Today's harvest from the garden

The vegetables are ready for harvesting. It is early summer and the weather today is beautiful. It is partly cloudy which is cool and comfortable. It is about 9.30 am on a Sunday morning with a temperature and humidity of 26c and 80% respectively. Know what? My 2 immediate neighbors are feeling uncomfortable and warm, thus having their air-conditioning switched on. To us,Singapore at this time is really humid and hot but not here in Japan. I supposed the Japanese are more sensitive to the "humid and warm" weather.

Harvesting tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and pimans

Harvesting the veggies

Harvesting cucumbers

It is time to harvest the cucumbers. There are lots of health benefits from eating cucumbers. It can help prevent cancer, constipation, protect your skin from the effects of aging, protect your brain from neurological diseases, help lower blood pressure etc.
To us it is a great delight to see our plants and vegetables grow from seedlings to bearing fruits.

Vegetables & cheap freehold land

Just harvested the brinjal, piman (green pepper) cucumber and cherry tomatoes for our meals. Always dream of having a small piece of land in Singapore to grow some vegetables and flowers but couldn't afford it as land is very expensive. Here, in Japan, the land is relatively cheap. You can buy a piece of freehold land (1,200 sq ft) in Fukuoka (where I am living) for about 10 million Yen or S$122,000.

Brinjal and cucumber from our garden

Top picture right hand side is the brinjal and left is cucumber. They are the first fruits of the 2 plants. Second picture is my brunch with the salad containing slices of the cucumber. Needless to say the cucumber tasted as fresh as it can be as it was taken from the plant an hour before.

Planting summer vegetables

It is an exciting time for we have now planted the summer crops like cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, bitter gourd and other vegetables. In about 3 months time, weather permitting, we should start to see the fruits of our labor.

Exchange of gifts

We bought the watermelon and gave half of it to our neighbors who in return gave us their home grown cucumbers and bitter gourds. In Japan, there is a lot of formalities and I am getting accustomed to it.

The cherry tomatoes do not ripened at the same time. Most are still green and so we have to be patient. The topmost picture is me holding a fully grown cucumber which I've plucked for my lunch. There are more cucumbers but are not fully grown yet.
For a Singaporean who has spent my whole life in an apartment, living in Japan has given me a chance to live in at least a small house with a some spare land to grow vegetables and flowers.