Friday 14 September 2012

My landlady's pride

One reason I am in Kyoto and taking this long break from work is to take time off to smell the flowers, as the saying goes.

Coincidentally, my landlady is a person with green fingers and I am in no want of pretty flowers even at my Kyoto home. The patio of the mansion where we live is where my landlady proudly displays her plants.

Around mid-August, I saw a plant prominently placed at the patio which I had never seen before. It caught my attention because of the small, yellow star-shaped flowers flanked by two white petals.

The flowers were in bloom for only a couple of days and I was glad I took a photograph of them.  I wonder what they are called.
A day after I saw the wilted yellow flowers, another new flowering plant was in their place. And I began to realise why I didn't see these plants before. 

My landlady probably kept some of the plants in her house and brought them out only when the flowers started to bloom so that others might admire them too.

"Come look at this flower! It only blooms for one day," she said enthusiastically when she saw me at the patio, and pointed to the huge, crimson flower which looked like a variety of the hibiscus.

"Okusan, you really like flowers, don't you?" I commented. "Yes, I love them!" She said happily and then started to bring me through the various plants at the patio, for the third time in the five months I have lived here.

How nice it will be if I could always be here to listen to Okusan talk about her plants.



2 comments:

  1. The plants are blessed with their caretaker, your landlady, who loves flowers.

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  2. How nice is it to live in place owned by a person with a green thumb? I love flowers too, and you're lucky to have a landlady who knows how to plant and grow them well. If I have that talent, I'll turn my rental place into a mini-meadow. GoldTeam.ca

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