Getting out the Gobo

To enter the back door of my house, I have to walk right by my gobo box, making it the most readily noticeable of my gardening efforts. And yet, paradoxically, it has also become the most neglected. I had even forgotten when I built it, or which variety I planted. A check of my old photos showed that it was back in 2021; a look through my old seed packets identified it as Takinogawa.

8-19-21

9-21-21

11-12-21

My neglect of the gobo began shortly after taking the photos above, coincidentally or not around the time I split with my publisher, and when Maya and Jim sold Kitazawa. Somehow the plants, or more likely their descendants, hung on despite the fact that I stopped watering them or really doing anything at all to help them along. Since they insisted on sticking around, I decided today to finally open up their housing and see what they were up to. Given that they’d been on their own for so long, they’d done pretty well for themselves.

Leaving half the haul aside for the time being, I prepared the other half with rice vinegar, sugar, and salt, and brought them to my aunt’s house for dinner along with a salad of young mizuna, wasabina, aichi cabbage, and daikon. I thought it all turned out pretty well.