Joy with my new garden

I've been wanting to write about my little garden for a while now. What's been stopping me? I've concluded that it's because it is not perfect, several aren't doing that wel! But that's a terrible excuse. Not all the plants are at their best, but it is winter time here, getting down to zero at nighttime, not the best time for plants! And because most of them are new to me and the conditions in this new apartment are also new to me, so I've been making lots of little adjustments: to plant placement (light and temperature variation), how much I water them.

These last five months has been a rebuilding time for my little potted garden. I got back some of the plants that I gave to others to take care of for the year we were away. Not all the plants made it through the transition to different locations and caretakers, so there was a fair bit of natural attrition. But as I got back some "old friends", I also got some new plants from the ladies who were looking after my plants, which was a surprise. On top of that I bought some new plants too. So now I have 21 pots with plants in them. Some are enjoying the bay window in our living room, two are in the dining/multipurpose area, and the rest are out on our tiny balcony, sharing space with laundry some days.

Parlor Palm

I felt very happy when my new garden was largely assembled. Why? Apparently there are many benefits to having indoor plants in your life (see this Time article, which, amongst other things cites an experiment where people who spent five to ten minutes in a room with a few houseplants felt happier than those in a plant-free room!) They are generally good for your mental health, though obviously not if plants are dying on you, which is why I always advise people to start with easy plants like geraniums, which are super hard to kill in moderate climates (mine survived being snowed on in Tokyo but didn't survive a year in a higher altitude when temperatures are much lower than here)! 

I particularly enjoy plants that I can nurture and see grow, rather than those you can buy fully grown and just water. There is also a lot of satisfaction in making changes so that a plant starts to thrive again. The Parlor Palm we have started out as a tiny little thing I bought for 100 yen (about a dollar)! It's now quite tall.

My sick maidenhair. I moved it outside
because I was concerned the fungus 
might jump ship to other plants, so I 
guess it's in isolation!

The maidenhair fern also started quite small and the second one (pictured) is a baby of the larger one. They've both been through some rough times. I think I'll have to wait till the weather warms us to see how they go. The latest drama with the little one seems to be a fungus of some sort.

Miniature rose

My miniature rose was a gift from David five years ago and it also has survived a few different crises. When we got it back this year it was just sticks and very dry, thankfully regular watering has revived some of the "sticks" and I'm hoping for good things come spring.

On either side of the rose you can see my efforts at a little bit of vegetable growing, but haven't had much success yet: my lettuces are still sprouts and I'm really not sure about the plants I thought were spring onions.

Baby hydrangeas. I don't know why they still 
have leaves...but I hope they flower in June!

The plants with the best story, though, are the two hydrangeas. Last year when we were moving out of our house in Tokyo I posted a photo of the two large hydrangeas in our backyard just as they were in full bloom, noting that I'd miss them. My mum suggested I take a cutting and someone else suggested that I ask a friend to look after the cuttings. I thought it was quite a long shot, but also realised I had nothing to lose. I Googled the topic, did the deed, then gave the fragile little cuttings to a Japanese friend (who also takes care of her parents' farm) and she gave them back to me in September this year looking magnificent. I'm so glad for the suggestion from my mum and friend, and for my Japanese friend who nurtured them! The parent plants are no longer in existence because the whole house and garden was demolished the week we moved in to our new place. But I've still got these little reminders of the place where we lived for 13 years!

The chrysanthemum is flowering quite nicely, with
many more buds forming, the Gerbera will probably
not flower again till it gets warm, and the Japanese Grape Leaf
Anemone looks a bit ill, but again, hopefully it will limp
along until we get to spring.

One of the surprises: another kind of geranium,
but I don't think it is well, it's also in iso.

The beautiful geranium flowered just in time for Christmas.

On the edge here is my lavendar: first time
trying to grow this plant. It's also not
looking great, but I'm hopeful.

My Aluminum Plant. I've shifted it
around a few times trying to find 
the right light and temperature combos,
it seems to be thriving in this spot 
where it gets light for a short period most
mornings.

I'm so glad to be settled in a place where I can have a garden again. I enjoy watering it and tinkering with it. It's a very small hobby that takes little time and not much money, but brings joy and colour into our lives.

Another crazy week: but I'm thankful

I'm starting to realise that having a few less responsibilities means I'm more flexible! So I'm able to take up short-term opportunities more easily and have the space to recover from them.

This last week I've done a few not-usual things and it's been crazy busy. In fact this is the first time in seven days that I've actually sat at my desk.

David's office where we spent several hours on
Friday sorting wrestlers into weight classes,
recording their names, and setting up the
 initial bouts.

Friday and Saturday were crazy busy, but fun. David and I did the admin side of the school's wrestling tournament. We had 250 wrestlers on campus (a large number for our league). The gym was packed to the rafters. We held a middle school tournament, as well as a full raft of male and female weight brackets for the high schoolers. It's very hard to easily describe what we did because it included so many moving pieces and a lot of copying of names. As bouts happened we had to add those results to the tree diagram (called a bracket) and then create the scoring sheet for the new matches with the relevant wrestlers. We problem solved and answered many questions. One of the most satisfying things personally was solving problems by tracking down wrestlers whose bouts had slipped through the cracks somehow. We've benefited from others doing this for our sons over the last 13 years, so it was great to be able to serve others in this way. I'm thankful it was just those two days, though!

The busyness didn't stop after Saturday...but here are some photos to show you something of the weekend (see more about my week after the photos).

CAJ campus was stunning over the weekend...
but I spent most of my time inside!

No filter here (or in the one above)!

Wrestlers, coaches, and supporters everywhere!
The noise level was very loud...for 12 hours.

I got 20 minutes out of the gym
at lunchtime and I went for a short 
walk around campus. This
ginko tree was stunning.

This was admin central: where we spent about 12 hrs on
Saturday. We had several helpers, including the veteran
coach (Dan Rudd) who did announcements
until he ran out of energy mid afternoon. Coach Rudd
is the one who taught our eldest son in the earliest
days of his wrestling career (and answered so many
of our early questions).

I didn't see much wrestling...we didn't have the 
best seats in the house! Past all the people in
this photo is a CAJ wrestler getting his gold medal, he's
a former long-time teammate of our youngest son.

And the days moved onwards: Sunday morning was our usual time at church with lunch afterwards, then chatting to our sons over an hour or two. 

We had overnight guests on Sunday night, but due to their short stay (34 hrs) in Japan they had limited data on their phones to communicate with us as they travelled from the airport and a lack of on-hand cash meant they had difficulty buying train tickets. We live 1 ½ hrs from the airport, so it isn't an easy drop-in, but they were determined. We waited an hour for them at the train station. Thankfully we could pop into the cafe there for some warmth as the temperature was around 5C. It turned into a late night! The next day I showed them around the school and our neighbourhood and they treated us to lunch. We've had very few supporters visit us in recent years, so it was a delight to have this couple visit.

Another great Japan Harvest issue completed!

On Tuesday I went into the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA) office to help pack magazines. A friend from CAJ-parent era met me there and we caught up while stuffing magazines into packets. That was an excellent use of time and I felt refreshed afterwards. I left a little early to get back to school for (you guessed it): more wrestling! Just an hour as a spectator, this time.

Yesterday I had another new thing going on: I'm hosting a short term worker and I met her for coffee and to talk about her involvement with social media, her weekly schedule, etc. I then took her to meet a Japanese friend of mine at the JEMA office, we ate lunch and packed more magazines. Another really good use of time because while doing a manual job like that there is much time for conversation.

It's been a lot. I ended up on my bed before dinner on both Monday and Wednesday. I'm really tired! Today is an office day (and a short grocery run). I'm grateful for the peace here at home and that while I've been gone things have been chugging along in the two teams I work with.

Thankfully it looks like the coming weeks aren't quite so hectic. It's just under three weeks till we travel to Australia for our son's wedding, so hopefully we'll be a bit more rested and able to enjoy that time.

A new layer of being settled

On Monday I went to our organisation's monthly regional gathering on the other side of Tokyo. It was, as usual, a huge day. But also a really good one. In particular I was able to have four longer conversations with old friends and new. I'm an extrovert with a strong introvert shadow (at least that's what I was told 25 years ago). I love time alone, as well as spending time with people, but most value deeper conversations. Random memory: no one told me that on your wedding day that you shouldn't expect to have deep conversations with anyone of these precious people who you invite to share your special day, it was very disappointing.

Some of the conversations on Monday included questions about how well we were setting back into life in Japan. It's over four months since we returned now, and you might think that is a long time, but in fact we've been in transition for much of the last two years, and some of those changes were massive, so it takes time to resettle and adjust.

I was surprised to realise that during November I'd hit another level of "settledness". And I think that is mostly related to connectedness. During November several things happened. 

We also had time to set up our
Christmas decorations and tree
on Saturday. Doing that for the first
time in a new house is always
significant. We're particularly
enjoying the fairy lights in the
lounge room.

School

I've been able to be a useful part of several events at school, a place where I no longer hold the role of "mother of student" and wondered if I'd find a way to be part of the community.

1. School bazaar where we rented a table and not just sold stuff to happy customers, but got to catch up with old (and new) friends.

2. Wrestling. It's been a few minutes since I mentioned this here! And no, we no longer have a wrestler at school, but it turns out that I can still participate. Our school team has had several matches "at home" over the last few weeks and it's been fun to wander down (just 5 minutes on my bike), to cheer, and also catch up with old and new friends in the bleachers. This Saturday CAJ is hosting several schools at an all day tournament. David's running the event for the first time and I'm his assistant! I'm looking forward to working with him again these next couple of days.

3. Christmas concert. Last Thursday we went to the Christmas instrumental concert at school (yep, they have a choral one too). I love orchestral music, it was fun being part of the audience. But I unexpectedly found myself getting sentimental as I sat in the school gym. It's a place where so many of our family's important events have happened. Sporting events, yes, but also three high school graduations, and various other events. So many memories (am I getting old?). I ended up sitting next to someone else who has many memories. She worked with our eldest son when he was in Grades 3 and 4, in a period of life when he definitely was struggling. She was so happy to hear how things are for him now.

Church

Since we came back to Japan we've also been searching for a new church home and during November we found one. It's so good to be settled, not just in that decision, but also week-to-week knowing where we'd be attending the next Sunday. 2024 has been very unsettled. We've worshipped in 16 different churches this year, five of those were churches we visited to speak about our work, seven were churches we've visited in Japan in the last four months, and we also spent two months early in the year travelling on long-service-leave and at different localities each weekend.

This new church includes a number of people from some of our Japan "circles": school, parents of kids who were classmates of our boys, and missionaries I've met via my magazine work and retreats I've been on. David has a couple of the youth under his care this year at school and one of them is also on the wrestling team, so we've been able to get to know them a little there. This church has a tradition (as many churches in Japan do) of eating lunch together after worship. It's a BYO situation and we've been enjoying "breaking bread" with church members and gradually meeting more people. Sundays are becoming a big blessing.

We've also been riding to church, which is potentially good for our health, as it's further than we usually ride each week: about 18 km round trip. But that's a story for another day (navigation in Tokyo isn't easy on a bike).

So, in answer to the question: How are you settling? I think we've hit another level and are feeling pretty settled. Something I read today reminded me of the "Maslow's hierarchy of needs", a psychological theory that organised human needs into five categories in a triangle figure. The base level is physical needs like food, shelter, and rest; after that is safety needs; then love and belonging needs; esteem needs (need for respect, recognition and status); and finally self-actualization needs (to achieve one's full potential and be creative).

There is some truth to this. The basic idea is that the "lower" needs need to be fulfilled before the higher one's can be, however it's also true that people are usually partially satisfied and unsatisfied at any one time. And of course it doesn't factor faith in there, although you could say that trusting God for all your needs changes all this. However, it did strike me that some of my unsettledness could be related to struggling with belonging as well as changes in "status". Just something to mull over.

We're flying to Australia again in a month, so that's probably going to destabilise me again, but it's just a short visit (for our son's wedding, but hopefully include many more opportunities for deeper conversations with those we meet than ours did), and then we'll come back to our new home.

The Psalmist says it well:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me. (Psalm 16:5–7 NIV)