity going on inside. And soon the sprouts⁵ started pushing out. This is a fun moment! The pots in which we had been seeing just dirt⁶ are getting active! One after another, the sprouts are coming out of the soil⁷.

  Now it’s been a month. They are like this!!

  It’s really amazing to see the power of life!

  This year, in the both our field that we borrow and the bank⁸ of the canal in front of our house, some volunteer pumpkins have sprouted by themselves. First, Will was skeptical⁹ about them, wondering if¹⁰ they can grow really healthy and strong, but he decided to take a chance¹¹ and let two grow.

  Soon, the seedlings¹² will be replanted in the soil. This year Will is growing 3 kinds. We will keep our fingers crossed for¹³ a good harvest!
 
 

  Don’t you think we had a long, wonderful cherry tree season this year? The weather was perfect. — There was no strong rain to make the flowers fall. And also, the temperature was good. Even the peak was on the weekend!


  I didn’t go out anywhere special, but just in the range of¹ my activities I was able to get so many nice photos of the cherry blossoms.

  One day I happened to find² this spot when I was cruising by bike downtown. With the red Torii and a tiny shrine, and a nice little path to a tavern…

 
  When my big band played in Tsutsujigaoka Park for the Cherry Blossom Music Festival. A nice weeping cherry tree.

  On my way to work. Next to the entrance of my local elementary school.

  As I took these, I photographed the monument to Hashi Hime Myojin* and the two swans who gave up going back to Siberia and are staying in the Hirose River. (Of course it’s sad, but two together make me feel less⁴ sad because last year there was only one.)

  Thanks to⁵ the cherry blossoms, I really noticed⁶ the many beautiful things around me!

 *See http://mitinoku.biz/hist_walk/hist_miyagi/?p=3298

  Sometimes the universe¹ gives us a special opportunity to create something perfect. This time that magic happened to our friend’s wife and she got a wonderful photo.



  Professional photographers know how to increase their chances of taking wonderful pictures, but even then they take shot after shot² and end up keeping³ a very few. Those of us who only take the occasional⁴ photo get a good one very rarely.