The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Very sorry for decelerated post rhythm. There appears to be a law of blogging, a bit like the first law of thermodynamics, the more you work the less you blog. Opposite and equal.

Big deal Open Campus Day

Thousands wait in line for the Thunder Mountain ride

Uncle Vanya

Anyway big success but very demanding.

Read all about it.

http://www.oist.jp/press-room/news/2013/3/5/thousands-visit-during-oist’s-open-campus

Great oaks from little acorns grow

Back in October, on the advice of my learned sister Rosie, I bought some Brugmansia plants. They grew very well until I re-potted them. I went to the I guess Garden Center but that term doesn’t really do justice to the Japaneseness of the place. I wanted to buy some earthy stuff to fill up the bigger pots into which I was to place my flourishing Brugmansia. Alack, the dangers of illiteracy for  I bought a very nice looking sack of stuff that turned out to be highly concentrated pig shit. Into this I placed my Brugmansia and went to California for Christmas.

On my return the poor plants were in  decline and the leaves in fall.  The power of the pig shit had burned their roots and I thought they would die. I re-potted again murmuring ancient flower apology prayers and ringing a little bell. It worked. After a few weeks they started to grow again. Look at them now.

Brugmansia, in my secret garden

Anyway, this morning as I drank my coffee, I had a good look at my plants and to  my surprise I find 3 Brugmansia flowers coyly hiding behind the foliage.

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air”

This makes me unreasonably happy. It augurs a spring of flowers and scent. By the way it is still February.

“The earth laughs in flowers.”

I then looked at the sea.

Spring sea

Spring Has Sprung

“Though the bed has a spring sprung
Outside April has sprung spring. ”

I have waited for Spring to see if the trees outside my house will sprung. They were severely beaten up by the typhoons last year however I assumed they would spring into life once Spring sprung. I now have severe doubts. I think they have been killed.

Dead , dead and never called me Mother

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

 

I struggle through the snow and icy fingered wind to the graveyard where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and other revolutionary heroes are buried. It is very cold and I am a sub-tropical softy. The position of the graveyard is indicated on a Google map on the ‘where to go in Boston’ section of the conference App. When I get there it turns out to be project housing where, when I ask, “Is Paul Revere’s grave around here?”, happy brothers say, ” Man, I sure don’t know ’bout that but he was one,one,one, bad motherf**ker!”  The pin somehow got placed on the wrong place on the map.  I stumble the miles back to the convention center -Oates-like.

Boston dawn

Eggs Benedict with sirloin tips hiding under the eggs. 7:30am

Seika is from Okinawa