Aussies like to call our country the Godzone, a corruption of the phrase “God’s Own Country,” and we’ve been lucky enough to replicate a little bit of that zone in the suburbs of Tokyo. Thanks to the talents of the amazing Alex Endo, Japan’s premier author on Australian plants and designer of gardens using Aussie natives, we have an incredible Aussie garden. Late spring in the lead-up to the rainy season is when the garden puts on its finest show. Nearly everywhere is lush and green. But there is also an explosion of color and beauty as the flowers spring…
-
-
It was an extraordinarily hectic day of being flat out from go to whoa, but also extremely productive and fulfilling as I was propelled by the thrill of the garden’s explosion of color through flowers. I started the day with a ride, dealt with some of the village’s board responsibilities (albeit lamely), wrote a blog post and attended an online meeting. Then work started. I was incredibly busy all day, punctuating time behind the keyboard by loading up my Brompton in a backpack and taking it for repairs to Y’s Road Fuchu Tamagawa; a roundtrip journey of about 13 km…
-
Caught up with work, study, travel, health checks and poor weather over the past few days, it was a delight to get back into the garden this morning to find that we were blessed with the season’s first bottlebrush and kangaroo paw flowers. Cooler temperatures have caused a delay in blooms compared to previous years, so the slow progress of the plants in the garden have had me worried. We’ve got lots of kangaroo paw plants, but none had started flowering until this morning, which was a disappointment as I had grown them from seed and wanted them to flourish…
-
I’m amazed at how much joy our garden brings me when I get to see it upon waking every morning. That is especially so at this time of the year as the flowering plants take their turns to flourish and add some brilliant blooms to the verdant surroundings. Our grevilleas are the big stars at the moment, with their delightful, spider-like flowers. Other trees are not too far away from showing their more flamboyant side, either. The callistemon, lemon myrtle and, if we’re really lucky, one of the banksia also appear poised to bloom. And the bush rosemary still looks…
-
May presented me with yet another delightful way to start the day, getting great encounters with the Japanese green pheasants that are a symbol of the Tama River. Every morning around this time of the year I get to see and hear the pheasants while I go on my customary ride. This morning, I managed to capture some shots of the bolder males along the river. Yesterday’s rain also left the paths filled with puddles, which are opportunities for reflection in more ways than one. I’m lucky enough to get shots in this are every year. I always find the…
-
May in Tokyo in my mind is a month of warm, dry, blissful weather, but for the second time in the four-day weekend this year for Golden Week we’ve had constant rain, which is frankly a bit of a drag. But being stuck inside with little to work on is giving me a chance to do a little study and fix my bikes to protect against theft, having being stung by a robber taking my bike earlier this year. I can also spend time with the struggling dinosaur, who still isn’t quite 100%. And the rain makes the garden look…
-
Blessed with glorious weather and little wind, it was almost appropriate I spent the first part of Children’s Day trying to kid myself that I am something of a decent cyclist. I did manage to build up an almost acceptable pace considering the countless number of traffic lights I had to deal with on a quick trip in and out of central Tokyo. Blessed with a day off as part of the Golden Week series of holidays, I headed into town to attend a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous near Tokyo Tower. The group was filled with sanctimonious, pious souls, so…
-
Much to the chagrin or Mrs. Kangaeroo, our garden is filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful Australian creatures, and they’re designed to look nice nocturnally. We have all sorts of kangaroos. Their sizes range from life-sized to tiny. A similar story goes for koalas. We have a koala couple. And another pair climbing one of our wattles. And there is even a learned fellow who reads a book. Considering we are supposed to be a kangaroo-themed garden, you could possibly say we are a bit over koala-fied. Aside from the marsupials, we’ve also got a wombat, and a…
-
Unsure of where to put the punctuation in the title, I decided to go without any at all, and I used this phrase because I wanted to talk about the garden, have something catchy, and draw from the Velominati’s Rule Number Five. Our garden, Kangaeroo Corner* is absolutely thriving. But not quite in the way that I may have originally envisaged, hence the latter part of the title, and the uncertainty over where to place the punctuation.** Banksia I should originally have planted in sunny spots are doing well, but none of our four trees have never really flowered, which…
-
I’m not quite out of action, but not far from it, thanks to popping a tiny blister on my finger over a week ago now. The bloody thing got infected and the infection started to spread up my arm. Pain has been excruciating, which has come as a total surprise considering how small the original blister was, and I have barely slept in a week filled with visits to the dermatologist and being pumped with increasingly large and frequent doses of painkillers and antibiotics. It finally appears as though the drugs are working and the swelling has subsided and the…