This is the garden, colors come and go...

It is June, it is summer, and remarkably, it is not raining. At all. This time last year I was complaining about the record breaking 16 successive days of rain. By the end of this month I may well be posting about the driest June I (and perhaps Hokkaido) have ever experienced. I know we are not having the best of summers back home so I don't want to gloat, but, heck, I do want to gloat. We are having a cracking summer; lots of warm sunshine, not too humid, not too hot, but consistently pleasant.
And it shows.

The garden, our thin L-shaped strip of greenery bordering two sides of the house, is thriving. Our strawberries are red and ripe; the juniper berries are coming along nicely, and it looks like we will enjoy a bumper crop of black and red currents this year. My hope is that the good weather continues which might help the blueberries ripen early this year, late July perhaps. Usually it is August and we are in Ireland so the local birds get to feast themselves on the crop, but if the sunshine continues we may just get to enjoy them ourselves. Hell, we might just bring some over with us.

Yes, I know what you are thinking; it is kind of oriental version of Chelsea flower show. But all is not what it seems in the Garden of Eden...
Last Thursday, Cian and myself arrived home to find this handwritten note of terror stuck to the front door.

 
We ran screaming into the house. No, we didn't. Cian remarked on Mammy's lack of cursive script whilst pointing out the omission of a definite article and issues with her word order. Then we ran screaming into the house.
The good weather has also brought with it an infestation of 毒蛾 (dokuga), literally 'poisonous moth', (though apparently it hides behind the more unassuming name of 'Oriental Tussock Moth').

 Along the south east coast of Hokkaido there has been an explosion of these venom tipped monsters and the tussocky feckers are everywhere. Beaches and parks have been closed because of them and poor Mammy got, well not exactly stung but more like 'grazed' by one of them. The caterpillar's poison is contained in the hairy bristles (or urticating hairs for all you Lepidoptera fans out there) covering their brown and orange bodies. These hairs are shed by the caterpillar when it senses danger and lets face it, there's nothing much more dangerous than an enraged Mammy finding insects munching on her strawberries. So, she got covered in these hairs, broke out in a terrible, itchy rash, and is now using the sort of steroid-based analgesic cream beloved of 1980's bearded, deep-voiced, female Bulgarian weightlifters.
Apparently we can expect another couple of weeks or so of caterpillar horror before they metamorphosize into winged moths and bring poisonous terror from the night skies!