• Daily Life

    Strewth Prevails

    Spring finally seems to have arrived in earnest in western Tokyo after what has been a funny kind of first few months of 2024, and I know this because of the Fountain of Strewth. Our fountain is finally sprouting proudly in the morning sunshine where just a few weeks ago I had been lamenting that it was no longer working. It was operating perfectly, as it turned out, but the problem was that the solar-powered fountain wasn’t pumping water into the skies. It took hearing that veggie prices were skyrocketing for the pump’s poor performance to finally sink in: it…

  • Daily Life

    Little Things Bringing Great Pleasure

    Spring can never come fast enough, especially now that I’m into gardening and have been able to experience the almost indescribable delight of watching the seasonal transformation of plants. But, having been teased into taking action only for nature to take a U-turn, I’m being drawn to the less obvious delights on show in Kangaeroo Corner. Heading into the last few days of March, my expectation was that we could see plenty of flourishing grevillea, bottlebrush, banksia and protea, not to mention the explosion of pink from Japan’s national flower, the cherry blossom, which transforms the country into what I…

  • Daily Life

    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 September 2002. I didn’t think I’d be able to grow them, having never even conceived of the idea before getting a garden in 2022, but decided to give it a try anyway. I brought back dozens of varieties of seed, but the only ones I really, desperately wanted to succeed…

  • Daily Life

    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 onset of spring is as slow as ever, we’ve had more days of snowfall and, at least as far as my guesses go, it’s been a darker year than usual. My reckoning is that 2024 has been cloudier and seen less sunshine than normal for a winter in Tokyo, which…

  • Daily Life

    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 it has on the city. Hailing from Australia, the idea of snow was something of a dream when I first arrived in Japan back in 1988. We got the odd spattering of snowfalls akin to those that would hit Melbourne during my initial stay here until the day of my…

  • Daily Life

    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 the ice so our avian mates would be able to imbibe if they wanted to, but couldn’t refill the bath as the hose has frozen over. My sports drink formed ice crystals during the morning ride. I’m not a great fan of the cold, but Tokyo has a pretty good…

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    Mean and Green

    After a few months of being jealous of my neighbors for enabling their lawns to evade the effects of the blistering hot summer, I woke this morning to find myself transforming from being green with envy to being verdant with chlorophyll! Kangaeroo Corner’s lawn, which started May in a generally strong state albeit being slightly patchy, took a drastic turn for the worst in early June. At what should have been the onset of the rainy season, I made the mistake of heavily fertilizing the warn to boost its strength for what I expected would be a hot and wet…

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    Stop that Pigeon!

    Lots of serious stuff is going down at the moment, yet the biggest gripe in my mind is how to deal with a bloody pigeon. One of my escapes has been the garden at Kangaeroo Corner, and one of the areas of which I had been proudest was the flourishing lawn. Except, it’s no longer flourishing. In May, I went heavy-handed on the fertilizer in the expectation of warm, dry weather followed by the rain and warmth of June and July. The rain barely came and the heat was dry and blistering. I didn’t realize that I needed to compensate…

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    Bested by Busyness

    Little things in life have kept me scrambling and stumbling in such a way it’s hard to get much else done. Work is always much busier in the warmer months. This year has been particularly demanding as our tyrant boss drove more staff out of the door and their tasks were often imposed on me. Early morning starts have been the norm and I’m often exhausted by the time the sun sets. Health hasn’t been great and the teeth I neglected for decades have come back to haunt me with a vengeance, which will result in two more of them…

  • Daily Life

    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 that says “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified,” according to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition and as I learned today). Sweltering heat and fierce sunshine has made the Fountain of Strewth a popular part of the neighborhood’s avian residents. And I’ve been delighted by this, sitting in…