Roosters, Rats, and Rain

Sarah harvested these beets from my garden. I thought they looked pretty.

Monday gave us another gloomy start to a not-summery week, the last week of August. It was chilly and overcast and too wet to work outdoors. I fretted through the morning, trying to entertain my brain. After looking at various news sites, which made things feel even gloomier, I watched some YouTube. I like to watch Baumgartner Restorations, where Julian Baumgartner restores damaged paintings. The most recent one I watched that morning involved restoring an antique icon. I find what he does fascinating. Then I watched Words Unravelled with Jess Zefarris and Rob Watts where they explore the etymology of English words. Also fascinating. Then I checked the Netherlands Bach Society's channel to see if there was anything new since the last time I checked. I found a performance of the Minuets in G Major and G Minor BWV 841–842, by Hanna Zhang on the harpsichord. That was a lovely three-minute distraction. Then I read.

I wrote last week about my unsuccessful venture into The Odyssey. I was disappointed that I was disappointed. I really wanted it to turn out to be a great encounter with an ancient literary masterpiece—which I'm sure it is—but my ability to appreciate it is limited. That happens to me sometimes. I just can't get into certain famous works, no matter how often or how hard I've tried. Moby-Dick is on that list. I've tried several times and just can't do it. The great Russian authors are on that list, too. Maybe someday I'll be able to read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy without falling asleep by the third page. Maybe not. So after my disenchantment with Homer, I was looking for a new direction to freshen my brain before returning to the Discworld books (I'm still determined to read them all this year). On the recommendation of Miriam and Hannah, I'm reading Anne of Green Gables. I've watched the wonderful 1985 series several times, but I'd never read the books. It has been a treat. Lucy Maud Montgomery is a great writer. Her ability to describe places, her characterizations, and dialogue are perfect. Maybe the fact that I've watched a well-done adaptation of her books has helped—I do picture Megan Follows as Anne, Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla, and Richard Farnsworth as Matthew as I read. I'm enjoying the book and now have added Prince Edward Island to my list of places I need to visit.

If you'll recall, several weeks ago I wrote about a nest of bunnies in one of my raised beds. They were too cute to do anything about, plus we had grandchildren here and they would have been appalled at even the thought of disposing of them. The bunnies eventually left the nest and went across the road to live in the scrubby brush, and I swore if they ever came back into my garden, they were fair game. Well, one of them did come back. It has made its home under the woodpile at the side of the house. It isn't especially afraid of us. It comes out several times a day to nibble on clover in the lawn and doesn't hop away until we get very close to it. It's still pretty small and cute, and despite my vow, I can't bring myself to shoot it. Living under the woodpile and eating lawn clover does no harm to my garden. It hasn't invaded any place where I have flowers or vegetables, so I'm willing to tolerate it living there. Am I getting soft in my old age?

The bunny that lives under the woodpile.

Because the weather wouldn't give us heat, I went to the gym to use their steam room. I sat in the steam and sweated, then took a cold shower and repeated the process four times. It felt great. It made me think of the few times I got to go to a bathhouse when I was in Japan. Missionaries were only allowed to use them if the bathing facilities in their apartments were not working. That only happened three times during the two years I was in Japan—once in my first area in Tsuruhashi, in Osaka, and twice later when I lived in the city of Akashi. That first trip to a bath house was a very different experience for me. I'd only been in Japan two days, and in spite of seven weeks of studying Japanese at the Missionary Training Center (it was the LTM back then, the Language Training Mission), I didn't understand much of anything that was said to me, nor could I make myself understood. This is what I wrote in my journal about that experience.

Saturday, April 15, 1978. Last night the heater on our bathtub broke, so we got permission to go to a public bath house called an ofuroyasan. The elders call it the "fud." It was just down the street from our apartment, so we walked there. The entrance was covered with a cloth banner that the elders call a "fud flag." A lot of elders collect them when the fuds change and replace them. My companion has three of them. We went into a lobby and paid an old woman some money. She gave us a plastic basin, two towels, and a key. There was a men’s side and a women’s side, completely separate. We went through a door into the men’s locker room, where we undressed. I’m very shy about being naked around other people, so I tried to wrap a towel around me, but it was too small. No one else was wearing a towel, so I just said, “Oh well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” We went into the fud room. There were hot-water spigots and stools along one wall. We sat on the stools, and using the plastic basin, we washed at the spigots. We had to soap up, shampoo, and rinse off completely. You never go into the tubs until you are completely clean. Next, we went to the hot-water tub. It was very large and about four feet deep. There were three middle-aged Japanese men and a young boy, about ten or eleven, already in it. It was made of tile and there was a ledge all around it that we sat on. You were only allowed to go in the water up to your chin. You never put your face or head in the water. The water was very hot. As I soaked in it, my face broke into a sweat. We wiped our faces with towels, then got out and went to the other tub. It was just like the hot tub, but the water was very cold. It was shocking to get in. I couldn’t stay in very long. We went back and forth between the hot and cold tubs three times. The whole time, we were chatting among ourselves in English and not paying much attention to the Japanese. My companion whispered to me that the men were talking about us. They didn't know that some of us could understand what they were saying. My companion said they were commenting on how big American boys are. I assumed he meant that they were impressed with how tall we are, but my companion made it clear that was not what they were commenting on. Until then, I hadn’t minded too much that we were naked, but when he told me that, I was embarrassed and wanted to cover myself. We stayed in the tub until after those men left. When you go to the fud, you are supposed to finish by soaking in the cold tank to invigorate the body, but my companion said not to. He said that if you finish with the hot tank, you’ll sleep better. So I finished with the hot tank. He was right. I was so relaxed that I almost didn’t make it home before I fell asleep. I slept the most relaxed and peaceful sleep I’ve ever slept. I think I love going to the fud, but I wish there were just elders there and no Japanese. I hope we go there often, but my companion says we won’t because permission isn’t often granted to go. Too bad.

This is a typical "fud" entrance with its "fud flag."

Me and my first companion, Elder Patterson, who took me to the fud for the first time.

That was my first experience at a Japanese bathhouse, a good memory. But, back to the present: Tuesday morning was another frustrating morning. It was chilly and gray again. I didn't take a morning walk. I just did the necessary chores and came back inside to wait, hoping the sun would come out. I can tolerate the chill if the sun is shining, but cloudy and chilly is too much. In the late afternoon, the sky cleared. Sarah came over and we spent some time working in the big garden. We picked another load of cucumbers. We have an overabundance of them this year. And we finished putting the plastic cover over the tomatoes. We're hoping the plastic will hold in enough heat to ripen the hundreds of green tomatoes on the vines.

The tomato tunnel completed.

That evening, after dark, Stacey, Miriam, and I went down to the chicken coop. Miriam went to shoot rats. Stacey and I went to clip the wings on the renegade young chickens and to catch two young roosters. These young chickens thought they could roam outside their yard all day. They even started going across the road. And they liked to perch on the railing of the barn bridge and made a mess of it with their poop. So we clipped their wings to keep them from flying over the fence. When we bought this last batch of chicks, they were all supposed to be pullets, but two of them turned out to be roosters. It wasn't a problem until they became mature enough to try and breed. That created a ruckus as the two older roosters wouldn't allow it. A lady who raises chickens near here takes unwanted roosters to an auction up in New York state and she was going there on Wednesday morning, so we caught the two roosters, put them in boxes, and set them on the back porch for the night. Wednesday morning I drove them over and delivered them to the lady. Things are under control down in the barn again. Except for the rats.

Two boxed roosters, ready to take away.

I don't know why there are so many rats this year. Most years we go through a cycle where a few move in, we kill them, and we're rid of them for a while. This year there are so many and all our efforts to get rid of them have been in vain. I decided to make a multipronged attack. I bought four new rat traps and a bag of poison pellets. I baited the traps with peanut butter. Then I set up a rat smorgasbord in the middle pen of the coop where I could keep the chickens out. Now I also make sure the chicken feeder is empty by nightfall so there is no chicken food available for the rats. Thursday morning, when I went down to check, all four traps were sprung and three had dead rats in them. And all the poison was gone. I emptied and reset the traps and put down more poison. On Friday morning, there were three more, and Saturday morning another two. This morning, before I got ready for church, I went down to check and there were five more. Thirteen down—how many more to go?

I know it's gross, but it also feels a bit triumphant.

Right about now, at the end of August, I start to give up. There is too much going on in the garden. It's harvest time and picking and preserving food becomes the most important task. Other tasks have to be neglected. I stop being so vigilant about deadheading flowers. I figure that, come the first frost, I'll be pulling them up if they're annuals, and cutting them back if they're perennials, so why fuss with them anymore. Same with the weeds. Soon I will overhaul the flowerbeds, the raised beds, and till up the rows in the big garden as they empty out, so why fight the weeds. They'll be ripped up and ground down soon. It's not that I'm feeling defeated exactly, I just have to prioritize things. I make sure things look tidy—as long as you don't look closely.

I spent the morning on Wednesday mowing. I only mowed our property. Miriam took over when I was done and mowed the Shilligs' yard and the Foster's property. She was at it until dinnertime. Sarah came over for dinner again on Wednesday. After dinner we went out and worked in the big garden. She, Miriam, and I dug up the places in the long rows where we'd cleared out garlic, cabbages, and basil, and we planted cover crops of crimson clover and a mix of other seeds. We worked past the sunset and finished up under the light of a primrose full moon. It was quiet and cool as we made our way back to the  house.

Sarah working by moonlight.

Thursday was an overcast day. I worked in the garden, wishing the whole time that the sun would break through. Sarah came here for dinner again, and afterward we went out to work some more in the big garden. We pulled up the row of peas. The vines were spent and mildewed. We pulled up the rest of the onions and brought them into the woodshed. We worked until it got dark.

Toward midnight, Stacey woke me up and we went out to watch the eclipse of the moon. Julie was out on her back porch watching and we walked over and joined her. Miriam and Hannah eventually joined us. We watched the moon almost disappear behind earth's shadow. We saw several meteors streak by as we watched. Far to the south of us, there was silent lightning. When the moon was obscured as much as it would be, we came back inside and went to bed.

The eclipse (not my photo).

On Friday, Miriam and Hannah went down to spend the weekend at the Thayns' house. They left in the morning, and with Stacey at work, I was alone all day. I worked part of the day on an indoor project.

Writing about going to a public bathhouse earlier in the week triggered something in me. I spent some time every day after that going through my missionary journals, editing them. I copied the entries and pasted them into ChatGPT, and had it check my spelling and punctuation. I edited my journals several years ago the old fashioned way. This time, using AI was amazing. It found many errors and inaccuracies that I'd missed before. Oh, the wonders of AI.  I corrected them as we went along. As a result of that, I was mentally immersed in that world again all week. My reaction to it surprised me. Looking so closely at who I was from the age of 19 to 21 was interesting. There were things that I wrote down that I would not remember otherwise. As I read, at times I became very emotional. I've told stories many times of the strange, funny, and bad things that happened on my mission, but reading through my journals this time, I realized that I'd forgotten some of the wonderful things—especially the Japanese people I grew to love. I wept several times as I read about them. I regret that I never kept in touch with them. But when I left Japan, I came home to a new place and was swept up in the affairs of my family and coping with that next phase of my life. I left Japan behind me. Only I didn't, really. It has always been there, in a place in my mind. It changed me in profound ways and has had an influence in everything that came after it. When I finished my editing on Friday afternoon, I did some searching online to see if I could find some of those people I loved, but time and incomplete information prevented any discoveries. Almost fifty years later, I suppose many of them are dead. I'm glad I preserved some part of them on the pages of my journal.

I find that I've been dwelling on Japan more and more of late. I often dream about it at night. It's been 47 years since I was there. I can't say that I loved every minute of my time there. That's very apparent in my journal entries. Being a missionary was difficult a lot of the time. My greatest difficulties were with the American missionaries who were my companions. But I quickly learned to love the country, its people, its culture, and its food. I always thought that I would go back again someday to visit. More and more, I feel that the time is coming—maybe it's here now. I like to sit and work out imaginary travel plans—the places I'd like to see again, the places I'd like to show my family. Should we go during sakura season, or when the azaleas are in bloom, or during the fall when the maples are magnificent? Can I find the gyoza restaurant I loved in the heart of Osaka? Is my language good enough to navigate the trains and buses? I think the translation programs available today will help with that. My Japanese is very rusty. I can dream, can't I?

After I was done with my journal, and a bit of daydreaming, I went out and worked in the garden. I pulled a few weeds and sowed some cover crop seed in the newly cleaned out raised beds in my vegetable garden. The day was pleasant, mild, and breezy. Later, I trimmed the onions we brought in the day before and hung them up to cure. It was very fragrant work. The smell of onions always makes me hungry. The rest of the day was quiet. Stacey and I ate a simple dinner of leftovers, and then spent the evening not doing much at all. Maybe we're just old and boring. Or comfortable doing nothing. Both, probably.

Onions curing in the woodshed.

Saturday was quiet. I didn't feel motivated to do much. I planted some clover seed out in an empty row in the big garden. I spent some time after lunch watching trailers for upcoming movies. I like to find one or two that look good. It gives me something to look forward to, although I'm often disappointed when I finally get to watch them. I wish they'd make more movies based on the great novels I love, but then, when they do, I usually don't like what they do to them. How I've pictured the stories as I've read them, and how they're portrayed on film, are usually too different. And I prefer what's in my head to what I see on the screen. And how many versions of Jane Austen's novels do they need to make? Move on, for heaven's sake. There are so many other great books that would make great movies. In a fit of misplaced ambition a few years ago, I tried my hand at writing a screenplay of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. I knew as soon as I finished it that I didn't understand the process well enough. I think with proper instruction, I might make a good screenwriter. Then I could help transform more worthy novels into great films.

Late on Saturday afternoon, I took a slow walk across the compound. My purpose was twofold: to make a note of the things I need to do this week, and to enjoy a summer afternoon with its sunshine and flowers. As I walked, I noted my successes and failures. What I'll do differently next year. The happy accidents where volunteers popped up—petunias in places where I hadn't grown them in years, pink bee balm that somehow transported itself all the way across a flowerbed. I like those happy accidents. Often the volunteers do better than the plants I planned and carefully tended. The sunflowers are blooming at their best now. I always realize, too late, that I didn't plant enough of them. Every year I think I've planted more than the year before, but when they bloom, I find it's never enough. Next year I'll plant more.

Some of the sunflowers in my garden.

Today is a fifth Sunday so, as branch president, I was responsible for what happened in the second hour at church. Starting next week, our meeting schedule changes and there was a video from Salt Lake that explained the transition. It was directed at the youth of the church, and we don't have any youth in the branch, but I watched it beforehand and determined that everything in it also applied to us more mature youth. So we watched it and the branch members said they found it applicable. Plus it was short, which meant we ended our meetings early and no one complained about that. We're home now. Lunch is almost ready. Miriam and Hannah will be home later this afternoon.

Now I'm sitting here, looking at the week ahead. Yesterday I made my list of things I need to do this week, but it looks like the weather won't be cooperating with my plans. There is rain in the forecast all week until Friday. At least it's not supposed to be chilly. I'll do whatever I can whenever I can. And I have a new indoor project for those rainy days—I'm going to edit my earliest journals. I started keeping a journal in 1975, and I wrote a lot. It will be fun to see what a silly and sloppy teenage writer I was.