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Patio time
Today Monaca Royal Construction Enterprises (MoRCE) and I finished up the hardscaping project. I am very happy with the result. It wasn’t easy. For the patio, we experimented our way across substrates. It was simply dry mortar for a few initial tiles in the southeast corner, but wet mortar is stronger, so we switched. Hand…
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Stone Path
To my surprise and delight, the Monaca crew turned up the day after they brought the stones. Their other project was put on hold and they got started on my hardscaping. I sketched out a concept and we started with a big irregular stone that is already a canvas for little nature mandalas and other…
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Hardscaping begins
I was excited to find the Monaca Doken yumbo parked in our driveway when I came home from lunch today. And a little while after that, my fav guys turned up with a truck full of stone slabs to supplement the ones I already have. They first changed the bucket for jaws, a process that…
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Winter into Spring
Woke up with a bit of a headache and decided to take a walk before yoga. Mother Nature gave me some lovely scenes on a foggy morning. Spring is on its usual rollercoaster of temperatures and precipitation. We’re finally getting rain so the weeds and grasses are waking up from their dormant rosettes. It won’t…
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Patio Approach
Well, I am back to the 555 drawing board, literally, as I design hardscaping for the patio. Unlike my garden plans which are subject to change even after implementation, putting in hardscaping requires precision and finality. I want to get the patio done before Tod’s mother and her husband visit during Golden Week towards the…
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Figuring out the gardening
Yesterday Tod and I planted potatoes in the hatake. It’s a bit late, but I hope they will still be okay. Once they were in the ground, I started to think about the rest of the field and what I might try planting. The monkeys and boars would enjoy most of what I would prefer…
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Flea Season
Forget spring, what we really have is flea and tick season. After yesterday’s tick bite on my leg, I went on alert and sure enough, I caught a little tiny tickling wandering on Maura’s fur in the evening. I combed him carefully and found two fleas as well. Great… Flea combing the cats is a…
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Two Mice & a Tick
Here in Japan, spring has several heralds: Here at 555, I have additional metrics based in nature. MOUSE #1I was doing a crossword puzzle after dinner when I heard the cadence of a cat with a mission. There’s a certain pattern to Maura’s movement when he has caught a snack. Fast and steady steps, low…
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Paths, old and new
The property around 555 is a jungle. I love it that way, yet I feel the need to tame it. I want a diversity of things growing, attracting insects, birds, and other animals but at the same time, I want to be able to enjoy the space around me without climbing through weeds. And the…
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First snow at 555
Across the Bay, yesterday was a snowpocalypse, closing all highways heading west from the city, grounding flights, and delaying trains. But here we only had a lot of rain pouring down on us all day. Until evening when the temperature dropped and the snow began. First a dusting and then quickly accumulating to a nice…
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