Raking mosses

How to keep mosses always healthy requires time and patience.

If you are not in a mood for spending up your time in the garden, it will turn to be such an irritating moment of a day. But once I get involved in it, I quite enjoy this chore of cleaning up the garden.

Today it was warm and less windy in the morning, I decided to spend a couple of hours before lunch to clean mosses.

Mosses grow inches and you can't neglet them grow. If they grow tall, it is natural they stand tittled and finally they pile one another by their own weight. Sometimes this brings excessive moisture inside mosses and let them ret. To prevent them from dying, I rake them to have them sit straight to get enough air as well as clean the surface.

It's really fun to see quite an amount of weeds are raked at the same time.

After raking, it's so pleasant to see and feel a moist carpet of green.

My 200th post!

It took way long for me to hit the 200th post today.
When I started my blog in English, who would have expected to meet a group of nice and sweet women from different countries. In fact I started my blog about 6 years ago but I haven't gotten many comments for years. Eventually I wasn't a good writer for years. I almost gave up writing.
I still remember of my excitement when I found the comments from Dionne from US and Little Tiara from Indonesia. They came in at around the same time and then I've met Anya from Holland and Jeany from Germany. This brought about a change in my blog. I've got some other friends. Lenorenevermore, Pamela, from US and Ellen from Malaysia, you always give me an enthusiasm to keep uploading my posts, as well. Then new meetings still lead me to another new encounters one after another!
Of course I would like to say "Thank you" to all those who come and read my posts often.
Without each one's constant visit to my blog, I would have never made the 200th post today!

One for you and all for me!

These are all from TAKASHIMAYA department store in Nagoya.
This is something very crazy about how women get totally carried away with selecting chocolate for their loved ones on the Valentine's Day. All the corners are just crowded with women of all generations. I belong to the group that stay away from those chocolate corners during the valentine's day season. Well, I've got already some for my family though from a very different route. (I'll talk about it later.)
However why not take a look at those fascinating catalogs from the web. Are you ready? There are 40 pictures I picked up.
You can see more if you want to from here.

This is trendy

Tea from Singapore. TWG Tea of Singapore is well-known and popular tea in Singapore but it hasn't opened any stores of its own in Japan yet. As both of my husband and I enjoy tea almost every day, we are always ready to try something new and that has a good reputation. This "Singapore Breakfast Tea" is so full of harmony with a blend of green tea, black tea and vanilla and some spices. Mmmm it smells sooo sweet and has a mild taste. It seems that nowadays, people select each tea by its unique titles like "Singapore breakfast" named by the tea company. In fact TWG tea has varieties of blended tea under the titles like "Happy Birthday Tea" , "Christmas Lights Tea", "Holiday spirit tea" "White House Tea" or "Tokyo Singapore Tea" which all are very attracting to try.

I love it and glad my husband got it in Singapore on his way back home from Malaysia. As a matter of fact, he said to me he prefers single loose tea from certain product areas like India or China. Well, I understand him as well. That is his style. I think I am more flexible enjoying tea.

Here are the TWG Tea website. It's a very gorgeous-looking page. It's fun to have a look.

"Techo" my favorite notebook

Most Japanese love to keep their "Techo" with them in their bags and briefcases not to mention myself.
At around the end of the year like in November and December, you will find varieties of "techo" at many shops and we are just absorbed in choosing which one is a favorite for the next year. We take one by one in hand and look into them one after another carefully whether or not it is the best. Some like small ones, some big ones , or daily schedule, or dairy, or just a notebook with plain pages ---there are lots of kinds, indeed.

I've been choosing the same brand for more than 10 years but this year I picked up the different one since I come to enjoy writing anything happened like you do in your diary and keep jotting down anything which I find informative and which I don't want to forget. So I chose one I can fill out one page for a single day. I enjoy making my "techo" very interesting vision-wise. I took some pictures usually with my cell phone camera and I print out on sheets of small stickers. It's fun. Here is the Japanese "techo" site I like.

(my pages --- confidential)

To tell you the truth, I never be a good writer and every year many pages have been neglected in blank. But this time I think this hasn't occurred to me yet. I've been writing every day! Incredible!

In this world of IT, we can make the best use of computers or cell phones to save any information on the web. But it is true on the other hand people are more likely to enjoy the analog side of daily life in writing and drawing.

Do you have your own notebook which you love to keep it around with you?

New book!

My husband came home from Kualalumpur, Malaysia with the book named "Logomania"!!! I'm so happy! Because this is one of the books Ellen published last year. She is a professional writer and one of my blogger friends who lives in Malaysia. She writes books and articles for newspapers. Of course I've started reading the book. You know, even for one like me, whose mother tongue is not English, the book is so informative and it's fun to know the language backgrounds as well as the phrases themselves. I'm especially happy that I can start reading any pages depending on categories. I can pick up any columns from index as well.
(You can have a peek for her new two books in her blog.)

Unless I had a chance to come across to her blog in the Internet, I would have never had a chance to get her book. It's true to every one of my blogger friends, who gives me such an inspiring different essence in my daily life.

January 17, 1995

It's January 17th today.
And the news of the vast earthquake in Haiti has been keeping informed since then. Many people are injured and many are still missing. How terrifying.

The post which Lenore has just updated reminded me of writing about another story of earthquake.
I'm just linking my previous post which I wrote 5 years ago.

I never forget of the Great Hanshin Earthquake which killed more than 6000 people. In fact many TV channels have been broadcasting commemorative programs since this morning. Some of them make me feel so down to know how many people are still suffering from the sense of loss. But this is something which we should face with so that we have to set up better systems to protect our lives in case of disasters.

Thank you, Lenore for reminding me of the importance of keeping informing and sharing what we should never forget.

picture:asahi.com

Two steps forward!

Oh, what fun!

making into cell phone straps

dressing up my cell phone

One step forward

Ever since I read about Pamela's special cute little felted acrons before, I've been always thinking I would like to try this needle felting some time. It takes quite time since then. Now I feel like I'd like to be involoved in this handmade craft soooo much. It's quite new to me and I don't think I can make acrons but I'd rather enjoy very simple ones for my first trial. Thank you, Pamela, for inspiring me for something new. It's fun and makes myself giggle to find out my wool balls are not really round.

Got to get started!

Things around me have gotten messy for these days.

I have to say I'm in a mood to accept the telling "Life is not easy" especially when it comes to a recent condition of my mother-in-law.

We are so relieved that she doesn't have to stay in bed after all. She can walk carefully with a cane but desperately needs other's assistance as well. We still have time so we are working on this slowly and carefully to see what we can do for her next.

So for a switch, I come back here to see my blogger friends and to get inspired by each one of you. All of you I know here are so fascinating that I feel so uplifted. I need a change for a switch. Hoping this week will be nicer one.

Thanks for reading.