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Chocolate zucchini cake? That sounds disgusting in princple, but with the amount of courgettes we have may be worth trying. I think during the War they came up with all sorts of strange stuff with courgettes because they lacked so many other things - I think courgette and ginger jam (jelly) was pretty popular, and my mum has told me they used to make a molasses from marrows filled with rum, or something or other.... it all sounds so wrong to me!

I don't think ants cause problems in themselves, unless they decide to build ants nests around your plants (which they tried to do with our artichokes). I guess it's conceivable that as they like sap so much, they may try collecting it themselves, but I've never seen it, and I don't think they would ever collect that much. The major problem they cause is really with the aphids and blackfly, partly because they cause MASSIVE infestations. I would just be wary that if they are crawling all over your plants, they are probably scouting out places suitable to farm aphids. But maybe ants are different in Japan.

Not much rain here. We had some rain, but it's been so dry and warm, it almost instantly goes...

Is the climate really changing that much in Japan? It just seems to get drier here and winters less colder. I can't remember when we last had proper snow. It's partly why the ants are so bad. Winters are too dry.

Okay, I'll accept that you're uptight about wanting to make sure you don't have anyone on your friends list.

As for photography, I'm thinking of doing just as you suggest - taking the camera and some bear spray out into the wilderness and taking pictures there. Then I don't have to worry about other people, and it'll give me some practice using the camera.