Slanging Garden With Birdies On

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1. Survived I was hospitalized. My brother and sister dropped everything to come and help. They took me to meetings. I have stopped. I will be all right. I can’t give up....
2. Winter is Here Although it was a glorious morning with clear, starry skies and then a wonderful sunrise, it was bloody freezing, confirming that the long-dreaded winter has arrived. Until now we have been blessed with unseasonal warmth: I wore shorts all weekend and the temperature topped 20 degrees on Saturday. I still...
3. Bonzer Bonsai! Given that this site started with the intent of spreading information about Japan and Australia and matters related to these countries, including languages, and then how much focus I have placed on gardening over the past couple of years, it’s surprising that I haven’t had much to say about bonsai....
4. オズのアホ使い 　考えRooの母国であるオーストラリアでは、国名を省略して「オズ」と呼ぶことがある。 　偶然に、考えるRooの生き方は馬鹿な言動が中心となっていた。 　つきましては、「オズのアホ使い」と呼ばれても全然問題ないと思う。 　具体的なことを言えないが、分かる人は分かる。いくらでも成功する機会が与えられ、裕福になれてもおかしくない過去があった。 　しかし、貧乏で終わって、キャリアも何もならなかったというかキャリア事態はなかったというほど達成感がない。しょうがない。 　それはそれでも変えられない。このもんだ。それでも十分。というか、これで満足しています。「オズのアホ使い」らしい生き方をして、最後までもそうだろう。 　結局、考えRooはもう少し考えるべきだったかもしれない。...
5. A Handmade Tale Some of Japan’s finest cycling handiwork was on display at Handmade Bicycle 2025 held at the Science Musuem in Tokyo on Jan. 25-Jan. 26. Given that I had no other plans, wanted to do something special to celebrate Australia Day and needed to go for a ride with a decent...
6. Calamity Free Ride! After several days featuring a series of stumbles, fumbles, bumps and bruises, it was fantastic to finally have an early morning ride that went without a calamity. Sort of. Riding La Cangura much slower and more cautiously than usual, the morning ride went without a hitch. There were many fears...
7. Some of the Cycling Camerawork that can be Expected These are the types of shots that I’ve been able to take of bikes....
8. Princely Reward Nature, and Mrs. Kangaeroo, provided a princely reward for patience and perseverance as the little prince protea I had been nagging for months to have removed from our garden because it had died actually sprouted and proved that it was as alive as my spouse had been saying it was....
9. Sounds to Trigger an Aussie Prompted by a Scottish mate’s post on Twitter about a tune that reminds him of his homeland, I got to thinking about the same kinds of songs that have an effect on me regarding Australia, my native country. While doing so, I realized there are probably a few shared by...
10. Charmed And Cheered Thanks to a minor quirk of fate, my life has turned completely around and I’ve gone from cursed to content, all within the space of a couple of months. For the first time in years I’ve got a great job in a prime location. My company values me and goes...
11. Feel That Groove….Or, Don’t I’ve struggled to adjust to the realities of life over the past few weeks, but waking on this holiday morning and seeing tiny spots of green sprouting up where my lawn used to be has raised my spirits infinitely, even if not leaving me quite as chilled out as a...
12. Well, Wattle Ya’ Know! Spring can never come quick enough, and even though Tokyo had a warm winter, the wait for warmer, brighter weather seems interminably wrong, as symbolized by the blossoming of the wattle trees in Kangaeroo Corner. Although temperatures may have been warmer than average in the 2023-2024 winter, the fully fledged...
13. Devil Laughs Nobody else but me is gonna understand just how ironic this post is (provided it even makes it onto the site) as I type it out in an MS Word file rather than directly into the blog as I would usually do. With a couple of extra hours available to...
14. Cold, Wet and Dark Doesn’t get any more archetypically Monday than today….cold, wet, dark and bleak. Kangaeroo wasn’t too keen on getting out on the bike with a huge day ahead. But it was precisely because the day promises to be demanding that dragged him out in the end. Rain had been forecast, but...
15. Be Careful What You Wish For… One of the highlights of Kangaeroo Corner is the Fountain of Strewth, which I placed with the hope of attracting birds to the garden, but the role has been served so well, I’m now drawn to the idiom used in the headline (which stems from a passage of Aesop’s fables...
16. Foo, Gee! May is, for me, the most delightful time of the year in Tokyo, and I was doubly blessed this morning when greeted by the sight not only of Mount Fuji, but with snow on top. Fujisan, that iconic symbol of Japan, is notoriously camera shy and it’s a rare day...
17. Whetted for Wet Rain is falling pretty steadily and though the rainy season in Japan gets me down, on the verge of its start, the precipitation has whetted the garden’s appetite for the wet; at least for the onset of the season, which could go on for months, or not happen at all,...
18. Arrows of Outrageous Fortune Mrs. Kangaeroo invited me out on a date today, which turned out to be an absolute ripper (how could any event with Mrs. Kangaeroo not be?), but involved horses, of course! Mrs. Kangaeroo is an avid equestrian and her devotion, best seen when it comes to living and providing loving...
19. Flashes of Brilliance, but Lacking Focus Today’s title was a perfect summation of the photos I took on my morning ride, but could also describe my life to a tee. The skies were spectacular! My photography, not quite so. I am struggling to hold my phone still. My hands shake all the time. I got a...
20. 南天は難点…Or, Farewell Heavenly Bamboo! Kangaeroo Corner, our garden, is basically filled with Aussie native plants, but there were a few trees and plants there when we came to live here, and they have largely remained, including the nandina, also known as heavenly bamboo. Unfortunately, her presence in the garden proved far from heavenly. The...
21. Hello Cocky! Spring is drawing closer by the day, if not actually here already in Tokyo, but that doesn’t mean the warmth has arrived yet, though the cockatoo in Kangaeroo Corner couldn’t care less. Every morning is getting lighter and the flowers are blooming. Kangaeroo Corner’s wattle is resplendent! We were originally...
22. Get Off Of My Cloud! Riding today was like floating through the heavens at times, reminding me of one of my favorite songs by the world’s greatest rock band: The Rolling Stones‘ Get off My Cloud. I’d have loved to have been able to keep the scene for myself as I rode through the mists...
23. Don’t Think! A good mate of mine often quotes William Shakespeare’s Hamlet by reminding me that, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Kangaeroo is prone to over-thinking, and this week is looming as a tough one. There’s plenty on the schedule, both professionally and privately. And...
24. Cycle of Life Life looks like it’s gonna be pretty busy for the next few weeks, so it might be something of a last chance to post for a while, and fortunately I got to kick off this period with a ride along the Tama River this morning. It’s been a funny rainy...
25. Awe-tumnal! Glorious autumnal weather and a magnificent event lighting up the coloroful leaves made for an outstanding occasion at Showa Kinen Park. Mrs. Kangaeroo and I enjoyed a hot date on a cool day by spending the early evening at the park, travelling there and back on the scenic Tama Monorail....
26. Brush Aside It’s a sodden May morning, so rather than risk my luck and hoping I’ll be able to brake properly, I’ve spent the morning enjoying the blooming bottlebrush flowers in our garden and being played with by my dinosaur. It used to be my habit to wake and immediately set off...
27. Quick Cleanse Aging, if nothing else, has made rising early a common habit, and I was able to take advantage of that by slipping off to a nearby park and being blessed by the sanitizing surroundings. Yakushiike Park in Machida is not far from my home, so I got on my bike...
28. Blowout! Even Fartilizer Couldn’t Help Well, strong winds have put paid to a lot of my experiment in growing seeds from Australian native plants, and even fartilizer couldn’t help. Gale-force winds daily for pretty much the past week made life tough for the little seedlings on the patio at Kangaeroo Corner. Watering, care, and even...
29. Oops, I Did It Again! After having repeatedly vowed to myself that I would post content with substance that may be interesting for anybody who ever stumbled across it, I’ve gone ahead and posted more sunrise cycling pics because Mother Nature just keeps turning on the stunning starts to the day. After another near-sleepless night...
30. Garden of Weedin’ Spring has sprung (for today) at least, and the garden at Kangaeroo Corner looks resplendent thanks to early morning weeding, a mow and planting plenty of new plants. Weather helped, too, with delightful sunshine and warmth as the temperature topped 20 for the first time this year. I had planned...
31. Blowin’ In The Wind Tokyo spring tends to be windy, and it is blowing up a gale in the suburbs of the Japanese capital right now. This morning I got to fly for a few kilometers, backed by a tremendous tailwind. Of course, barring a meteorological miracle, where there’s a tailwind, there’s almost always...
32. ‘Sno Business Like Snow Business March in Tokyo always feels like a bit of a tease as expectations of immediate warming are invariably let down, which is a feeling probably stemming from childhood in southern Australia where there is a clear demarcation in the transition from summer to autumn. And today we got snow, albeit...
33. A Fern Native Action Some massive changes at Kangaeroo Corner this week, which is pretty apt for the early summer, but there has been some man-made actions, too, with a tree fern poised to take center stage. As mentioned earlier this week, the nandina had to go as it was killing all the other...
34. ‘Umble…That’s What You’ve Gotta Be Humility is a trait I desperately seek, but, like Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens‘ masterpiece, David Copperfield, who constantly espoused the need to be humble, I implore myself to be modest, but the only area in which I have consistently done so is my track record in life. For those...
35. Another One Bites the Dust… It’s no longer possible for me to trust my own mind because I know how utterly unreliable it is, but I got greater affirmation of why I’m so uneasy in my workplace when I learned last night that we have lost yet another very decent person from our working team....
36. A Pheasant Makes Things Pleasant Late May is nearly always an idyllic time with the glorious weather hiding the impending onset of the rainy season. This morning’s ride was made even pleasanter by getting to spend time looking at a glorious Japanese green pheasant reigning over its territory near the Asakawa River. Pretty much every...
37. Procrastination Propagation Winter is probably the worst time of the year to try to grow plants from cuttings, except, like for me, you’re desperately trying to avoid doing something unpleasant and you’ve been handed unseasonably fine weather. So, instead of taking a trial test for a potential new job as I could...
38. Rounding Biwa, Japan’s Largest Lake Blessed with a long weekend and loads of motivation, Kangaeroo and Mrs. Kangaeroo got out the foldups and built up the resolve to circumnavigate Biwa, Japan’s largest lake. The 235-km shore length is not for the faint-hearted, though plenty make the trip in a single day, courtesy of the almost...
39. Pushing the Paws Button Even by the generally lousy standard of 2024, this morning was a pretty rotten one in some ways, yet even that couldn’t deter gaining pleasure from our kangaroo paw. The flowers have hit peak bloom. They bring me unbridled delight. I’ve still got hope some of the plants we have...
40. No Paws for Thought Kangaroo paws, the big success story of my Aussie seeds saga, and the one that most mattered to me, reached a new stage in their progress from propagation. Mrs. Kangaeroo noticed that they were crowding the large pot that I had planted them in, and if they weren’t moved they...
41. Enoura Observatory: Putting the WOW! Into OdaWOW!ra Enoura Observatory, a short trip from the center of Odawara and which I had never heard of before Mrs. Kangaeroo dragged me up to earlier today, is simply sublime and a breathtakingly beautiful gallery well work the trek to get there. The installation created by New York-based, Japanese-born architect Hiroshi...
42. Mates’ Paws We had a busy and fruitful weekend, welcoming friends over for a party yesterday, working for a new future and getting to enjoy kangaroo paw that others are growing. As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, I grew kangaroo paw from seeds and got amazing results, which I delighted in “sharing” with friends...
43. Welcoming In Winter Like it or not, and I’m firmly in the “not” camp on this one, winter is here again, but I’ve been kind’ve happy to see how well Kangaeroo Corner has held up this year as the cold sets in. This year is the second year of our garden and for...
44. Bloomin’ Bewdy! It was the D-Day anniversary today and it sure felt like I was storming enemy territory for most of the day, but the fantastic flowers blooming in the garden warmed my soul. And the magnificent Mrs. Kangaeroo took the ugliest flowers in the garden, the Australian native hops, chucked in...
45. Paws for Effect Blessed by warm, sunny weather and the sight of spring blossoms, I boldly decided to divide our kangaroo paws to try and get better flowers to make Kangaeroo Corner look even more effective. I’ve grown these kangaroo paw from seed that I brought back from Australia when I visited in...
46. Feast of Flowers There’s much to love about Tokyo in May–long, warm days with little rain (for the most part), lots of greenery and things settle down after the hectic early months of spring when much of the country starts and ends the business year. Little, though, can beat the delight that the...
47. Sunflowers in the Rain Fortune smiled favorably on me this morning, too, as I got to ride out to a nearby sunflower field and get some awesome photos. There’s not much I can elaborate on, other than to say the field was a spectacular sight. There were lots of people around, even though the...
48. Sweetie Pies! Australia doesn’t really occupy a prime place in the mind of most Japanese people’s eyes, and the same goes for Australian cuisine. But for a short while, meat pies here were, well, the flavor of the month. オーストラリアは、多くの日本人の目から見ると、あまり重要な位置を占めておらず、オーストラリア料理も同様であった。しかし、一時期、ミートパイが流行ったことがありました。 Meat pies are, of course, probably the Australian national dish, or at...
49. 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...
50. Tour de Gutsing Today was simply magnificent: stunning weather, delightful companions, fantastic bikes and serious gutsing of ourselves. Bromptons ruled the day and it was the common connection between us. Mechanicals slowed down our start, but also opened new doors. Following a slowdown caused by a flat, we got to eat at Hugsy...
51. Craving Procrastination, But Will Procrastinate Tomorrow Well, what a bloody awful rabbit hole to fall into. Today was supposed to involved delivering choccies to some cycling associates in Kawasaki. But getting up and about with half an hour or so free before Mrs. Kangaeroo was due to head off to work and hanging out with the...
52. No Wonder the Wallabies Were Wallies in RWC2019 Australia’s rugby team, the Wallabies, were ignominiously dumped from the 2019 Rugby World Cup that Japan is currently hosting (and being lauded for both its organization skills and the rousing performance of its unfancied team). The Wallabies lost badly to England in a quarter final, mostly because they were not...
53. The Strewth, the Whole Strewth and Nothing But the Strewth… Strewth, work and life are bloody busy at the moment, but I can’t let that stop me from looking after things, which resulted this week in a renovation to the Fountain of Strewth. It was nothing major, but I found wooden letters on sale in the local 100 yen shop...
54. Hopes Raised, Then Razed Today has been another roller-coaster ride for my emotions, having started on a high and now falling into a deep trough. I’ve been keen for today for a few reasons, but mostly because on late Friday night I received an email asking me to apply for a job being offered...
55. Willow Worlds Cricket is one of the few things I really miss about life in Australia, and stumbling across the Japan Cricket Association website recently led me down a rabbit hole centered around willow, an integral yet often unremembered part of life in my two countries. Come down the willow wormhole with...
56. The Day of the Chicken Today, February 8, is The Day of the Chicken in Japan, according to the Japan Anniversary Association. The anniversary was chosen because of one phonetic reading for the date. In Japanese, phrasing today’s date would be 2月8日, which is literally the “second month and eighth day” if rendered in English....
57. A Pheasant Start to the Morning I got a delightful start to the morning with a not-quite-chance encounter with a beautiful green pheasant near the Tama River. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to cross tracks with pheasants in a few places. They’re beautiful birds, the males are at least, and I loved...
58. Fat-Arsed Friend! Fortune blessed me with lots of wonderful reminders of how lucky I am yesterday, including through a fat-arsed addition to Kangaeroo Corner. We held a garden party for close friends and family, hoping to show off Kangaeroo Corner. A harsh summer, untimely rains and, I think, excessive intervention on my...
59. The Strine Why Atorkin: Natchrule Strine Read this in Plain English/プレーン英語で読む Read this in Japanese/日本語で読む Chrissie It was getting close to Chrissie, which prompted me to chuck a sickie. I was still in the nuddy, so I slipped on some grundies. I went to light up a durry, but I’d run out and had to have...
60. Glorious Grevillea Although the harsher than normal seasons this year have made it tough for our garden, our consistently strong grevillea has survived and thrived....
61. Do Little Blessed with a bit of time and being in close proximity, I used the beautiful weather to visit Tama Zoological Park, testing a new Nikon Z 50 camera. I first visited this zoo in 1993, at a time when the memory of the 1984 arrival of koalas was still fresh....
62. Biwaichi Takes the Wind from Our Sails Having completed about two-thirds of a circumnavigation of Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake, the final day was supposed to be an easy jaunt to the train station and a comfortable ride home to Tokyo for the Kangaeroo crew. “Ha, ha,” laughed the devil. On paper, the last leg of the...
63. Three-Day Monk One of my favorite phrases in Japanese is mikka bozu, literally a three-day monk, and it’s a term used to describe the length that most people can maintain their resolve. I’ve got to admit to being an archetypical example of the concept. Having accumulated a huge spare tire and found...
64. Oz Everywhere! Incredibly, just about everywhere I went, a little piece of Australia popped up in front of me. I left home on my bike not long after 6 a.m. to head out on an errand before having a regular, quarterly hospital check-up. I left the route up to my Wahoo Elemnt...
65. Plastic Roos and Fuji Views The Izu Peninsula about 100 km southwest of Tokyo is a sheer delight in many ways, not the least of which is that there’re plenty of kangaroos there at the moment! Not that they’re real roos jumping around here and there on the peninsula. Some of the zoos and animal...
66. Own Your Own Japanese Castle for $100,000 Aussies can buy an (almost) authentic Japanese castle for only about $100,000, it has been revealed recently on social media. Century21 Japan is selling the 6-story castle (with a restaurant on the second floor) in Akabira, Hokkaido, at a price unimaginable to potential home buyers Down Under. Of course, at...
67. Bromocalypse, Now! As fate would have it, I got to ride my Brompton in a post-apocalyptic landscape over the weekend, making for some eerie-looking pics. It’s not the first time I have been able to ride through the area, but it was Brommie’s first chance to do so. Although the scenes appear...
68. 豪キャブラリー： Shoot through Shoot through （打って通れば）を聞くと何となく「銃の引き金を引く」ような感覚を起こすかもしれないが、実際にオージー英語でこの表現を使えば一切そういうような意味がない。実は、「打つ」(shoot)と一切関係ない（だったら、なんで使うかと言いたくなるよね、、、）。「出ていく」とか「場を去る」などの意味。Shoot offも同様の意味として使う場合もある、「急いでいく」ような感覚があるが、shoot offのほとんどの使う時がshoot off your mouth（口を打つ！）になり、「しゃべり過ぎ」という意味のだ！...
69. Cherry Ripe For A Ride I always look for a sharp way to start of a post, hopefully with some sort of catchy word play that might draw anybody who stumbles across the blog into reading further. I was pretty sure today’s title would play that role perfectly. And then I wasn’t. A cherry ripe...
70. Enough Of The Cold, Already! May weather is generally the best of the year in Tokyo, by Kangaeroo’s reckoning, and though it looks like it’s gonna shape that way, it would be nice to say “bye” to the cold until at least the late autumn. The first weekday of May greeted early risers with a...
71. Laughing All the Way to the Banksia After worrying for literally months, maybe even years, banksia are finally giving me a great boost as they showed signs of thriving now that spring has sprung in earnest. It’s hard to tell which banksia is bringing the most delight. The main hairpin banksia, intended to be a centerpiece of...
72. So Close… Mid May, now basically, has become a tantalizing time of the year for me, with most of the spectacular blooming of the gorgeous Japanese flowers like cherry blossom, wisteria and azaleas (to name a few) having ended, but the Aussie plants in my garden not quite ready to spring forth....
73. Brush With Death I got to have a brush with death this morning. Nothing serious, of course, as I’m referring to a log-awaited photo opportunity with our bottlebrush in full bloom and the Death Machine as we refer to the rickety old recumbent bike which seems to offer the opportunity of terminating life...
74. Dark! It was already light when I woke at 4 a.m., but in lots of ways, it was also really dark, literally and figuratively. We had powerful winds carrying rain clouds over the Japanese capital, casting a bleak pall. But the winds also ensured the rain held off. And the YouTube...
75. Rooted! Having experimented with growing Aussie plants from seed last year, this year’s efforts have focused more on growing from cuttings and finally, from this morning, replicating the seed propagation experiment. Turns out that things are rooted, but not the way I had hoped. I started trying to grow cuttings from...
76. Lady of the Lake and More Lucky Rides Not much has happened, certainly nothing to really write about, but I have been very fortunate to get some amazing skies that make tremendous backdrops for bicycle photos, including these shots of La Cangura beside a little pond near the Tama River, which evoked an image of the Lady of...
77. Flake News! Tokyo, or at least the hillier Tama part of it, got dumped by a heavy snowfall on Friday, turning the place white. Kangaeroo Corner’s trees, never keen on the cold, struggled with the heavy snow clogging their branches. It did look good, to be fair dinkum. But it was another...
78. Fountain of Strewth Frozen Over! It’s a gloriously sunny morning today, but bloody freezing, as attested to by the Fountain of Strewth freezing over. Birds are coming to Kangaeroo Corner throughout the day every day at this time of year, largely to enjoy a drink or a bath from the Fountain of Strewth. I broke...
79. Fatal Attraction Following slovenly Saturday where I did basically nothing for the whole day, today has become a bit of sprightly Sunday, being busy from the get-go, with the Death Machine taking a prime position. The Death Machine is, of course, the nickname I give to my Performer recumbent bicyle. It gets...
80. 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...
81. Saving Things For a Rainy Day It’s drizzling and miserable weather today, which provides a wonderful opportunity for an update as my customary lunchtime ride can be substituted. Lots has happened since my last post, but there’s little time to write about it, so this is a bit of a summary of the past couple of...
82. Marching Onward March draws to a close today, ending the first quarter of the calendar year for 2023 in what seems a stunningly speedy period. Time is, of course, relative. Each year, the relative amount of time each period occupies in our whole lives is shorter. So. it’s only natural that time...
83. Love The Way You Lie Kangaeroo got a much better day than expected today, Japan’s National Foundation Day but not a holiday because it fell on a Saturday. Waking, Your Humble Narrator (to borrow a turn of phrase from Anthony Burgess) was greeted by a winter wonderland from the previous day’s snowfall. There would be...
84. Gentle Soul During a brief visit to Australia last year, after a separation of about 40 years I got to meet a schoolmate who I had greatly admired as a teen-ager, and he referred to me as someone “who always was a gentle soul.” It was one of the, if not the,...
85. Biking Beauty I’ve been alternating between busy and broken over the past few days, resulting in fewer posts and less cycling, but still lucky enough to catch some tremendous snapshots of the bike like the ones here. Work has been proceeding at a furious pace as we have not replaced people who...
86. And Now, The End is Near It began to sink in on this morning’s ride along the Tama River that this aspect of my life, such a crucial activity over the years of the covid pandemic, is drawing to a close. Many people are fixtures along the river, just as I suppose I must be for...
87. Propagation Station Even though it’s the middle of winter, I’ve turned my attention to trying to conjure up some pretty plants by propagating cuttings from the star of Kangaeroo Corner, our grevillea. I set up a propagation station using cuttings from our tree. I’ve dipped the cuttings in growing hormone and hope...
88. Flockin’ Wonderful Time All sorts of amazing things are happening at the moment, and I’m taking me time to let them settle in. Biggest is the new job, which is taking up most of my time at the moment and, naturally, has a huge impact on my life and that of those around...
89. Glistening… Today greeted me with the pitter-patter of raindrops (and a hefty dose of demotivation), so I spent the predawn hours vegging out with the idiot box on and gazing into the garden, appreciating the raindrops glistening on the leaves. In days of yore, I wouldn’t have been deterred by the...
90. A Bit of a Roo-ed Shock Kangaroos have always taken center stage in this blog (which I started almost 13 years ago to try to tap into the then recent introduction of Australian English into TOEIC testing), so it was a bit rare yesterday when I had the chance to write about roos but didn’t (albeit...
91. Jacaranda Journey Provides Purple Haze Mrs. Kangaeroo and I woke up early, let the dinosaur roam free for a while to stretch her wings, then headed off to Atami for one of Japan’s few jacaranda festivals. We’ve got a jacaranda in our garden and it has proven to be pretty fickle, so I was very...
92. Everlastings Love! Everlasting daisies have become the first plants I’ve potted after starting to grow them from seed. I planted the seeds in humidity pods on February 19. They germinated in a flash, with buds clearly visible within a week. They were starting to grow too big for the pods, so I...
93. Doxing Paradoxes OK, the title is a bit of a lie, because I confused doxing with poxing, but the wordplay was better, so that’s what I went with. The paradoxes I’m dealing with are trying to make a living while blessed with innumerable talents that are all useless and a track record...
94. Brommies More Than Just a Mere Bike Several years ago now, I was very fortunate to stumble into buying a Brompton folding bicycle that has fundamentally changed my life and continues to have countless unimaginable effects. I’d already shown signs of developing into an avid cyclist and was using a Dahon foldup bike to slice my then...
95. Isle Idyll On our sole shared, obligation-free holiday over the 2025 new year period, Mrs. Kangaeroo and I headed off for a day out to a nearby island. We headed to Enoshima, a short trip from our home and site of the sailing competitions for the 1964 and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games....
96. Kangaroo Cookies, Tim-Tams, Cakes and Cuppas: Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This Mrs. Kangaeroo whipped up a few culinary miracles (making the impossible look simple and all while not having slept a wink) including kangaroo cookies and Tim-Tams to put the most amazing topping on what was a magnificent day. We welcomed my oldest friend and the person who brought me to...
97. Inuit ‘Innit It’s snowing in Tokyo again, reminding me that the Inuit are supposed to have 50 different words for snow and making me wonder if the equivalent to English’s “Oh no” is one of them. I’m not the biggest fan of snow falling on Tokyo, mostly because of the paralyzing effect...
98. Full Seed Ahead! Buoyed by the emergence of buds from everlasting daisies on Saturday and given the gift of desperation on late Sunday afternoon following a weekend of sloth, I planted the last of my seeds from Australia. With “budding” success from the humidity pods I have been using, I got enough confidence...
99. Slice of Heaven Kangaeroo Corner, the name I give to our garden even though it’s not a corner but close enough anyway (which kinda sums up my life) is a little slice of Godzone for me. Gardening had never entered my radar until Mrs. Kangaeroo and the amazing Alex Endo presented us with...
100. Let There Be Light This morning I got an entire ride in the light for the first time this year. I still had lights on my bike, but they were the flashing type that enabled me to be seen instead of the high-lumen shiners that all me to see. It was lovely to be...

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