Hoi An: old houses, vegetables, and rice

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and well-deserving of the designation. A historic seaport and trading center (think 250-300 years), it declined into obscurity as the river and harbor became shallower, as silt and time made the town less accessible.

Now about 3 km from the coast, Hoi An has a nice historic center, with extraordinary buildings (maybe overly filled with silk shops, galleries, etc.), but that's what supports tourism.

We were there five years ago and loved the area, and bicycling into the countryside.

There are still rice and vegetable fields just out of the town center.

We enjoyed our time there again -- a wonderful place, and it seems to be developing as a tourist destination in a very attractive way.

Leaves, persimmons, and traveling

Our 'natural gardening' motto is that you can never have too many leaves! (Thanks, Sheila, for the post inspiration.)

In spite of having created nice woodland areas in our garden that are almost self-sufficient in their re-mulching capacity, additional leaves are always valuable for soil enrichment. In temperate areas, organic matter breaks down rapidly, so constant replenishment (following nature's lead) is important.

It's vital in woodland, shrub, and perennial borders, but absolutely essential in heavily-worked vegetable garden beds, where additional inputs of compost and organic nutrients may be needed to add minerals lost in harvesting.

I totally subscribe to the idea (as a plant ecologist and wildlife gardener) that mimicking nature, increasing biodiversity, and trying to create ecological balance in the garden is a good thing.

Personally, I don't worry about diseases that 'might' be harbored by leaf mulch in shrub and woodland areas (let the fungi and micro-organisms duke it out) -- leaves falling in such areas are natural and part of regular ecological processes.

Perennial borders and vegetable garden beds are much more tame, and in need of a gardener's care. But I'm certainly not worried about diseases in those beds either, if leaves are gathered (not the tough, slow to compost, ones) and used appropriately as mulch.

One of our signals that it's time to leave for traveling at winter break is Japanese persimmons.

This is an old tree that was one of the first things I planted as a 'young' gardener well over 20 years ago. It survived transplantation (with few roots) from Georgia to South Carolina, struggled, but has continued to produce persimmons, some year more, some years less. We always enjoy them, either fresh (me) or as persimmon bread (my gardening companion).

The last few fruits will be cut and brought into the refrigerator tomorrow before we leave for winter break travels.

I'm taking an iPod Touch and a new small camera -- hardly great blogging equipment, as we're traveling light.

But I wish those of you that have happened on my posts and especially those of you that continue to read them, a very happy holiday season!

I'll look forward to reading your posts while traveling, but mine will probably be minimal until we return in early January.

Winter

Because we often travel during winter break, our relatively mild winters in the Southeastern US seem even shorter. We're fortunate to be able to travel in December; without family obligations (our families are far-flung and independent at this point), it's an excellent time to visit many parts of the world as we can.

During our academic winter break from early December to early January, we've traveled to Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica in the Americas, Thailand, Laos, Northern Vietnam, and India in Asia, and Tanzania and Zanzibar in Africa, as well as going to Italy, France and Great Britain, over the years.

All have been wonderful trips and we're grateful that we were able to take them.

But one of the non-traveling pluses has been that we leave just as winter descends (not very heavily in our part of the world), return in early January, and by February and March have quite a few periodic mild days, which are really quite spring-like, and we're back to warm weather.

So, we're fortunate to escape the 'worst' of what our Southeastern winters offer; we're totally wimpy compared to so many of you that have much more harsh winters to cope with!