grevillea

  • Kangaroo Paw Finally Hopping Into Action

    My heart-wrenching kangaroo paw plants have finally started to flower, bringing some joy, but a little bit of sadness, too. Perhaps the best lesson they’re teaching me at the moment is not to get too attached to anything. I’ve always wanted to have kangaroo paw in the garden. They’re one of the few Australian flowers I’ve always known about. I consider them iconic Australian flora. They have a connection to the theme of this website. Most of the kangaroo paw I have in our garden have a connection to my hometown. Apart from one plant, I grew all our kangaroo paw from seed I bought in Belgrave, where I grew…

  • Why Is It Snowing, It’s Supposed To Be Summer?

    It’s cold and wet, and we’re three days into summer. As I mentioned the other day, the snow in the summer in our garden is supposed to be because of its resemblance to the phenomena, not its materialization. It’s less than 20 degrees. The sky is dark and bleak. It has not stopped raining since the very early morning. Instead of basking in the summer sun, the flowers’ snow-like appearance seems to have adjusted the season around them. Other flowers are starting to feel the pinch. It has been raining for weeks, and the rainy season (which typically lasts four to six weeks) hasn’t even officially started yet. Some of…

  • Beautiful Blooms Brighten Drab Days

    May in Tokyo is usually my favorite time of year because it is customarily warm, dry and sunny, perhaps coming closest to what I imagine were the seemingly endless summer days of my childhood in Australia. But this year, the weather has been a bit bleak with more overcast days and cooler, cloudier days than I’d usually associate with the normally idyllic lead-up to the rainy season. Fortunately, the flowers have come to the fore to provide some brightness. Our grevillea has flourished and keeps spurting forth flower after flower, bringing immense delight as it has done since we planted the garden. Another superstar this year, albeit a bit less…

  • Suburban Tokyo’s Little Slice Of The Godzone

    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 forth. We have the scarlet of the callistemon. The burning…

  • Brushing Up On Kangaroo Paw-nography

    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 considering the kangaroo connection. It’s hurting especially as plants in…

  • Beautiful Bloomers And A Bevy Of Budding Beauties

    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 glorious after flowering for weeks.

  • Mornings Are Pleasant When You Can Meet A Pheasant

    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 reflections to produce breathtaking results. This year, Big Red makes…

  • Trying To Kid Myself On Children’s Day

    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 I left feeling like I could speak in tongues, but…

  • Garden The F**k Up!

    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 is what the sun will draw out of them. And…

  • Pop Goes The Blister And A Cracker Jaca

    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 infection beginning to retreat. I’m not the only ailing body…