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 On average twice a year I clean the filters in the underground irrigation sprinklers, four of them. Perhaps double of that number of times I cut away the groundcover around the sprinklers.
In addition the filter on the water-inlet hose gets cleaned once, in the beginning of the year, [...]  As I wrote in Fertilizing the garden (October 2010), fall is an important time to fertilize the garden, also known as “winterizing.” Shrubs, trees, ground-covers and other plants begin to use their energy to strengthen and expand their root systems in preparation for winter dormancy and spring growth. Fall fertilizing provides a slow absorption of [...]  My first thought for a post-title was ‘Design and re-design by experience’. But then, later I considered that as too strong. Hence the current title. What is that all about ? In this post I will discuss, and more importantly show, an interesting and even intriguing, development. Find the differences in these photo’s (taken from [...]  The “nightingale floor” is made with a special timber technique from 17th century which makes it impossible to walk on the floor without it making quite beautiful squeaking sounds. The idea of the floor surrounding the living and sleeping quarters of the palace was to work as alarm system. No one could enter the space [...]  The samurai quarter of Chiran is a semi-fortified village of which a number of houses survive today. Nowadays this old samurai quarter, with as its center the Honbaba promenade or Bukeyashiki-doori (武家屋敷通り), the street with old samurai residences, or samurai lane of Chiran, narrow paved lanes bordered on both sides by walls of undressed [...] 
In summer the “upper lake” on the Kame-jima, “Turtle island”, gives us a lot of joy. Every day, we see a diversity of birds that come to drink and bath in this small pond. The water in the “upper lake” (right) gets continuously replenished and refreshed by a small fountain-pump that gets the water [...]  Fuji Musume or “Wisteria Maiden”, is a famous classical dance out of the Kabuki theater in Japan. Print made by Utagawa Kunisada I (1826). Fuji (wisteria) Musume (maiden), now performed independently, was first performed in 1826 as one of a set of five dances. The figure of the wisteria maiden first came from the [...] 
For sure winter has come in November-December. It started very early this year and continues for weeks already. For weeks it has been freezing and we where still in 2010 ! Below we show a more or less random collection of photo’s that give a brief impression of our snow-covered garden in December 2010. [...]  Ryogin-an, one of Tofuku-ji sub-temples, Kyoto, has Japan’s oldest Hojo building, that was built around 1387. The Rinzai-shu sect temple has beautiful modern karesansui gardens that were laid out in 1964 by Shigemori Mirei (1896-1975) who was the first to use red, blue and dark-grey gravel. In my second article on the subject ‘Your [...] 
In the Tsubo-en website we have many pages with lessons learned (LL) at the bottom. Recently I started to include LL’s in this diary, classified as such. Having an IT-background, talking about lessons learned reminded me of: “Rule 0: Don’t make a mess of it.” by Edsger W. Dijkstra, a Dutch computer [...]  After a couple of days of frost and white frost, today we got the first snow this winter season. Nothing much, but still. This mostly implies that there will be little to no garden activity. Related: Year round activities in the garden , Season impressions. [...] 
What types of Japanese garden can we distinguish ? In my previous article about this subject I wrote about considerations and decisions to be taken when you are going to build your own Japanese garden. In this article I’ll elaborate on that. As the Japanese garden evolved over 15 centuries it is difficult to [...]  Autumn coloration results in a totally different view of the garden, in more than one way For months the garden gets scattered with fallen leafs and needles. This may fit some gardens, due to the autumn feel, but does not fit ours. Collecting and removing fallen leafs is a major activity this and the next [...] 
These photo’s give an impression of the annual removal of the reeds that grow on the opposite waterway bank at the back of our garden, owned by the golf course. These guy’s use the professional power tools that we can only dream of. This machine clips the reed and collects it in one go. [...] 
Blackbirds are really, really fond of our garden. And so we used to be fond of Blackbirds. This photo only shows one of the damages the birds do to our garden. Beautiful moss taken out of the joints between the flatstones of our “hidden terrace”. No moss is save in the garden and most [...]  Well made decking is very attractive in its own right and is part of a Japanese shoinzukuri style building such as our house. Although our decking is profiled, not normally the case in Japan, it can become slippery with algae and even mosses. This needs to be frequently removed e.g. with a wire-brush when dry, [...]  Although this subject has little to do with our Japanese garden I think it is appropriate to place this article here. We both fell in love with the painting right from the beginning. We first saw this painting during our Grand China tour back in 1992, where we met the son of the artist Xi [...] 
How to go about when you are caught by the beauty of a Japanese garden and you have decided that this is what you want ? Japanese gardens are a living work of art in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature they are constantly [...] 
Edges, we have a lot of them in our garden. Most of them are surface-edges. In a number of earlier posts we showed the visible edges and the frequent maintenance that those require. Apart from visible edges we have plenty of surface edges that are situated out of sight, invisible to an average spectator [...] 
In Birdlife in the garden I wrote about life and dead. This female blackbird was lucky. Although it flew against our living room window it eventually survived. It fell on its back on the wooden deck of the veranda after the bang. We heard the bang and where immediately alarmed. We soon found the [...] |
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