On the drive in the mountains yesterday, after the lovely field of purple flowers, we came across this farmer preparing one rice paddy in between two that were already planted.

For actually planting the rice, the tractor takes an attachment that holds tray after tray of rice seedlings, and automatically puts them into rows as he drives along. The clump in the foreground above are some such trays, likely left over when the foreground paddy was planted. I suspect they'll use them in the paddy being prepared in the photo.

While on a drive in the mountains of northern Kyoto today, we came across a pretty scene... a small watter-filled field of wilty-looking purple flowers, with a backdrop of the sun setting behind some mountains.

To me they were "wilty-looking purple flowers," but Fumie guessed they were one of three kinds of flowers, each of which turns out to be an iris of some sort when I look up the Japanese names she offered.

The field was apparently filled with frogs, their loud din similar to that mentioned the other day.

The field held a grave marker for [...]

After the ugliness of my last post, now I just want to see some interesting pictures, so here are a few random shots that I've been wanting to share....

These were strawberries that Fumie prepared for the kids when Anthony had some friends over. They lasted for about 30 seconds before the plate was clean. A similar shot was featured on one of my Lightroom posts.

A tree at Anthony's preschool last January. Being in a valley, it seems that Kyoto's sky is always hazy, but on this day it was crisp and deeply blue.

A goat at the petting [...]

Every once in a while we see a great blue heron around this building (across from where these night blossom shots were taken), usually standing motionless on the sloping banister wall. The first time we saw him we didn't even realize it was real, until eventually it moved slightly.

I happened to have my camera with me when I saw him on the banister wall today, and was about to take his picture when he jumped down to the stairs leading to the basement property. I ran up to look, and saw him go down and inside, and then saw [...]

A few more pictures of May snow near Furano, Hokkaido, Japan, where there was still plenty of snow a kilometer up......

On the way home, I was surprised to notice our hotel so visible in the distance (the white building in the lower mountain, above the rightmost orange backhoe), and even more so when the car navigation system said that it was more than 10 miles away. It looks much closer, but is 10.6 miles (17km) away.