The flowers and the bees, the birds in the trees (image intensive)

Sukagawa calls itself a garden city, and it's not hard to see why. I can take a trip to the local supermarket and come across no less than 30-odd species of flora and fauna on the sidewalk alone. It's a refreshing change from grey concrete and sunburnt foliage in Sydney.

All this green is good for the soul. The fresh air ain't half bad either. and since it's nearly the end of summer right now (all the cicadas have finally shut up and died), a lot of flowers are blooming with a vengeance. Methinks it's one last hooray before fall sets in and the cooler weather slows things down a bit.

Here are just a few of the characters that populate this city:

Ok, ok I kid. The last one isn't exactly from the neighbourhood. It's my air freshener.

I really wish I could name the rest of them, but they never did see the importance of botany when I went to school. And they wonder why their students are all soulless automatons. *sigh*

I also live right next door to the Sukagawa Peony Garden, which boasts an impressive collection of peony plants, and is apparently quite famous throughout Japan. Pity I got here in the middle of summer, and I have to wait until the next spring for the garden to really strut its stuff. Pictures will ensue when peony season comes about again.

So to compensate for the lack of peonies, I've started a small garden on my balcony on top of my air-conditioner's compressor. I even bought fake grass to turf the surface of the balcony, but gave up once I realized that the really realistic looking grass would cost me pretty much an arm and a leg (actually about $50 from the local 100 yen shop). This really is the fault of the kids at my homestay in Aizu; they gave me a few seeds from their morning glory plant and I thought it would be a shame if I didn't plant them. Curse yoo kiddies for restoring the circulation to my green thumbs! I just hope they don't turn out to be two left feet (de-volution is so not Darwin).

So far they've progressed like this:

I thought they'd be lonely, so I went out and got me sweet peas, nadeshiko (marguerite carnations) and pink lipped daffodils to plant, so the top of my compressor is looking quite busy now. Hopefully it'll be a full fledged mini garden once it gets to springtime in March. Does it look like I'm settling in? Naw...