Who Loves Nature?

We do! We do! Today we went to our first official meeting of the Rumoi Forest Support Club in the mountain park nearby. We took down fences around fruit shrubs and reset the logs for a mushroom-growing area. Luckily there were many shitake already growing on the logs so we picked a bunch, along with some other mountain vegetables (things you wouldn't think you could eat, like fern fiddleheads). After washing these off at home we made tempura - delicious! Oh, and the best part, in the leftover batter, we dunked some snickers bars and deep fried those too. It sounds disgusting, and it was, but it tasted really really good.

In the spirit of spring, after I digested the foods above, I made a sakura (cherry blossom) brooch. The cherry blossom season is just starting (late) here in Hokkaido. It looks a lot like the one I made for my mom, but for this I added some yellow beads for the stamens.

Stuff around here is finally looking less brown and more green. . .come on spring, I'm running out of patience!