white paperbark teatree

  • |

    Snow In The Summer Is Only Supposed To Be A Name

    In an uncustomary May I was absolutely delighted to poke my head out of our backdoor and see a lovely little white blossom greeting me. The flower was on our melaleuca linariifolia, a tree generally known as the snow in the summer. It gets that name because it blooms when the sun shines hardest, so my astonishment arose as this month has been dark and wet for the most part, as it is again today. The weather’s been so bad I wouldn’t be surprised to see us get a fair dinkum dose of snow. The melaleuca are part of the mrytle family, and we have another tree in the garden…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Gifts Galore From The Garden And More

    Spring has really kicked into motion, one of the upshots being that our garden presents us with a new gift nearly every day. Our garden is providing us with a series of new flowers one after another. Hardenbergias have been giving me great delight for a few weeks now, particularly because I grew all of our four thriving plants from seeds I brought back from Australia. But our biggest surprise this year has come from the white paperbark teatree, which we picked up in a bargain basement bin at our local home center and have now been rewarded with a delightful bunch of frilly blossoms. Our ground covering linear-leaf grevillea,…