Summer in Tokyo this year was just how I like it: boiling hot and dry, probably the driest I have experienced in 35 years of living in the Japanese capital. But while I loved the heat, my garden in Kangaeroo Corner had mixed feelings, especially the lawn that went from vibrant green to burned brown.
Trees thrived! Most delightedly, the jacaranda we had written off as dead in the spring powered back into life and is now one of the tallest growths on the block. The “branch” silver wattle goes from strength to strength and the golden wattle beside it is flourishing. All the grevilleas, bottle brush and myrtles grew in the dry heat like crazy. Even the eucalypt given the imposing task of trying to survive in what I’d termed the Corner of Death has prospered.
Although death proved to be the outcome for the vast quantity of seeds I brought back from Australia this year, the summer was kind to some. The kangaroo paws thrived and I was able to give many out to neighbors. Next spring should give our neighborhood a real Aussie taste. Hardenbergia, often called the Australian native wisteria, also thrived and we have have it climbing up the fence and around a trellis.
Even the dicksonia, planted in direct heat in a boiling summer that should make it struggle, did as expected for a while, but after we placed it under a makeshift shade, the tree fern has plugged away steadily.
Unfortunately, the spectacular summer didn’t leave all feeling well. My cherished lawn virtually died overnight through, I suspect, fertilizer burn. Anticipating the rainy season, I covered the lawn in fertilizer in early June before we were to hit 30-degree temperatures daily and hoping that the rain would work its wonders on the grass.
Armed with a new lawnmower, I then gave the lawn a crew cut. Well, the rains never arrived. The searing heat and over-mowed lawn proved fatal to the grass roots and within days what had been a verdant strip of land had turned into a dustbowl.
I’ve tried everything since to revive the lawn including aeration, raking, re-seeding, over-seeding, using a sprinkler, watering, not watering, shading, exposing, organic fertilizing and more. Nothing worked. Voracious pigeons didn’t help, either. Finally, this week, after almost two months of an ever-growing patch of brown began to sprout the odd shoot here and there. We’re still gonna have 30-degree or more temperatures daily for the next week or so, which is prompting me to hold back on planting new lawn seed. But it does give me a lot of hope.
Gardening is right up there with cycling for me now. I have had my confidence sapped by an inability to step up to the plate with what life has pitched at me over the past few years. The garden gave me back a bit of a boost last year when I saw it do so well. As summer passed and the lawn deteriorated, it has a terrible effect on my state of mind. Too fragile, for sure, but I was already struggling. While the garden on the whole has done spectacularly well considering the difficult conditions, as always my mind is drawn back to the negative and downbeat, which has been the struggling lawn, a metaphor of myself. Mind you, I got to learn a lot about lawns (most of which I have already forgotten) as a result of what went on this summer and hope that I might be able to revive it. Same goes for myself!
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- No Time to Paws Work is dominating my life at the moment and I have little time for anything else, yet we are fortunate that our kangaroo paws are leading the way in a thriving summer garden. I’ve detailed my attempts at growing Australian plants from seed. While most failed, the kangaroo paw, the...
- 豪砂漠の恐怖な「火の竜巻」 オーストラリア、ノーザンテリトリー州のアリス・スプリングズ近くに同町テレビ局が17日に起きた「火の竜巻」の劇的な映像を撮られた。 「火の竜巻」という現象は滅多に起きなく、起きるときでも長くて数分間と言われているが、撮影したクリス・タンギー氏が約40分続けたという。 同氏がテレビ用のイメージ映像のロケハンティング中だったが、いきなり「火の竜巻」が上がったきた。 「人生一度のチャンスではなく、人生10回生きても１回あるかどうかようなことだった」という。 Caught on camera: The 30 metre high tornado of FIRE that whirled around Australian outback for terrifying 40 minutes...
- Reflective More and more is going on to inspire reflection on life. It’s a constructive development. Life is good when life exists. Realizing it’s good is another matter. Fortunately, for various reasons, it’s becoming easier to find elements of all things to contain the pleasant. It’s not my nature to do...
- Farting Proudly! Despite the best intentions, the weekend was a bit of a write-off, and apart from a brief interlude with an old mate to tell each other bawdy tales about breaking wind, the rest of the time was more about flat than flatulence. My mate, an 83-year-old American, and I have...
- Bit of a Wasted Weekend Didn’t do a lot today. Except eat. And play with the bird. Turned out to be something of a wasted weekend. It wasn’t a total failure. Cleaned the house. And got the garden looking good. Including some shopping for new lights....
- Warm in the Winter Dino the dinosaur is no slouch in finding a warm place in the winter, which is a handy trait when you’re a rosy faced lovebird. She huddles up next to her heaters, on the nest she builds out of the strips of paper she so dexterously rips off with her...
- Paws and Reflect Possibly the most meaningful part of my Australian seeds experiment arose today when I transplanted my kangaroo paw seedlings. The great experiment, which I expected would result in me proving to have a green thumb and presenting all my gardening mates with exotic plants has proven only that I am...
- Ending With the Seed of An Idea Sometimes, Kangaeroo can come up with the seed of an idea. Thanks to a bit of a search a few months ago, Kangaeroo has got plenty of Aussie native plant seeds to try and grow. Growing them will be a late-winter, early-spring initiative. But preparations are already underway. Will be...
- There And Back Again: Oz 2022 Kangaeroo made it back to Oz for a while in 2022. The circumstances behind the trip weren’t the greatest. But the time spent Down Under was fruitful and poignant. Kangaeroo got to catch up with lots of childhood friends. And deeply explored the places that had played an enormous role...
- Glad to be Alive Kangaeroo is easy to be critical and cynical, less so to be thankful. Today, he is taking a moment to be thankful for life. Kangaeroo loves life, even though he has largely made a mess of his own until recent years. Life interrupted this week, preventing any significant entry here,...
- 元々祭りの山車だった違う州２つのBig Pelicans オーストラリアの「Big Things」の中にはBig Pelicanが二つあるが、数千キロ離れても両ビッグ・ペリカンが共通するところがたくさんある。 南オーストラリア州ロクストンにあるBig Pelicanとクイーンズランド州ヌーサのBig Pelicanのいずれも1970年代に祭りの山車として使われるため作られた。 以降、両Big Pelicanが数回パレードなどにあっちこっちによく登場したが、結局永遠に設置するようになったが、今でもヌーザ版が移動式であり、使おうと思えば出来るという。 ヌーサは、そもそも観光地であるので、「Big Things」があってもおかしくない地域。同町のBig Pelicanは、同名のボート貸し出し会社前の公園に設置されている。 一方、ロクストンは農業地域にあり、オーストラリアの最も長い川マレー川を面している静かな町だ。 ロクストン版のBig Pelicanもいたずらで川に流されたことがあったが、結局無事に回収できた。 いずれのBig Pelicanが波乱万丈があったが、今では「Big Things」としてきちんと評価され、愛されているようになっている。...
- So It Goes… Today marks farewell to Premiership Palace. Kangaeroo is no longer a Kanagawa kenmin (resident of Kanagawa Prefecture) from Kurokawa. Well, at least not after today. If nothing else, at least the pandemic allowed Kangaeroo to explore the neighborhood, getting to know what a delightful place it was. Time in Kanagawa...
- All Sorts of Returns Kangaeroo.com is back online after a few weeks of being grounded. There were myriad reasons for why nothing got posted. But an old friend from NewsonJapan played an important and much appreciated role in getting the site back on track. Other everyday items making comebacks of sorts include my spare...
- May It Always Be May May is gorgeous in Japan, even this year when the world is confronting the bleak tragedy of the covid-19 outbreak. The warm, dry, mostly sunny month brings some much-needed delight....
- Otherwordly! Strange things are at play today, starting with a sunrise that for a fleeting moment created a scene like the cover of a pulp science fiction book from the ’50s or ’60s. The sun was shaped like a perfect disc and rose above the horizon, turning the early morning sky...
- Having Faith And Hoping For The Best Our new home is a delight and the neighbors seem nice, though it’s hard to meet many of them as we’re still in a state of emergency, but I am having growing concerns about our company operator. Our president clearly has no idea of what she’s doing and the reason...
- Goodbye Possums… Barry Humphries, the creator of characters such as Dame Edna Everage – the Moonee Ponds housewife famous for her flamboyance and shouted greeting of “Hello Possums” – Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone, and himself an entertainer and icon of Straya in many parts of the world, has passed away....
- Glorious Greeting Waking early is never easy, especially as the nights get longer and the temperature cools. But nature sometimes does its best to reward those who drag themselves out from under the covers as the birds begin to sing. The photos here come from one of those times....
- Strange Days, Indeed There have been better days than today, but this one is up there for peculiarity (in a minor sort of way). The morning ride was nice in spite of tiredness that became increasingly more obvious the more Kangaeroo rode. Not helping was having woken before 3 a.m. again and not...
- May It Be That Way May is Kangaeroo.com’s favorite time of the year. Normally, dry, warm and sunny, flowers bloom and the month is a visual and sensual delight. This year has been unseasonably sodden, but that’s good practice for the upcoming rainy season that will begin in early June. Normally, May is a great...
- A Seed Of An Idea As I touched on over the weekend, I’ve started trying to grow plants from seed and I completed the first round of the process this morning before heading off on my bike. Dwarf wattle seeds that I soaked in boiling water last night were the final group of seeds that...
- Golden Girl La Cangura is the name of my bike, a beautiful gunmetal and gold-trimmed machine from Orbea, a manufacturer from Spain, hence the name (which means The Kangaroo in English). She looks delightful in among the canola, the yellow hues of the bike and the flowers a wonderful match. Just wish...
- Open Up Your Eyes, An Everlasting Bud! Kangaeroo’s Aussie seed experiment is moving forward, and today resulted in its first buds. Seedling growth came from an everlasting, a pink, yellow and white flower native to Western Australia. I potted everlasting seeds last weekend in humidity pods. They’ve been growing under lights daily ever since, except for Tuesday...
- Catching Covid Well, what’s looking like a bleak time got bleaker as I caught covid and then shared it with Mrs. Kangaeroo. I isolated as soon as I realized something was wrong toward the end of the month. But it wasn’t enough to prevent the disease from spreading. I think allowing Dino...
- New Roads Kangaeroo won’t be doing much riding along the Tama River for a while. For the next few weeks, it will be back in the homeland again. Riding will be a bit of a challenge while there. But also a bit exciting! Oz is far stricter on policing road rules than...
- オーストラリア最大恐竜がエロマンガに オーストラリアの最大恐竜がエロマンガにあった。 本当。 下品なことを考えってんじゃねぇよ！エロマンガはオーストラリア先住民の言葉で「風がよく吹く平野」という意味だそう。 エロマンガは、北部クイーンズランド州にある小さな村です。石油とオパール鉱業が中心となっている人口約40人の村である。 1990年代までエロマンガ有名なことはオーストラリア内で海から最も遠く離れている町ということだった。（今でもそうと主張しているが、そうじゃないという人もいます。） いずれにせよ、クイーンズランド州都ブリスベーンから約1,000キロ西の方に置かれている。 1994年にチャリ乗りの少年が化石を見つけて、以降次から次へ恐竜の化石が発見された。 2007年にみつかった化石が今までオーストラリアで最も大きいな恐竜のものだった。 その恐竜がティタノザウルス類の一種であり、エロマンんがの恐竜がクーパーと名付けられた。 しかし、名前は名前なので、当然にエロマンガという村が日本に注目を浴びた。 数多くの日本のエロ漫画や普通の漫画もエロマンガの話が出ています。 その中は「ニニンがシノブ伝」、「サムライフラメンコ」というまでもなくオーストラリアで児童ポルノとして禁じられている「エロマンガ先生」がある。 今、エロマンガに恐竜研究が励んでいる。 2017年に開館したエロマンガ自然博物館が運営しているが、コロナ禍で苦しんでいるだろう。 それでも、間違いなくエロマンガがオーストラリア恐竜研究・跡地の最前線にひとつということはまちがいない。 これからもエロマンガにますます期待できるだろう。 ...
- 離婚ベント同士！ Fate smiled broadly on me today as I finally dragged myself out on the recumbent (or the rikonbento as we’ve come to call it), and was rewarded by getting a meeting I had yearned for years. Following yesterday’s glorious weather and my most recent viewing of a weather forecast showing...
- Big Thingsと妖精ペンギンが溢れる小さな島 ビクトリア州州都メルボルン市からおよそ140キロ離れているフィリップ島は「妖精ペンギン」と呼ばれている小型ペンギンのパレードか美しい自然風景やオートバイ・クランプリー開催地などで世界中にかなり知られてあり、観光名所の位置づけが確定している。 そろほど良く知られていないのは同島が実際にオーストラリアを象徴する「Big Things」も数多くあり、「Big Things」都と言われてもおかしくないほどだ。 面積100平方ｋｍしかない同島には、なんと４つもの「Big Things」がある。 そして、フィリップ島とメルボルンを繋がる道路沿えにバスというところでさらに一件がある。 すごいと言えばすごいだけど、存在する理由が未だに分からない。 ま、それをべつにおいておいて、どの「Big Things」があるのか見てみよう。 まず、以前に紹介したBig Koalaがある。これが実際に数少ない野生コアラが見える公園の正面入り口にあり、フリップ島カウズ町にある。 また、カウズにあるのがBig Tapという巨大蛇口。「蛇口」を称える理由は？と言われたら答えられないが、一応同オブジェがキッチュなテーマ・パークの看板となっている。 ちょっと分かりづらいかもしれないがちょっと違うカウズがカウズ近くにあるニューヘーブンに見つけられる。 これがBig Cows（カウズ）というデカイ牛だ（これれについて別の機会お話しするね。） さらに同じ町にBig Waveがある。 フィリップ島は有名なサーフィン地域であるので、なんとなくこのオブジェがそのことを称えているじゃないかな？ このデカイ波彫刻がカフェ前に設置されている。 そして、見飽きてなければ、フリップ島近くにあるバス町（これも以前に考えRooで取り上げたことがあるよね、、、）。...
- Wattle Happen Next? It’s becoming increasingly clear that spring is not too far away, and the wattle tree in Kangaeroo Corner is giving hints of something about to spring into action. March, which starts tomorrow (der!), is traditionally a coldish month, with a warm day every few days here and there. This winter...
- Pedal Power Giving New Lease On Life Really starting to get into my cycling, both as an active participant, and as a spectator sport. Human-powered wheels are a wonderful way to see the local surrounds and I regret not having gotten into cycling earlier. Very grateful for my Brommie and looking forward to doing ever more riding...
- Dekochari, Proud Member of Japan’s Itasha ‘Cringeworthy Cars’ Family Long past their heyday, even in English-language coverage, dekochari, decorated bicycles, continue to survive in miniscule numbers even in today’s Japan. Dekochari derived from the dekotora, decorated trucks, that became hugely popular throughout the archipelago in the 1970s on the back of the Torakku Yaro series of films, and which...
- Goings On It’s been a strange old start to the year, really, mainly because Kangaeroo is strange and old. Tokyo has been experiencing a mild winter. So far there has been no snow and daytime temperatures have been closer to what you’d expect in March than the opening month of the year....
- Warm in the Winter It’s bloody freezing, but some know the best way to beat the cold. We had a pretty heavy snow fall last week, but it was followed by a few days of unseasonably warm spring-like weather that took the edge off. Only for winter to return with a vengeance as the...
- Putting the ‘Ning’ Into Gardening Despite parents who were avid gardeners – Dad even worked as a part-time gardener – and growing up surrounded by greenery, I never got into horticultural pursuits until I got a plot of my own and became enthralled, even though I’m a bloody ning-nong in the yard. I don’t really...
- Every Cloud Has a Sliver of Whining An unseasonably warm and dry late winter and early spring has given way to more customary wet, with really lousy weather since rain began early yesterday morning. Wet weather makes me whine, but I really shouldn’t because it was supposed to pour all day today, but I woke to warm...
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