Happy New Year!

Every year the Dieramas surprise and enchant me with their exuberant display, none more so than the white variety that I've planted in my rock garden. This plant is smaller in size and flower than the usual red and pink varieties and is better suited in scale to the plants around it. I love the way it complements the blue, yellow and silver theme of this area of my garden but enlivens the whole combination. Every year I think, "I must have more!"

So in winter I will divide my clumps and spread them further and this time next year there will be a larger display to welcome in the New year!

A day in Kyoto

This week two boxes arrived from Japan, part of the treasures we'd posted home on our recent trip. To unpack not only the purchases we'd made and the things we'd been given, but the maps and brochures of some of the places we'd been, brought back so many memories. It was the day we'd spent in Kyoto with our friend, Ryoko's father Tsugio, that was the stand-out experience.

Tsugio knew we were interested in seeing some Japanese gardens so he organised a day with typical Japanese efficiency and punctuality. We had first to get permission to visit two Imperial Palace garden. This involved presenting our passports at the office and much Japanese talk and gesticulation! However, we were soon sped off in a taxi to the first garden, nestled in the foothills of the nearby mountains.

Shugakuin Imperial villa and gardens were the creation of the ex-emperor Gomizumo-o in the mid 1600's. There were three villas, each in its own enclosed garden, set in an estate of rice paddies and vegetable gardens. We ascended the hill from one to the next, along paths lined in small pines. Each of the villas had a separate enclosed garden with stream, stone bridges and lanterns and an impressive gate entrance. The highest villa was the ex-emperors own and he visited one day a year in autumn, to gaze from this window at his dragon-shaped pool and write poetry!The day was glorious and, though we were given no time to linger, the experience was unforgettable. The maples were fiery red and eagles soared overhead and fished from the dragon pool.

Then it was back to the Imperial palace in Kyoto to view the Sento Imperial Palace gardens. These were far more formal and elegant. They are centred around two lakes, joined by a canal. They are a strolling style of garden on a grand scale, and, though very impressive, lacked the inspired feel of Shugakuin. Nonetheless there were some wonderful features, especially this fabulous wistaria-covered bridge that spanned the connecting canal. Monet, eat your heart out!

There were gardeners working in the gardens. This lady was sifting leaves from the gravel paths using a small brush and bamboo scoop.
Our next garden took us from the exclusivity of a small group with guide and minder to the bustle of the general tourist traffic. We wanted to see the famous Zen garden of Ryoan-ji. Tsugio took a deep breath and whisked us there. We were thrust into the midst of hordes of Japanese high school children and American tourists, all talking loudly and somewhat ignorantly about the experience around them! We removed our shoes and padded across sock-polished boards to sit on the steps and contemplate the raked gravel and stones of the little Zen garden. We did our best and the garden is wonderful and enigmatic and so different. In the end, though, the mob drove us away and we explored the rest of the garden complex. These gardens are largely deserted but were serene and beautiful, laid out around a twilight lake covered in water lilies. The trees were magnificent, shading the paths and defining the walks. What other people missed!
Then Tsugio produced bus passes and we proceeded to the nearby Golden Pavilion. Again it was a tourist Mecca and we followed the throngs to the viewing spot. It is a stunning sight! Who cares if it was reconstructed in 1942 (when Tsugio was a boy), burnt down by a disaffected monk! Again it is a stroll garden dating back to the 1220's. Like most Japanese gardens there is a feeling of seclusion and calm, in spite of the many people.

Finally Tsugio took us to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. This was no ordinary cafe. It was once a city villa with garden centred around a small river that runs through Kyoto. The rooms all look out on the garden and once we'd finished our sumptuous meal, we had time to don the plastic mules provided and shuffle down the paths and cross the stone bridges in the lantern-lit dark. It was like an up-market fairyland!

All is forgiven

Remember when I drastically pruned Rosa "Shropshire Lass?" Well, early summer is here and she is now flowering her heart out. She is such a lovely creature!

I'm careful about colour placement in my garden - some may say obsessive, even. I loathe pink with yellow or orange. But Shropshire Lass transcends all this somehow. She has the palest flowers - white, flushing pink with a peachy tinge. They flutter all over the shrub like butterflies. And though she is surrounded by yellow and orange and golden flowers, she never gives me a moment's unease. She only flowers the once ... but what a display!

Sheer indulgence

So we've been to Japan again. Three weeks have we indulged ourselves, and our feet barely touched the ground! This is the land of the best - THE BEST - trains in the world, the most efficiently run railways there are ... and what do all Japanese do when on such paragons of the train culture?
They all fall asleep!!

The end of an era.

Today was a sad day. Yesterday we took our last guinea piglets to Launceston to the pet shop and today Drew took his last pig in her cage up to a new home.

He has decided after all these years - and pigs - that it is time to give up his guinea pig keeping. It started all those years ago when Shannon went to Japan and left her Elspeth in his care. He bought Twistie as a mate for her and dozens of litters later it is all over.

Here are some of the memories.
Twistie's offspring were Abyssinian types with longer hair and crazy cowlicks! There were fabulous colour combinations and patterns.
And finally, the last pair that he kept, The Stig and Easter Bunny. All their offspring were smooth haired and solid coloured. When the Stig died unexpectedly, Drew rather lost heart and made the decision not to get another male. So when Sally, who has one of the Stig/Easter offspring already, was happy to accept the offer of Easter Bunny and her cage, it was time to say farewell to the cavy connection.

The garden seems a little quieter now.

In the pink ... or not.

It's been a cold winter this year and I've relished my nightly open fire and my sinful electric blanket at night. Come the equinox each autumn I also slip into my old faithful pyjamas. I bought them as separates and while they don't fulfil Drew's ideals of sexy nightwear, they've been a comfortable and discreet beige and taupe outfit. The knit top has short sleeves and scoop neck. I don't need the extra warmth around my neck. The pants alas have suddenly developed extra unwanted ventilation, so I took the opportunity of a trip to Devonport to replace them.

I mean, how simple is that? I sidled past the lingerie shop with its racks of long nighties and frilly little numbers and made a beeline for Sussan. There I was confronted with the colours of the season - pink and mint green. Now of all the colours in the world, the ones I can't wear are green, pink and yellow! So although I trawled through all the racks on special, there was nothing in my size that I could wear or even want to wear.

So what is it with pink? Why are we thrust into wearing it - from birth in fact? I guess it suits some people but it's such a helpless, ineffectual colour. I even find it difficult to place in the garden. It's hideous with red or orange or even most blues. It's such a fifties and sixties colour. In fact when we moved to our house at Riverside when I was in my teens, the 40s house was painted out in pink and pale green! Gran had one room repainted and we had one wall in pink, one in primrose and one in aqua. The other wall was polished blackwood cupboards. Eeeyuk!! I guess that's part of the reason for my cringe of pink, and, yes, pale green. It's all tied up in the angst of my adolescence!

But I have a favourite joke:
A man (from the sub-continent?) applies for a job at a call centre. The challenge is to use green, pink and yellow correctly in a sentence.
His response: "The phone rings, 'Green, green.'

I pink it up.

'Yellow?'"

He got the job!

In the end, I did find a pair of pj pants at el cheapo Best and Less. They're dark blue with owls all over them.

And, yes, the owls are pink!

The adventures of Shropshire Lass

I've always had a soft spot for my Rosa 'Shropshire Lass' ever since I rescued it as nothing more than a stick with a few miserable roots at one end and a couple of leaves at the other, languishing in a bargain bin on a late Spring Launceston street about 20 years ago. I could find out nothing about it at the time other than it was a David Austin rose so, in my ignorance, I planted it in the corner of a new garden bed I had created. Gradually it thrived and by year 2 it produced its first flush of large single blushed flowers hovering over the bush like scented butterflies. I knew by now that she flowered only once but I still didn't know that she was not a bush but a large shrub - and a wickedly thorned one at that.

And so it proved. She began to throw out long trailing arms, ensnaring the unwary visitor and as, at the time, I was a participant in the Open Gardens Scheme, something would have to be done. So Fer kindly helped me dig it out and we moved it to a choice new spot in the middle of a new bed where she could grow and flower unhindered. We had to cut her back of course and for two years she was very ugly and stunted and produced only one or two butterflies. Then she took off and she has been a miracle every November/December producing a breathtaking display.

Then this winter I looked at what she had become ...

She was overwhelming, choked and tangled, full of dead and spindly wood, and smothering everything around her. No more pussy-footing around - it was time to prune!

I know you're supposed to prune once-flowering roses after they've flowered but in this position everything else is growing around it and it's just too difficult to get at it so it has had to be now. It has taken me two days - agonisingly prickly days - but at last it's complete - and what a transformation!

She's had her revenge. I'm covered with scratches and embedded rose thorns and I have a bloodshot eye where she poked me in the corner with one of her freshly pruned stems. But I know she'll forgive me and the butterflies will fly again in early Summer.