The strangeness of watering plants

Hello all,

Just a quick check in tonight.  I'm feeling droopy which never bodes well for scintillating writing.

So this morning around 8am, while the rest of the house slept and the cats slurped up their morning canned food treat, I went outside to water our vast collection of potted plants.

We have a vast collection of potted plants because we have nowhere else to plant green things.  I mean nowhere.  No front yard, no back yard, no side yard.  Our front door opens out right onto our teeny side street.  The sides of our house  are a scant 8 inches or so from the houses on either side, and the back of our house is within finger tip distance of an apartment building and a local onsen.

So yeah, it's potted plants or nothing.

I slipped out of  the house and picked up our pink hyakuen (aka Dollar store) watering can and filled it for the first of probably 20 to 30 times.  

And of course I have a watering routine.

I start at the far left of the house, near our bicycles.  I water the huge out of control aloe vera, the tiny peach tree, the tiny orange tree, the tiny olive tree and the geranium.  Then I load up the can again and water our 3 foot tall evergreen which we use in December as our Christmas tree.

Then it is time for the vegetables.

I was at this point in the routine when the older woman from the house across from us slipped out her sliding door, her own watering can in hand, and greeted me.

"Ohayoo gozaimasu."  She said, smiling and bowing.

I returned the greeting.

She asked me what we were growing and I told her, sliding into Japanese-accented English when the specific names of the plants in Japanese evaded my mind.

She watered her few potted plants, commiserating with me about the annoyances of watering plants in the summer heat, then said farewell and slipped back inside her house.

I returned to my watering.  Mint.  Watermelon.  Eggplant.  Tomatoes.

Our  other elderly neighbor (a good many of our neighbors are elderly, truth be told) from the corner rode past me on his bike, and screeched to a halt in front of me.

He greeted me, grinning at our array of pots.

He asked me about the chamomile and corn, and informed me that he preferred flowers to vegetables.

Then he leaped into a detailed description of his friend who lives in Liverpool, who takes pictures of flowers and posts them on his website.

Which of course led, quite logically, to him listing all the wildlife that lives along and in our nearby river, Kamogawa.

After which he informed me that 50 years ago, when he was in elementary school, Japanese schools didn't have swimming pools (as all of them do now, for summer swim lessons--Japanese schools start in April remember).

So when he was a boy, students learned to swim  in the river, in a spot that had been dredged to form a makeshift natural pool.

Mind you, he was speaking in Japanese the whole time, a fact that didn't really sink into my brain until he gave me one last grin and started riding away, but not before quickly  informing me that his father was in the hospital, and  was scheduled to come home today.  I offered my good wishes and condolences, and off he went, squeaky bike wheels and all.

I finally returned to finish my watering, realizing belatedly, that I had actually understood everything he had said to me.  Not that I could answer very complexly in kind, but I was able to get caught up in his story without  need of a dictionary or a translator.

It was a lovely realization.

So while I still sound like a babbling 2 year old when I speak Japanese, at least I can understand much of what is said to me.  Half the battle won I say.

And a good way to start the day.

But now it is time for me to end the day.

Oyasumi nasai.

Until next time.