eggs in the garden

In front of our house, we have a little vegetable garden. Or maybe that is a bit too much to say – we are planning to have a vegetable garden; so far we only have one kind of vegetables, two okra plants that my mother-in-law planted for us the first week after we moved in in May. They have already come to bear fruit – my mother-in-law has green fingers as we would say in Sweden, she has her own flourishing vegetable garden and me and my wife look so forward to learning from her.

Okra, okura in Japanese, is a plant with green longish seed pods, from afar reminding a little of mini cucumbers but when looking closely bearing no resemblance at all – the pods form a star when sliced and they are supposed to be very healthy, rich in minerals and fibers and other good things. Coming to Japan I had not had okura before and it has taken me quite some time to get used to this vegetable. The taste was almost ok even at first bite, and it has grown on me since, so the taste has not been my big issue. Instead it was the texture that I had trouble getting used to. Okura is when boiled quite sticky and when having it in my mouth it reminds me of natto, the fermented soy beans health food loved in Japan, even by my son, and natto I can still not eat. It has taken me a few years to separate the texture of okura from the taste of natto, but now that it is done, I enjoy okura very much, especially so home-grown.

Then comes the fly in the ointment – ants started to move in to our okura plants. Particularly the most fruit bearing one was soon covered in little black ants fond of crawling around on the leaves. What to do, I asked my mother-in-law. You can try eggshells, she said. My wife’s interpretation of that was to put a few halves of eggshell around the plant. And lo and behold – a few days later the ants were much fewer and last night I could hardly see any. I have no idea if that is thanks to the eggshells or just a coincidence of timing that we happened to put eggshells just when the ants were going to move along anyway. But I have faith enough to know that next time they come I will put eggshells there again.