Japanese Garden in San Francisco

Today I thought I'd see if I would run into the same difficulties as Alice has been having uploading and keeping photos on her blog.

So I've just selected a few photos from our trip to San Francisco last year, and thought I'd use Blog This from Picasa. Much to my delight I've found that it now uploads more than one at a time! The format isn't the greatest, they're all rather scrunched together, but I think this is better than using the "Hello" system which is a bit fiddly. (Don't ask!).

This photo was taken after the Man Who Cooks had dropped the camera on that very hard surface. He is looking suitably abashed.














Here we are on speaking terms again.












And below is us having tea in the tea house overlooking the gardens. Ah, I just noticed that 2 photos have been "lost"... Now for the Publish button!! Had to add the last two photos in via Blogger. Is there a 4 photo limit when you blog photos from Picasa?



One hour later...Hey guess what! The first 4 photos I uploaded via Picasa have disappeared, and only the ones I uploaded manually via Blogger are there. So now I have to upload them manually... Sheesh!

A Bloggy Tour of Homes

Welcome! This front courtyard is part of the Japanese garden look we are trying to achieve. There's a rumpus (hubby's workshop and sons' gym to the left of the front door. Behind the bamboo blinds is the kitchen, and to the right, out of view, are our two studies, and one son's bedroom.

My blogspace. Well, not much to say about that. But I'd love to replace my workstation which I bought along with my first computer in about 1990. In those days I didn't use the mouse much, and now it's apparent that I don't have enough mouse-moving room.

Dining room, living room on other side of bamboo screen, STILL decorated with Christmas things, yes, in July.

Kitchen, with waiting dirty dishes edited out to left of screen. Two lazy susans in the bottom corners, glad the kitchen design man convinced us to have two rather than one. So easy to get at stuff.

Walk in pantry, taken from the doorway. It extends to the left and right, with shelves on two walls perpendicular to the one you see. Top shelf full of Gourmet magazines. I love my pantry!

My blogspace

I've loved reading about and seeing photos of my blogger friends' blogspaces, so of course I have to retaliate.
Here is my computer desk, bought years ago and absolutely junky. The "veneer" started peeling off as soon as we got it home. Nevertheless, it does the trick. My wallpaper is of the Japanese Gardens at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. That came from a digital postcard of SF that my dad sent me. He also gave me the slim monitor and Logitech mouse - Dad's a bit of a computer freak as mentioned in a previous post.
There's the obligatory printer, soon to be augmented by scanner-printer-fax-copier thingie, and you might also notice what looks like two CPUs. Yes, the horizontal one is my old one (have techie son's cast off as current one), and still haven't got around to disposing of old one. Mind you, it still works, stable Windows 95 installed, Microsoft Works which is really all the home user needs for word processing, etc. But I digress.
To the right is my bulletin board with current Carlton Blues calendar. You might notice some post it notes scattered on it. That's to cover up the player and his name, the one who defected to another team at the end of last year. Grrr. To the far right is my desk, an ancient discard from my husband's work. It too still works.

This photo was taken a few months ago. It's in the afternoon, when I get the afternoon sun. Good for sitting with my cup of tea, reading or dozing, or for more agro times, checking the credit card statement. Agro not because of what's spent, but because the man who cooks forgets to give me the slips (invariably from Bunnings - mega hardware store for you non-Aussies). Not content with that, he will then find it weeks later scrunched up and put it in the credit card slip envelope - stored in the wicker basket to the right - so that I again waste time sorting it out. Grrrr.

This is looking from the doorway. My window, which is the entire wall, looks out onto the courtyard with pond that has featured in previous posts. The kimono is one that my mother-in-law bought many years ago and she was so happy that I love such things. It hangs in front of a shojii paper blind - a perfect match!

The sliding doors hide a wardrobe and built in drawers. On the other side of that wall is the mirror image of my study which my husband has as his study. This house was built for a big family and these were originally small bedrooms but very effective use of space. Recently we found out from the original owner that these two rooms were designed so that eventually they could be made into one if we wanted to.

To see what other blogspaces look like (no fair making comparisons) see:

http://colorsofthegarden.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-corner.html
http://purplegiraffes.blogspot.com/2006/02/blog-corner.html
http://heathhill.blogspot.com/2006/02/blogging-corner.html

Have I left anyone out??

Virtual Japanese garden tour

Inspired by a recent post by Susan (Takoma Gardener), I thought I'd offer a link to another virtual garden tour that I enjoy so much. Given my interest in Japanese gardens, I often "visit" this one in Seattle and it also includes soothing Japanese music. You need a good internet connection.

You can find a lot of good sites (and spend much time) by googling "japanese gardens", but probably the best place to start out is to visit the excellent Japanese Garden Database. Although it doesn't seem to have been updated for a while, the links from its various pages are very useful. I also like the Bowdoin College website on Japanese gardens.

I also love Japanese interiors and furniture - this is a cabinet from the 1930s that we bought a couple of years ago.

Borrowed scenery

Using the Japanese concept of borrowed scenery (what you can see beyond your own boundaries/fencelines), we try to remember to look at and appreciate what others have planted and which add to our own landscape. So far we have been very lucky in that regard, but modern gardening trends do not auger well. This will be the topic of a future rant, but for now, here are some photos of what I took in this morning's gentle light. The photos just don't do justice to what the eye sees - maybe I'll have to upgrade the camera...


First photo: looking west as the rising sun lights up some trees two and three gardens away from ours.

This is the Norfolk Island Hibiscus in the neighbors' garden. It gets these purple flowers which attract the noisy wattle birds (usually before the alarm has gone off). The ground is littered with the husks of the flowers after the birds have finished with them. The last photo is north facing, and the tallest tree in the back neighbors' garden turns lovely colors in the autumn. The umbrella shaped tree just to the left of our garden house, currently with yellow blossoms, is an unknown to us, and creates lots of seedlings (to weed out), but it's mirrored by one in the garden to the east, and they look a treat.

Sacred bamboo - hah!

You'd think that something named sacred bamboo would be a bit more restrained and even difficult to grow. Nope, it grows like a weed, and it once filled almost the whole courtyard which you see in the previous post. We now have that area under control, but on the weekend I removed much of it from around the Japanese maple (so we could see the beautiful trunk) and near the footpath (so the water meter can be read, and even found). As a consequence of pulling out shoots and clipping very thick woody stems, I am feeling a bit weary. But getting that done, plus my zen weeding in the mornings is giving me a great sense of satisfaction.

After looking on the internet for suitable images of sacred bamboo, it would seem that we don't have sacred bamboo at all, but some other type. I should have read this article first!

Zen approach to the garden

When I went on that horticultural tour of the Japanese garden at the zoo last week, I optimistically asked the gardener if there was a modern, 21st century invention that would magically help the home gardener tidy up the leaves, twigs etc without having to get on hands and (ageing) knees. No such luck! His answer was that they used one of those most un-zen-like blowers as well as, yes, getting down on hands and knees.

There used to be a self sown tree in our stone courtyard. In its healthy days the tree had a wonderful lollypop shape that gave us privacy and shade in summer, but was extremely messy, even to the point of spreading around purple berries that discolored the path to the front door. When it gave its last hurrah last March and we removed it, it was the start of a tidier courtyard, but I still needed to do the finetuning that a stone courtyard requires.


So yesterday, inspired by the beautifully maintained garden in the zoo, I made a start at tidying up the debris the tree had left behind, including a zillion seedlings that had started poking their heads through the stones. I think that tree knew it was not long for this world and produced a bumper crop of seeds. Rather admirable really, but out they came. I fell into a quiet rhythmn, maybe zen-like, and it didn't seem to take long at all. Then a final rake-over, and I could look at it with pleasure. This morning when I went out for the newspaper, I stopped to pick up a few more twigs and seedlings, and it was a lovely thing to do in the fresh smelling air of early morning. Will I continue that? Only time will tell.

Mel made this bamboo fence in the traditional manner, tying together the bamboo with rope. These photos were all taken of our front garden. (Mel has just confessed that the rope hides the screws he used!)

Another Forbies Folly...

At long last, the Japanese teahouse is finished!

And it's portable, so if and when we move...

There is also a light behind the moon window, and at night it looks really beautiful. Unfortunately my attempts at taking a photo of it last night didn't work, but I'll get the live-in Kokak person to have a go.