Last harvest for 2011

Am not sure what this plant is... 

Shall have to look the references up one day...

I supposed the fruits must be quite tasty as the birds do come for them...

Update: Thanks to Debra for suggesting that this could be 'bittersweet'. Did a search on the net and indeed, this plant belongs to the bittersweet family. The bittersweet in Debra's write-out looks like a climber but not this one in our garden. I think this plant we have is called Japanese Spindle. It is not a climber but an ever green shrub with shiny leaves.

Harvested some round daikons today for my suweeto haato to make a new year dish with carrots...

Also harvested the butter scotch pumpkins... 

All six of them, including the one that was harvested some time ago...

In total, they weighed about 4.9 kilograms...

As we retire for the night, my missus is about to put one pumpkin into a dutch oven and placing the dutch oven inside our wood-stove...

We are experimenting to see if the pumpkin gets cooked with the remaining heat from the wood-stove... 

Plus, harvested the last of the sweet potatoes...

The purple-flesh murasaki sweet potatoes were the most productive of the four types... 

All in all, they weighed in at about 15.2 kilograms...

Very good by my standards...

Our favorite sweet potato however, is the orange-flesh An-no...

They are super sweet, almost like honey...

Rather unfortunately, productivity was low...

We could manage only about 2.9 kilograms of this delicious sweet potato...

And to close the 2011 chapter is this little camellia...

Ok folks, looking forward to the new year when we get up next morning...

Camellia, citrus, ta-sai...

Camellias in winter offer one of the few colorful sights in our garden...
The nectar in the flowers attract a very cute small bird call 'mejiro' (Japanese White Eye?)... 
I like the flowers so much that I am contemplating to make a hedge with just the camellia plant...

One reason I enjoy living here is that the neighbors are friendly...
Over the weekend, I made a new friend and was immediately offered some oranges...
These oranges are very sour and are sometimes used for religious purposes...
I am suggesting to my missus to make marmalade out of them..
Then our next door neighbor gave us some 'yuzus' (Japanese citron?)...
This citrus fruit has a very refreshing flavor to it, and we plan to use it for cooking...
Our neighbor prefers to squeeze its juice into some Japanese sake, on the rocks...

Harvested some ta-sai (a type of Chinese green belonging to the cabbage family)...
This vegetable is one of my wife's favorite...
The taste is quite lovely, I must say...
It is highly cold-resistent and easy to grow...