Before I start back on the "rack-my-brains-for-memories-and-guess-the-date-in-the-diary" posts, I thought I'd show you my little garden.
When requesting a home here, we really didn't want to live in an apartment, mainly due to having the cats (now singular, after sadly losing Inti shortly after our arrival). I'd lived in flat for far too many years when in London and really wanted my own front door and direct access to the outside world without going downstairs.
We didn't want to live on the Embassy compound as I felt that Tim would never be free from work. By living away, people would think twice before calling on his services. Also, as I work from home, I need my solitude. Actually, I LIKE solitude and this house fits the bill perfectly.
I also love gardening, and had dreams of cultivating a green space to indulge in. Failing that, I thought I might try my hand at creating a Zen garden. Somewhere to sit in the sun.
Anyway, we struck gold when this house unexpectedly came up for rent: the previous occupants had left earlier than expected, and the landlord was so keen to keep British people in it that he lowered the rent to within our limits.
Our house in England would fit into the front room; the space here is amazing and puts paid to all the belief about miniature homes here in Tokyo. I don't deny they exist as I've seen them, but there are a surprising number of enormous houses and apartments to be found too.
I cannot stand the decor though: beige, taupe and green. Not much I can do about that, just going to cover it all up with bookshelves, pictures and the like.
We are also conveniently situated up a little cul-de-sac, so Rhiannon is free to practise riding her bicycle outside without fear of traffic accidents. Within a few weeks of us arriving, she'd mastered riding without stabilisers! Shame the same cannot be said about her mother...
About two blocks away is a very busy main road, so I was very wary about letting the cat out. However, I took the nervous plunge and let him go out through our French doors. Most pet cats here never go outside, but it would be cruel to make Raymi become in indoor cat after enjoying his first couple of years exploring the outside world.
The garden is tiny, but backs onto our landlord's garden which is huge and beautifully laid out. Beyond that is a deep gully, which I think was an original water or irrigation way some centuries ago. After that, is Shinjuku-gyoen garden.
So, as long as Raymi goes that way, he's safe from traffic. [Two years on, he's proved he has no interest in going further than the first block of houses, so you don't need to worry about some horrible event coming up while I catch up with this blog! Hope I haven't jinxed this subject now!!] He stayed close to home for the first few ventures outside, and I trained him to come in by rattling a box of treats, then rewarding him for coming when called. I've also trained him to sit before having a treat.
As I said, the garden is minute, but contains 3 trees: one evergreen something, one deciduous dogwood and a ratty little conifer. An old, rusty windchime has embedded into one of the tree branches and the chime fell off when Rhiannon touched it.
There are also two plastic troughs containing a wisteria and an unidentified plant that has small white flowers. The wisteria has never flowered. Bulbs also push their way through the mass of roots in the troughs, but add little to the aesthetics of the garden. I will leave them though.
Sharp, coarse gravel covers the "walking" area and a few smooth pebbles cover the miniscule "garden" which is delineated by larger pebbles. I made the garden area a little bigger by moving the big pebbles.
Also we discovered an extremely rusty barbecue, a wooden box to keep tools in - I found a small green trowel - and some discarded potplants. One was an orchid so I brought that inside and managed to coax a flower from it before it died.
Mum is a fervent gardener, so tried to get me to buy a heap of plants when she visited, but we couldn't find a garden centre. Besides, I wanted to see if anything came up in the spring first. I did have a go at digging, to see what the soil was like. It is an incredible rich black loam, which I assume is either silt or ancient volcanic in origin. However, it's full of roots from the trees and not been dug before. When you dig down far enough, you reach solid clay. I wish I knew more about geology!
So, there is the photo of the garden as we found it. Pretty bleak really.
But, it's early days [pretending I'm at two years ago again...]
The only things I have planted so far are some clumps of "cat grass" - something readily available and much enjoyed by Raymi, although I have to feed it to him as he hasn't grasped the idea of munching it himself. Daft animal.
I have plans, I just don't know what they are yet! But I have bought some books on Japanese Gardens, so perhaps a Zen garden will be on the cards.
To be continued...
