The wood-chopping continues...

As with the past few weekends, the main preoccupation is... yes, you guessed it... wood chopping...

It is a strenuous activity, but I enjoy 'punishing' myself this way... 

And as I joked with a dear friend when I visited him in San Francisco last March ... 'chopping wood makes me feel like a man'... :)

Strenuous... especially when the grain of the wood is not straight as in the above specimen (an elm, perhaps?)... 

Wooh, you can chop and chop but that thing just will not split that easily... 

 

Last October, we first heard the sound of wood cracking when we stood near the firewood shed... 

But inexperienced as we are, the sound was not from the wood drying... 

It was the sound of worms chewing on the wood...

See the above picture? It has no eyes, and the jaws are very hard... (I touched it)...  

Searching the net, I found out that they are wood borers... tanbark borers, perhaps?  (Source)

Their length is about 1.5 to 2 cm...

Each time I chop wood, I get tens and tens of them...

Our favorite bird, Daurian Redstart aka the Potager Y mascot, loves to come by whenever he (yes, a 'he') sees me chopping wood... 

Imagine the feasts he gets each time he catches me with the axe...

And yes, the 'man' needs to take a break from the chopping, sometimes... 

Chiang Mai, I was at...

Just came back yesterday after spending a few days at Chiang Mai, northern Thailand...

Purpose was to thrash out the final details of a student program that we are experimenting with...

Thanks to our counterparts, I managed to meet several key persons and I am happy to say that the negotiations turned out very well...

In the off-hours, sneaked out to steal some shots of the happenings in town...

Before long, I could not help but to hear some traditional Thai music...

There was a 'big band' of about 15 musicians... guitars, cymbals, xylophones, keyboards, drums, traditional trumpets, gamelan-like percussions...  

It seemed like a religious event... people were praying and there was a make-shift Thai shrine set up just for this purpose...

And the dancers... so colorfully clothed, and their movements so graceful ... 

In the evening, took a stroll at the night market... 

I have seen quite a few night markets here and there, but this one in Chiang Mai, hmmm, should I say, really 'pulsates'?

There is really so, so much activity there... and the range of stuff sold there is immense... as in bags, clothes, accessories...

Tidbits... as in corn... dried squid...

 Sausages, anyone?

 Goodies on skewers...

 Decorative little bulbs... 

Fried noodles... now if I could only muster enough courage to try out stuff like these...

Avocado salad, among other stuff...

Temperatures these few days have been dipping below freezing point...

We had minus 4 degrees one morning, and there had also been some brief moments of snow...

Not much going on in our potager in this cold season...

I spend almost all my time in weekends chopping wood for our stove... 

And my sweeto haato, as usual, had been very kind to cook me some sumptuous meals...

Had this avocado salad for dinner last night...

We always throw the avocado seeds into our garden and they do germinate...

We have a few of them, growing up to about a meter or so... wonder if they will ever fruit...

Sometimes we have some cheeze (Camembert, this time) with crackers before the main meal...

Fried rice noodles was what we had for lunch today...

Bean sprouts, mushroom, leafy greens, tofu, chillies, a little meat and spring onions...

And for tonight, butter scotch pumpkin salad...

We have been eating pumpkin quite a bit these days...

Am very happy that we can grow this lovely vegetable in our garden...