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Signs of Autumn
The two-meter tall ginger is in full bloom outside the kitchen window. Its scent is intoxicating. Hummingbird hawk-moths visit at dawn and dusk to enjoy the nectar. After a long break for summer, Beryl is enjoying her favorite cozy beanbag in the barn. She’s also crawling under the bed covers to sit on me in…
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Rain, Observed
I took a moment today to sit on the floor in the dining room and look out the window at the rain. It was meditative to observe without any expectation or need to act. I watched the water drip off the channels of our tin roof. Each had a different timing, creating a pattern that…
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Early Morning
My favorite days start with a dawn walk around 555. I join the bees and butterflies in their first explorations. Birds sing and squawk. The morning unfolds itself with a sensory overload. Today, the scent in the mist was heavenly. The huge osmanthus along our driveway is starting to bloom. Its tiny orange flowers are…
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Yumbo!
One of my goals for 2024 is to get my excavator certification. It’s not a typical goal for a middle-aged lady, but read on for the why. Thanks to a lucky chain of events, I am helping to organise an English-friendly certification course in Kamogawa in November. We are currently hustling to get enough students…
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Moon Madness
Might as well blame the minor incidents of the last couple of days on something. It was the FULL MOON that gave me a migraine, caused me to search the house for a missing spoon at 2 am, and made Beryl play with a snake. There’s not much else to say about the “Respect for…
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1 year at 555
Today’s the anniversary of our move into the new house. It’s been a great 12 months and I wanted to mark it with a visual celebration. But instead, I have been distracted by cleaning and maintaining all of the things I ignored for a year. Lest you think I slacked for an entire year, here…
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Starting the storehouse
Work has begun on the fanciful toolshed. After getting quotes from Sasaki-san, I opted for a slightly less elaborate but still pretty fancy version of my traditional storehouse and wood deck design. The first step is to reinforce the cracked and bulging concrete walls. These walls form the retaining wall between the driveway and Blueberry…
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Blacklight
Earlier this summer, I found a small wasps’ nest in the Tractorport. I learned that the yellow bits might be fluorescent. Interesting. So when I noticed wasp activity around the house last week and found a new nest, I bought a UV flashlight to test if the yellow nests are fluorescent. Yes! So bright. It’s…
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Rewired
A few years ago I bought this lovely lamp at a local thrift store. It has the most amazing pierced copper shade. But I soon learned why it had been abandoned by its previous owners – its touch sensor was haunted and would turned itself off and on at random. I quickly opted to keep…
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Tiny horrors in my garden
Today I learned about a weird mushroom called bird’s nest fungus or cyathus stercoreus. It’s only about 1 cm talk, but it packs a lot of ick into its small package. These mushrooms like to grow in decaying biomass or soil that has dung in it. I found these along the green strip next to…
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