Cherry Bomb!

Cherry blossoms have started to bloom in Tokyo’s suburbs.

For the most part, flowers have yet to reach peak bloom along my most-traversed part of the Tama River.

But in some of the areas where the flowers are at their best, the view is lovely.

It was a bonus to be able to see them in flower this morning as I had presumed the entire weekend to be a washout.

It rained incessantly yesterday.

It gave me time to do some much-needed study for work, which is paying me to take the course I’m doing.

I should be putting in a bit more effort on my studies than I am.

Yesterday was also spent preparing to serve a year as the body corporate’s architectural director.

This is going to be fun.

Hopefully not in a sarcastic way.

I’m bloody clueless, but I hope I can make it through.

I’m inspired by my mate, Derek Wessman. I first saw him 20 years ago, campaigning for a local politician with whom I was somewhat acquainted. There were still few Caucasians in Japan then, let alone those on the frontlines of a political campaign. Derek remained in my memory until I was able to confirm with him a few years ago that he was, indeed, the campaigner I’d seen.

Derek makes an incredible contribution to his community.

One area where he does so is eloqently, articularly, and extremely humbly, outlines what he does and why, such as his volunteer firefighter efforts, operating a successful company and his most recent blog post on kamidana.

I’m not a giver, but Derek is among those who motivate me to do something for the area where I live.

Despite my will arguing fiercely to act otherwise, I’m pushing myself to strive to give back to the small community that has given me so much. And it’s great fun, even if I can’t do it as well, or explain it as fluently as Derek and other community contributors. Hopefully, my actions will prove to be the best expression of all!

Otherwise, spring is coming to the garden, perhaps less flamboyantly than last year. Our wattles have basically finished blooming, the hardenbergia is about to flower, and it’s just about time for the kangaroo paw to start showing a bit of oomph or they may not flourish quite as I had hoped.

Our lawn has been the bane of my gardening life the past to summers, and I hope this year will not be the same. I used to cut the grass short, and I reckon this may have harmed it. I was going to relay the lawn earlier this month, but decided to give it one more chance, this time leaving the grass long and seeing how it goes.

This morning, I mowed the lawn with the blades at their highest possible setting. I then raked the lawn, putting the clippings in our compost bin and then top-coating the grass with compost to try and spark microbe life. Later, I pruned the silver wattle to hopefully give it a prettier shape, with the golden wattle to follow soon.