Wednesday, September 3--No Green Thumb Required

For anyone who heard me complain about the size of lots in neighborhoods we visited in the States, I take it all back. Here, you are lucky if you even have a lot. Since the entire population of Japan (127 million) lives in only 19% of the country’s land area, there are a lot of high-rise apartment dwellers. For those fortunate enough to live in a house in the suburbs (like us), you better like your neighbors. There is literally less than 10 feet between our house and our neighbors’ homes. This means that if you are outside or have your windows open, you can hear your neighbors talking, rattling dishes, playing the piano, closing cabinet doors (remember there is no insulation in the walls to help with sound-muffling).

This also means that yard work is a snap. Our yard does not have the first blade of grass in it! Not because grass won’t grow (the weeds do quite well) but because there’s absolutely no way you could cut it, short of getting on your hands and knees with a pair of scissors. Our yard is about 40 inches deep on the sides, and less than that in the back. You might be able to make a single pass with a small lawnmower (if it weren’t for all of the strange miniature manhole-type covers stuck up everywhere) but you’d never be able to turn the corner from the side of the house to the back. Even if you tried to cut the grass with a weed-whacker, you’d end up slicing off your feet at the ankles trying to maneuver in that small space. Consequently, our “yard” is gravel around the sides and back. The only maintenance required is weed-removal. The house had been vacant for several months when we moved in, so there were quite a few weeds, yet pulling every last one by hand today only took me about 45 minutes. Now that’s the kind of yard work I can handle!

The front “yard” is larger—possibly close to six feet deep. But there is no grass here either. Instead, it is full of trees and bushes, selected to give as much privacy from the street as possible. I recognize a crepe myrtle and several azaleas, but everything else is a mystery. Once Jim gets home with the camera (yes, I foolishly put mine in the pile of stuff to arrive via ship instead of carrying it with me) I will post pictures and y’all can help me try to figure out what else is out there. I feel like I should recognize some of them…especially the tree that is flowering now, with pretty white blooms that close up tight then drop off. Except for pulling weeds, there's nothing for me to do in this part of the yard either. A gardener comes twice a year, I assume to trim the precisely shaped shrubs--what else could he possibly do? If I want to exercise my own horticultural skills, I'm going to have to either create some container gardens for the front entrance or start collecting house plants again.