Nishigawa Kobo

Roses in full bloom at Fukuoka City Botanical Garden!

Yaemi Shigyo — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:10:19 +0000

On 17 May, our wedding anniversary, we usually go to the Fukuoka City Botanical Garden, which is near our house. Our purpose is the rose garden. We also go there for autumn roses, but spring roses have a more gorgeous atmosphere. The past few times it wasn’t so great because not enough time had passed since its improvement, but I should mention that the Angela arch had grown beautifully this time, and it’s very pretty! This time’s overall impression was best among all our memories of this garden. Even though, when we looked at them closely, we found their petals had become a little tired looking under the strong sunshine.
Around the edges of the garden where the plants get less sunshine, there were still many buds, and they will bloom soon.

I made silly mistake: I told Chris that the ‘penicillin’ rose wasn’t totally in bloom yet. The correct name is Aspirin rose. It was in full bloom when we went there in 2009. It’s a white middle-sized rose that has pale pink in the middle: I like it very much. (But I said the wrong name!)

The interesting rose this time was a dark red rose named Jocelyn. Even if it’s still in bud or just after blooming, it looks antique.

Before we left, we swung past the peony garden. The tree peonies had completely finished, but the bush peonies surprised us by still having many buds. Did it usually bloom so late in the season?

– YS, 19 May 2012

What’s this flower?

Yaemi Shigyo — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:48:50 +0000

There are some flowers happily in bloom in the back yard, which has the better sunshine in our house! The other day, I envied a big lemon tree I saw near our house, which had flowers in full bloom: it was a lemon! Our lemon in a pot had five fruits last time, even though they were not very big, so we had almost given up on it this time, because we hadn’t seen any buds for a long time… However, now we see flowers! We feel they are bigger than the ones last year. (It might be our imagination.) They are really pretty!
The other current flowers are dokudami (Houttynia cordata) and tokiwa tsuyukusa (dayflower), which we never planted, but that grow very strongly. Some white geraniums in pots have also been doing well this year. The miniature roses quietly have some cute flowers. And the hydrangea has a greater number of flowers this year, which are getting to be blue.

The flowers below are marigolds; I bought them for planting after pansies and violas.

Free Monthly Calendar: phrasal verbs and cats (June 2012)

Yaemi Shigyo — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:12:58 +0000

Our Naniwa rose and jasmine season has completely passed, and roses have been blooming a little bit. The hydrangea is starting to show some colour.
It became hot and then became chilly: the weather has been unstable these days.
Our cats try to curl up on our laps looking for warmth, but they ask us to open the windows… They are indeed selfish creatures. They know only this small world inside the house, but they may study each other, and we find they end up having similar behaviour. It’s very interesting to see them changing.

By the way, here we offer our June calendar.
Other countries also have Father’s Day on the third Sunday of this month, but there are no national holidays this month.

fill in for
(inseparable)
to act as a temporary substitute or replacement for someone or something else.
Can you fill in for me on Wednesday? I have to go to Tokyo.
We’re out of honey, but we can fill in for it with sugar.
Sometimes the cats change their behaviour, and it seems like Kuro is filling in for Hachitaro.

To download the calendar, please click on the image above or the link below.
Calendar download link: Monthly calendar 2012-06 (11)

The calendar is a PDF file. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader yet, you can click here, which should take you to Adobe’s web site.

– YS, 14 May 2012

It’s May!

Yaemi Shigyo — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:02:59 +0000

It seems to have gone by very fast, but a week of May has already passed.
This morning’s sunrise was orange-coloured behind a building to the east, so I was wondered what it was and took a photograph. After it rose, it became too bright and we couldn’t take its vivid orange with our small digital camera.

In our back yard, the Naniwa rose season is ending, and now the jasmine is in full bloom. When we open the windows, we feel sort of sick because of the too-strong jasmine smell.

It seems window TV is very exciting stuff for our cats: they are keenly looking outside. Are they waiting for passing geckoes or cats from somewhere? Our neighbourhood cats seem to have changed generations, so most of the new cats are new to us, too. Where are they coming from?

Some changes inside the house: one of the human beings had been growing a moustache and beard since the time he had a cold last year; he had hard tricolour hair (black, white, and light brown) like a scrubbing brush even though the hair on his head is very soft. Then he suddenly decided to get rid of it.

One more event was that Kuro had his 7th birthday on May 5, which was decided by his vet. (In human years, he became 44 years old.)
This is the digest version of our small events in May, so far.

– YS, 7 May 2012

Some trouble

Yaemi Shigyo — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:59:06 +0000

Hachitaro likes cat grass.
However, his eating style is not good for it. He pulls at it then eats it, and often the rectangular block of soil comes out from its planter. And more grass gets wasted being pulled up from the roots and seeds than the amount he actually eats. He sometimes pushes the planter down from the shelf.
In a desperate measure, Chris tried to fix the planter to the shelf using a bungee with hooks. I coiled a string around the soil and the planter. But he still pulls out the cat grass every day. Is there any other good way left for us?

This is a bonus. It’s a photo of Hachitaro being really curious about a souvenir chocolate snack from Okinawa. Of course we didn’t give it to him.

– YS, 30 April 2012

The Naniwa rose in bloom

Yaemi Shigyo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:40:07 +0000

Our rhododendron flower season is over, and this year’s Naniwa rose blooming season has been underway for about a week now.
Chris said that last summer it was much cooler in his study because he didn’t trim the Naniwa rose very much compared to a few years ago (if I point out that it hasn’t been trimmed, he would say it was all on purpose), and this year the Naniwa rose outside Chris’ study became almost like a cave.
I smell a slight apple-like scent: is it just my imagination? Anyway, it’s not a stifling fragrance so I like it. Beside the Naniwa rose bush, the strong-smelling jasmine is waiting to bloom.
We guess we can enjoy the Naniwa rose flowers for only a few more days, but thanks for blooming every year! We, and the cats, and the bugs, are all enjoying you!

– YS, 27 April 2012