Wood Water Garden

This climbing rose bush blooms like crazy every year then stops after the first flowers fade. In 2007, I trimmed the bush and waited to see if it would continue producing flowers through the summer! it didn't very much. I think it's a one-time perennial bloomer.

A post from June 2007 re the backyard cherry tree. No sour grapes here, even though heavy spring rains and winds flattened the cherry blossoms and discouraged the bees that usually pollinate this tree. As a result there are about one-third or less of the usual amount of cherries this year. I decided not to pick them but to leave them for the birds, and for those eager backyard squirrels - gymnasts who hang upside down and adopt fasicinating postures to get at the fruit. The tree is a Montmorency sour cherry, I believe, which is self pollinating, though when I bought the tree it was labeled a McKinley cherry tree. I was told that it needed another tree of the same kind for pollination. The tree has fruited every year, so either there is a similiar tree in the neighborhood or the tree really is a Montmorency. In the past I have been creative with the cherries - have stewed the fruit with lots of sugar, removed the seeds, and made a cherry syrup to put in sangria, make a cherry drink, or...

The plant has been doing well facing south in zone 5, and has so far weathered the cold while indoors by the window.

In a residential section of Kyoto, I caught sight of this bonsai tree that was cut to fit the space it's in as well as to please the eye, its leaves artistically cut. The Japanese admire things that are "sculpted and controlled," in the words of writer Pico Iyer, who lived in Nara, close to Kyoto. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you will see the "fence" made of horsetail plants that are grown closely together around the base of the tree. Very ingenious. The tree with its gnarled and shaped branches in a "pom pom" look, must be quite old. Note the decorated ceramic tile roof of the house in the background.