Where do you work?

I have recently upgraded my office!

Well when I say I, I mean my mom did all the hard work and now I am reaping the rewards!

All the hours she put in sorting out our yard so it actually looks presentable has paid off and I'm so glad we invested in the parasol. I burn terribly so I rarely sat out. Now I can actually enjoy the yard and all the flowers and the weather is just oh-so-perfect at the moment. Give is a couple of weeks and the rainy season will be upon us. Not fun.

Most of the kids on our street are now at kindy or school, which means from about 8.00am onwards it is lovely and peaceful too but there re distractions, oh yes, the drama that goes on in the garden.

The most interesting has been the bees. We have blackberry brambles along one fence and I noticed a brown bee buzzing up and down but not collecting nectar, it was as if he was on guard duty.

It turned out that was exactly what he was doing, a little later a black bee (yes, they have black bees here) came to collect some nectar and the brown bee was not happy and started attacking the black bee. Chasing it off. A little while later the black bee would come back and the brown bee would have another go at it. We did a bit of research and it turns out that the black bee has no sting but the brown bee does.

Quite fascinating, that wasted a whole chunk of time!

And then there is Edvard and Munch, the two cute caterpillars munching their way through our orange tree. It's not a very big tree so I was a bit concerened! And Edvard was the bigger of the two and we reckoned he was about ready to go for 'the change'. We had been checking up on them every day but then we had a couple of really rainy days and.... Edvard and Munch had disappeared! We have no idea where they went, couldn't find a crysalis anywhere and no sign of the cute caterpillars. 

We are hoping that they found somewhere cool to hang out and change into butterflies and that a very hungry sparrow didn't eat the very hungry caterpillars!

We also have a couple of little lizards that come out and party when they think nobody is watching, I'm telling you, it's all happening in our back yard!

I could do with a better chair but you know, life could be worse! 

Do you have a nice place to work?

Our annual event…

in the garden!

We don't have much of a garden, which is just as well considering my gardening skills - or lack of! We haven't touched it all winter so after lunch yesterday we decided, on a whim to go and buy some new plants. Of course, that meant we had to clean up the mess and pull up all the weeds before we could get potting plants…

Hopefully we have made a better choice this time! We did try the square foot garden way but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be and so we have ditched that system. Succulents seem to fair quite well under my gardening regime so I was all for just filling the garden with them but hubby wasn't having any of it! We did get a fair few and I put my foot down regarding marigolds - we always buy them and within a week they have been eaten!

Ebi-kun refuses to get rid of his first bike so we are attempting to turn it into a garden feature! Hmm yeah, we will see how that goes! I want to have a basket on the back with some flowing kinda flowers in it (you can see my garden skills shin through, I am clueless about plant names!)

The other hardcore plant we have got is the rosemary, which all went a bit mental last year, hubby cut it back to about 1/4 of it's size, we need to keep it under control, we still have lemon balm popping up everywhere after that crazy experiment. So the centre box is now all herbs and the big box is a bit of a hodge podge. We found a blackberry plant and rhubarb… yeah I know, what were we thinking! At least it is looking a bit tidier, this time of year it is nice to sit out during the day and now most of the kids are in school, it is pretty peaceful too!

Pinterest Love - My Secret Garden

We don't have much of a garden, more of a yard but I would love to have it over-flowing with pretty flowers, reality is that I don't enjoy gardening and it is usually over flowing with weeds!

But one can dream for a beautiful garden...this is how my secret garden would be filled....

Lots of pretty flowers...

Source: Uploaded by user via Jo on Pinterest

A tree house...

Source: garden-artistry.tumblr.com via Jo on Pinterest

A secret doorway...

Source: pixdaus.com via Jo on Pinterest

This cool seat to sit and read in...

Source: myburghdesigns.com via Jo on Pinterest

And a pizza stove, perfect for inviting friends round.

Source: casasugar.com via Jo on Pinterest

What would you have in your secret garden?

How to keep your house cool...

As you probably know, last year Japan had a lot of problems being able to supply enough power around the country and this year pretty much looks like the same thing will happen. So the government have been encouraging various ideas so keep Japan cool (like it isn't already the coolest place on earth!). They are asking companies to to make the dress code more casual and to reduce the use of the air-con - as far as I am concerned it is about time this issue was addressed. The company I used to work at would have the aircon set really low and then the female office workers would sit their in their knitted cardigans and a blanket over them to keep warm, insane!

So, another idea which really took off last year was to grow a green curtain, we didn't get round to it last year but we are having a go this time. The idea is to grow a vine based plant against a wall that gets a lot of sun, the foliage blocks out a lot of the direct sunlight and so reduces the amount of heat radiating into the room. According to Kyocera the reduction can be up to 15°. 

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago, some of the vines have now reached the balcony, not bad for this completely non-green-fingered gal! We decided on goya, partly because it is supposed to be the easiest to grow and partly because no one actually likes it so we don't mind pulling the flowers off to help it grow higher. 

If it turns out to be successful then next year we will try one on the front of the house too, this corner gets the brunt of the lunch - afternoon sun which makes the living room unbearable without the aircon on. If you need any help getting started with a green curtain, I recommend this site.

So, do you grow a green curtain? Which plant to you use? Please share in the comments section.

Welcome to my office....

The other day, I gave you a peek into my studio over on Whip Up but to be honest I haven't spent much time up there recently. I am working on a new project that involves no sewing and a lot of computer things. So, I have been enjoying an outdoor office this week, I have been proof-reading and prepping (all paperwork) out in the yard.

Our yard isn't the oasis of colour that I would like it to be but then that would mean actually doing some work on it, in our garden it is survival of the fittest! Lovely as it is sitting out, it is also distracting, I can't help watching the bees do their work.

***have you entered the GIVEAWAY yet?***

Pretty in pink....

I'm not sure why, but our garden is predominately pink this year... well it was until the rain flattened everything yesterday!

The yochien garden...

Ebi-kun had yochien on Saturday, he usually goes twice a month on a Saturday but we decided before he joined that we wouldn't be tied to the yochien schedule so if it falls on a 3 day holiday and we have camping plans then camping is what we do. Anyway, hub and I went and did some child free shopping, a much nicer experience if you ask me then having a whining child in tow, then when we were done we dropped by to pick him up and we had a look at the kitchen garden while we were at it. Each class has a set of veg pots with pepper, aubergine, mini tomatoes and cucumbers plus they have their own flower pots, they all grow their own morning glory (which they use to make iro mizu) and the class has their own sunflowers too.

They also have a couple of small rice paddies, they grow potatoes in here in the winter then plant rice late spring. A couple of weeks ago Ebi-kun came home with a small bag of potatoes and some aubergine, the three older classes had dug up all the potatoes then they were shared between all the kids at the yochien. For the veg the kids did rock, paper, scissors to see who took what home.

Hubby and I were laughing at the sorry state of the cabbages when the head sensei came over to say hello, then he told us that they don't grow the cabbage to eat, they grow them so that they get lots of butterflies flying around the yochien - sweet!

Name that plant....

I think that you know by now that my fingers are not green, when I plant things in the garden they have to be pretty hardy, survival of the fittest! I did put beer out for the slugs that were eating the strawberries but that just resulted in drunken slugs in the garden, I discovered that some slugs can swim! Plus hubby wasn't too chuffed that I was feeding the local wildlife his beer.

Anyway, I need some help identifying a couple of plants, yes, I know I should have put the labels on them but these are both plants that were coming through in the spring and the markers had got lost somehow, this one is in a pot and is about 4 foot tall, any ideas?

And this one, when you rub the leaves is smells like basil but it doesn't look like the basil I planted this year, the new basil has shinier leaves. I did plant some sweet gevonese basil seeds last year, possibly in the same spot, or maybe not. I am hoping it is basil so I can use it in the kitchen but I am a bit worried it is something else and will poison us all.