冬の庭で、白い花に惹かれます。雪を想像させるだけでなく、寒い日に明るさを添えてくれます。
I am drawn to white flowers for winter gardening. They evoke snow, and also add brightness to the cold days.
From last year, I like these images of the balcony garden in late fall, still crowded and with leaves turning color, the previous year’s purple salvia re-bloom, and new pink gerber daisies as highlights.
ガーベラの雑種をもう一つ。植物の室内撮影をもう一つ。
こんなに細かく刻まれた花びらを見たことがありませんでした。東京の冬のベランダで育っています。
Another gerber hybrid. More indoor plant portrait photography.
I’d never before seen a gerber with shredded petals. Another lovely winter flower in Tokyo.
もう一つ、植物の室内撮影。このミニガーベラはとても派手ですね。たくさん化学肥料を使っているからかもしれません。ホームセンターにはそんな植物が多いです。短い茎は異常で、このピンクと白色のガーベラは人工的です。人工的に育てられた花と手作りの陶芸を組み合わせるのはかっこいいと思います。
More indoor plant portrait photography.
I love how this short stemmed pink-and-white gerber is so loud. It seems super-charged with fertilizers, which seems likely since I bought it at Shimachu, a “DIY” home center in Nakano. I like the prices and the proximity, although I consider many of their plants more on the human side of the nature continuum.
In winter, it seems like some of the filler and seasonal color I bought there is lasting a long time. And I think there’s a perverse balance in combining factory-produced plants with hand-made ceramic.
冬の日光は、室内で植物を撮影するのにいいと思います。
ベランダの庭には、植木鉢が多いです。ですから、室内に持って来るのが簡単です。一つの植物はお客さんを接待するときに使えますし、気分を変えてくれます。盆栽は一番持ち運びがよくて、いくつかの要素が小さな世界を作ってくれます。
The winter sunlight is particularly good for indoor plant portrait photography.
Bonsais are the ultimate in portable and creating an entire, changing world with few elements. Part of gardening involves the overall effect of dozens or hundreds of plants. But part is also the specific plant and season.
As a balcony gardener using containers, I have many small plants that are especially portable. A single indoor plant can welcome a guest or create a mood.
マンションは小さいので、ベランダの庭がいつも見えます。寒いときには、多くの時間をなかで過ごします。
One advantage of a very small apartment is that two of our three small rooms face the balcony with a wall of windows. You don’t need to make a special trip to observe what’s going on in the garden. It’s always there. As it gets cold, I spend more time inside.
寒いときには、温室に来るのが熱帯林への安い休暇みたいです。夢の島熱帯植物館を訪れました。戦後、たくさんのごみで作られた島です。外でパパイアの並木を見ました。この果物を東京で育てることができますか。
The same week I participated in the Umi no Mori tree planting, I had the opportunity to re-visit Yume no Shima, Tokyo’s most famous artificial island made of waste. This urban development started in the 1950s. Now it’s a vast area with a sports club, botanic garden, playing fields, semi-wild palm landscape, a marina, and a still functioning incinerator. It’s showing its age with deferred maintenance and sparse usage.
I love how it’s named “Dream Island.” This time I visited the botanic garden. On the outside is a row of papaya trees, which I thought too tropical to grow outdoors in Tokyo. There’s also a row of ceramic frog planters leading to the front door. A green house is a great place to go on a cold day, like a brief tropical holiday at very low cost.
花壇の剪定の前と後の写真。この庭はビルの管理人と退職した夫婦が世話をしています。上の写真は、１０月で、葉と花が多いです。１１月は、隣の壁が見えます。剪定の後で、もっと明るくなりました。冬も毎月、花が咲いています。
I like this before and after photo set. It shows an apartment building green space that sits between the ten story building and its two story neighbors, homes and a plumbing supply business. It borders a small street that is mostly pedestrian.
The garden has a mix of flowering vines, bushes, bulbs, and a row of pine trees that were probably planted 35 or 40 years ago. The utility pole support is borrowed infrastructure for training a vine upwards.
The photo above was taken October 24, 2011, and the one below November 23, 2011. Above you can see all the fullness of summer: lush foliage, pink and red flowers at every height level, a blurring of the boundary with the neighbor’s garden.
A month later, the 3 story tree has been heavily pruned, which lets light in during the cold months. All the plants have been cut back, and you can see the wall separating the properties.
The maintenance is a mix of semi-professional gardeners hired by the apartment building and a retired couple living in the garden apartment. Although far more restrained in winter, the garden continues to bloom in every month, no doubt because of their efforts.
ベランダの庭で、狭い道が混乱のなかの秩序を作ります。木の床や赤い葉やダリアや白い釉薬が対照しています。時々この小さな庭のなかで迷います。
For a brief moment, I managed to clear a long path on my narrow balcony garden. There is only the slightest order within the chaos. I like the contrast made by the wood boardwalk, the red leaves and dahlia, and the white glaze on the pots I made at Shiho ceramic studio. Sometimes I get lost within this small garden.
私のベランダの庭には、違う場所を呼び起こす植物を並べて置きます。ここはバラとフジバカマは一緒にあります。小さな庭なのに、楽しいです。
In my balcony garden, I like juxtaposing plants that evoke different places. Here is a late-blooming pink rose, originally from Asia yet cultivated extensively in Europe, along with fujibakama, one of Japan’s seven fall flowers. Mixing forms, colors, and histories make even the smallest garden fun.
文化の日にオランダ大使館が一般公開されました。大使公邸と庭を訪ねるためにたくさんの人が来ました。東京の中で、たくさんの庭と自然が通常は住民に開かれていません。オランダ大使館の庭は和風と洋風の特徴が混ざっています。よく手に入れされた庭にも、自然に生えたシュロというヤシもあります。シュロというヤシは、江戸時代に多くの用途がありました。オランダ大使館を散歩しながら、長い貿易と鎖国の時代を想像しました。
On Japan’s Culture Day, the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo opened the doors to its magnificent ambassador’s residence and garden. Hundreds of locals took advantage of this rare inside look. It reminded me that many of Tokyo’s greatest green spaces are in private hands or inaccessible to the public like the Imperial Palace.
It’s fantastic that the Netherlands embassy opens their diplomatic outpost to the public twice a year. The house was initially designed in the 1880s and rebuilt after the 1923 earthquake. Although some say the style is “colonial,” the building reminds me of upper class residences in the United State’s northeast. From some angles, I could imagine Gatsby throwing a large garden party.
The garden is a fantastic mix of towering pines and other trees, a pleasantly irregular lawn, and a mix of traditional Japanese garden plants with plenty of imports like roses. Within this well maintained garden, I was pleased to see Tokyo’s native palm tree, the shuro, which easily self-sows and carries a history of being used for centuries in domestic life, as brooms, roofing, and sandals.
The visit also reminded me of the centuries of Dutch-Japanese history. This year I visited Dejima in Nagasaki, the sole foreign trading post during the centuries when Japan remained otherwise closed to the world. The visit conjured scenes of trading ships, cultural emissaries, and globalization in its earlier stages.
コスモスは東京の秋の花だと知っていますか。近所の花店で買った。今庭で、ピンクや濃い青や白や黄色の花が多いです。ブルーベリーの葉は紅葉になります。
Did you know that cosmos are a fall flower in Tokyo? You see them everywhere this time of year, so I picked up this one from my neighborhood flower shop. This fall my garden has a lot of pink (roses, fujibakama), deep blue (Okinawa morning glory, lavendar, salvia), and white and yellow (pansies, marigold, geranium). The blueberry bush leaves are also turning red and gold.
