Category: Everyday Life

Recently we wonder: why is it so?

The hydrangea (next to our slightly listing gatepost) and the passion flowers (around the kitchen garden) are blooming naturally, and there are flowers on the impatiens we bought from a shop. But generally our garden doesn’t look great these days. (Although we can see our neighbour’s amaryllis from our gate.)

This hydrangea has blue flowers and reddish flowers, blooming on the same bush, and it is a very common kind. The year we moved into this house, an elderly lady who used to live next door gave us a cutting. So it’s blooming for the seventh time. For the first few years, it had reddish flowers. I hear that alkaline soil makes red flowers, and acid soil makes blue, even though it’s the same hydrangea. The soil type in our yard might have changed.

We planted purple (Passiflora amethyst) and white (Passiflora caerulea) passion flowers in our yard. But, and we don’t know what made it different, for the past few days passion flowers without any colouring have been blooming. It gets the same sunshine as the others. Anyway, have a look at them!

The cotton rose (Hibiscus mutabilis) has flowers at the end of summer every year. This tree is also from the lady who used to live next door, and she was proud of these flowers that change colour from white to red: this one is her baby. After cutting it back last fall, it hasn’t grown yet this year. New branches haven’t come out. I dug up a seedling tree that sprouted between cracks in the cement this year, put it in a pot, then brought it to my parents’ house. Now, we are hoping it grows well. (We don’t have enough space to grow a new tree.)

It’s not plant topic but I have one more question ‘why’, about the four kittens I mentioned last time. (Yes, they are indeed cute to watch, but we are sure they will make a lot of trouble in a few months.) They spent their time here during the weekend, and now it seems they moved somewhere. Komoku, was nursing them, still appears in our front yard frequently. Did dad Ryo adopt them at his own house?

–YS, 7 June 2006

7 June 2006