Our garden came to life again

They grew too fast during the scorching hot summer. Too fast and too wild for me to control.

Once a year we have the gardeners (we call them friendly "Niwashi-san")come over to trim the trees and clear the bushes. This year too, Niwashi-san did such a beautiful work. Their skills are amazing especially when they work on pine trees. Basically they don't use scissors to trim these. They just pick up excessive tiny pine needles by hands. It's the most delicate work and it is often considered as an ultimate skill for a good gardener. It requires patience and attention to make a whole pine tree into a better shape. They often stay on a tree for hours to pick pine needles in the strong sunlight while others trim trees by scissors and sometimes electric scissors.
So ironically this is often said that a pine tree in a garden is money sucking.

Whatever it is, thanks to Niwashi-san, here comes back our garden of what it is to be. A "real garden" not a jungle anymore. The next thing I am concerned about is how long I can keep our garden this neat and clean after they left. Let's see.

In spite of the holidays

Well, I have to update my life all after the typhoon.
In Japan we are now in the midst of three-day holidays and it's Sunday today. I brought my laptop in the kitchen enjoying my afternoon being alone in the house, which is once in a while welcoming moment. My husband is still in India, my daughter is visiting Korea and my son is out for business today.

It's indeed a beautiful, quiet and peaceful autumn day. All of a sudden, however, my thought goes to those people in eastern Japan who faced with such a huge loss. In that area the autumn surely arrives much sooner than my place. By now the nature over there must be changing in colors. It must be beautiful and breathtaking. This is the reality. The autumn beauty and the disaster are all due to the same Mother Nature. Soon it will bring snow in that region, which makes more difficult for them to promote all those recovery processes. I'm sure in some places, they have to leave them halfway.


Six months have passed since the March huge earthquake and tsunami. It is said the recovery and reproduction are generally going on as scheduled. From my point of view, however, it's very slow and not organized at all and looks like it is a long way to go. Every thing seems to be so slow. How come 10,000 people still live in the evacuation spots surrounded by piles of boxes without privacy. About 83,000 people including those from the area of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plants live far away from their home towns. The central government is too slow making vital decisions for reconstruction. As a result, in many places people as well as volunteers are still struggling with mountains of wrecked houses, debris and contaminated mud all over.

The fall in that area is very short and the winter will stay long in eastern Japan.
We have to appeal to more people away from the devastated area to do something helpful so that they can make a new start.

(Please read more about this picture here)