Garden in Summer 2013

These days I love waking up around 5 or 6 in the morning to tend the garden before the sun is in full sight.

It was a very private moment of the day for me, a block of time before neighbours get out to work, before birds start to tweet, before bugs wake up, before much traffic begins to flow, and before everyday routine resumes. The garden is in full shade around this time, bright but elegantly grey in tone. Given that I do not need to dodge burning sun beams, I am able to feel the garden in a more intimate way. It smells fresh, feels cool, and sounds quiet. Colours are even brighter. Every second is endearing to me.

My garden was never productive in summer in the past due to irresistible heat and ever-proliferating bugs, but this year I sowed some zinnia and portulaca grandiflora with a very humble expectation that they would eventually flourish. Surprisingly they have taken over the entire space of the front patch with their bright blossoms at different heights.

They are blooming well fearless of the sun, and the balls of colours add pleasant varieties to the monotonous golden light in summer.

A New Colour

A wooden cover for ventilator has been sitting in our garden for a couple of years. Brown is always a safe choice of colour for furniture, I reckon. I never dislike it, and it, too, tends to be my ultimate choice; nonetheless, the natural tone of the wood is, to be honest, never very exciting. Between having fun and playing safe, even though I had been brewing over a revolutionary idea against K's reservation about loud colours, no action was ever taken.

Summer and vacation are two factors that would lead to changes.
I spent an entire day last Friday painting it blue, a careful choice of mine, Virginia clock blue, which provokes a sentiment of nostalgia. My amateurish skills with paint and my obsession with perfection plus the weather made the project too full of details to complete early. Yet, the first large-scale DIY was  done without much hindrance at the end of the day.

The new color is adorable, and this adventure with visual effect has allowed the reformed furniture to resume its presence in the summer garden in harmony. It is quite likely that I will never try to paint any large furniture again in near future due to the great labors and time that it would require. Yet, it is also true that the experience does give me a moral to reflect upon in response to the current state of my life. My prolonged hesitation about this DIY task had yielded no result but endless longing until a decision was made and action taken. This summer I am also in the turmoil of pondering over possible changes in career, struggling with the two things that I am least good at: letting go and moving on. It is a decision between safe and risky choices, between banality and adventure, and it is self-evident that something more ambitious and brave has to be done so that I am able to enjoy life and work. Yet, the indecisiveness or the fear of making decisions poisons my heart.

New Acquisition in the House

Two years after we moved in, we finally acquired a set of wooden chairs to furnish up the dinning room! They are elegant and comfy companions indispensable to an enjoyable dinner from Kashiwa furniture.

Garden in June: Lavender

I still am not very sure if I love lavender. In my impression, they are too popularly loved that it becomes difficult to appreciate their beauty.

However, for my herbs project in the garden, I planted some lavender in the garden 2 years ago, After a long wait, now here they are, blooming and airing natural aroma.

They are lovely adornments, and their quiet scent soothes whoever approaches them.

One regret is probably that I should have dedicated a larger space to them. It is difficult to understand their humble beauty in these two small bundles. 

Garden in Spring, 2013 (II)

The good weather of spring continues to encourage blossoms in May. 

Now the central stage of the garden is given to three types of roses. 

At the corner of the garden is a climbing rose with a beautiful name: the blue moon. It has been staying with us since the first year when we moved in. Their gigantic blossoms and impressive volume have attracted much attention in the neighbourhood. I do heart them as they are the first-born of my gardening project. 

The blue moon is commanding an unmissable presence in the garden. However, I have a feeling that they are not doing as well as last year, or as I have expected. Perhaps I did not make enough efforts to care for them last winter; or perhaps it rained immediately after they started blooming, and the rain somehow burned the edges of its silky petals. The shape of the entire shrub is far from ideal, too. As I did trimmed it down harshly in the past 2 winters, it is not supposed to grow too vigorously either horizontally or vertically. Therefore, it has made into this awkward triangular bulk. There are some more work to do and some research to be done to make it thrive better this winter. 

The blue moon

Distant drums rose and Royal Sunset rose are two new additions to the garden this year. They had been taken professional care of in their nursery before coming into our possession last winter. Undoubtedly they have been flourishing pretty amazingly.

Distant drums rose

Royal Sunset Rose

I found growing roses is quite rewarding. The entire process especially satisfies the wish of an anxious gardener like me who would always want to give more fertiliser and more water.


I used to grow up in a house where there was a huge garden of roses. While I entered my teenage years, the toils of caring for roses drove my parents to replace all of them with trees and bonsais.

Roses are very adorable to me, although they have left many scars on both of my hands this spring. I am fond of flowers in general, as, perhaps, they have this particular pride in appearance that says much about my egoistic self.

Garden in Spring, 2013 (I)

Spring is indeed the prime time of everything exciting, le printemps. 

The tulips in the garden did very well in April. Cups of solid colours waved in their small circles in the garden. They would have lasted much longer if it had not been for an overwhelmingly windy day on which I harvested an armful of them and secured them in the house. They served as wonderful companions indoors especially when the last bit of wintry chill still lingered around. With the heater on, they would bloom as wide as the size of a palm; however, such artificial warmth had stretched these darling creatures too much that their lives were unfortunately shortened. 

As a gardener, I guess I am not mentally strong enough to bear the thoughts that it is in the end more than natural for plants to sprout, to grow, to bloom, to wither and to die out in its natural surroundings. 

Tulips in April, 2013

Since the first year we moved into the house, one of my keen anticipation for the garden every year rests mainly on a collection of small weedy flowers: forget-me-not, California poppies, pansies, thyme and ivies. Unlike other previous and pricey kinds, such as roses, peonies, hydrangea, or orchids, these small flowers require little attention but quickly carpet the ground with their bright colours when time has come.

April, the beginning of spring 

In May now, the highlight is foxgloves which were planted 2 years ago. In the first year after they put forth shoots, there was  not much progress. They had stayed very small for a long whole year until last autumn. It was surprising how long it took them to get established in soil; yet, it was still not too long for me to lose faith. 

Foxgloves are also part of my imagination/impression of English gardens. These are flowers which seem to cost no efforts to grow in the English weather, but they have become a piece of puzzle integral to my memory about England. 

It has been exciting to see the spikes develop into individual flower-heads, and the creamy flower-heads turn into purple bells. According to Wikipedia, its name, foxglove, derives from foxes' glew - music - as it resembles a kind of musical instrument in ancient times which consists of many bells attached to an arched support. There are also other folk sayings about this plant. For instance, to my preference, in Wales it is said to be the habitat of fairies, thereby the name fairy-folks-fingers in Wales.

I adore their elegant long stems. As the bells swing in spring breeze, it feels as if there is a small music concert going on in the garden, a solo of ringing bells. 

Fox-gloves in May, 2013

Cinema: DE GROETEN VAN MIKE! (Mike Says Goodbye!)

Youtube source

Further info on EYE

Title: De Groeten Van Mike!

          (Mike Says Goodbye!)

Director: Maria Peters

Country: Netherlands

Language: Dutch 

On a KLM flight back to Tokyo last March, I watched this Dutch film, Mike Says Goodbye! This is probably something that I will not have easy access to in Asia. 

The story succeeded in tickling the soft part of my heart, which had been battered and benumbed by academic training. 

It is a feel-good family movie telling a story which evolves around the central character, Mike, and his friends in the section of paediatrics in a hospital. 

From a critical viewpoint, the plot is not special, ordinary, I would say. However, the story itself feels real and moving right because of its simplicity. 

What really got me in the film is a poem written by a supporting character, Mike's roommate in the hospital. That little boy is paralysed in the lower part of his body after a devastating car accident. He can no longer dream the dream of becoming a pilot. Everyone is anxious for him as he has refused rehabilitation and resisted any psychological consoling. 

He writes and rewrites a poem, which he probably has no intention to make public at all. Or, the revision process is a way to get ready for the new life from which he cannot escape. 

It is a poem about the last ordinary day of a school boy, and the sudden change in everything ordinary when a truck hits him and overturns all those simple facts of life. 

The poem is heart-wrenching for its wish for simplicity, its humility, and the impossibility to return to the ordinary. 

Something about Needlework

Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival at Tokyo Dome

Last January (2013) I went to Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival with a friend in my weekend Japanese classroom. As far as I know, she is quite into knitting and needlework. My inspired interest in craftwork does not show an equal strength in my ability, and the end results of my work always fall short of the blue plans in my head.

My mother started patchworking a couple a years ago after her retirement. Like drawing, another activity in which she has been zealously engaged, quilting seems to provide an equal amount of pleasure of solitude. This other space - which her two hands create with cloth ruler, needles, fabric and colourful threads - is probably an alternative version of the space, which Virginia Woolf has called a room of one's own.

The exhibition space was packed with fervent weavers and covered with tapestries of breath-taking beauty. Although it might be true that most needlework must have been completed with the assistance of sewing machines, every piece of work is an amazing embodiment of imagination, impeccable details, intricate patterns, and combination of vibrant colours.

Awkward as I am, the efforts, attention and time that have been devoted to achieving such grandness are merely beyond calculation. What a gifted mind and patient heart of creativity it is behind the design of every single stitch!

Writing as an essential way of self-expression has been one of the popular domains for the discussion of female writers in literary history. It is commonly considered to be the main arena in which females are able to rival with their male counterparts. However, homely these other forms of domestic arts may seem - cooking, gardening, sewing, and stitching - they are never inferior to writing as an expression of creativity.

Remembering her mother's talent in gardening, Alice Walker celebrates that whatever her mother has planted in her garden would grow as if by magic. The blossoms then have provided a magical glass through which every suffering in deprivation is filtered and endured. In spite of the hindrances and limitations faced by African-American women at her times, the mother never forgets to be artistic in everyday life. She never forgets, or she has to remember, to create beauty and to bring in order to the domestic world.

It is an ability to hold on, as Walker notes.

What do we need to hold on to?

Being creative and staying creative is a means to endure a unfavourable reality, to create pleasure when faced with difficulties so as to live on.

To create is to be in control; to create is a self-assertion of presence.

Asada's Poppins

Youtube Source

Asada Mao definitely has outgrown her past self in her latest performance in the 2012 Japan National Figure Skating Championship: Merry Poppins.

When she lost the champion title to Kim Yuna in the 2010 Winter Olympics, she was obviously disappointed and somehow lost in disbelief. Undoubtedly she had been diligent and already did her best at that time, but Kim was definitely beyond comparison in that game. Asada looked stressed and tensed in her though beautiful and graceful skating; while Kim gave an impression that she danced at ease in every step. On technique front, I am not any expert to judge, but as an audience I was much more enchanted by Kim in 2010.

By chance I watched Asada's performance in the national championship in 2012. She skated like an elf on the ice and seemed to have raised herself to a different level of the sport. Even without her signature jumps - triple and 3 and 1/2 - she was still fascinating. Possibly without those highly risky shows of techniques and therefore free from worries about possible mistakes, she was able to relax more, enjoy herself better, and manage to engage her audiences in the joyful melody. An impeccable performance it was in terms of its overall presentation, skill, and spirit.

Asada has been the apple of the eye of the Japanese public since the very early stage of her career. The distance that I have maintained to keep myself away from that nationalistic mode of adoration did not prevent me from applauding for her; she really earned her title hard and gracefully this time. And I believe, as an athlete she is now in a totally different stage of the career, a better and brighter star who has mastered the profession and learned to do it as a form of art.