I don't want to leave the negativity of the previous post on the top of my blog for too long, so I'm posting a couple of snapshots that I just took from the kitchen window. Nothing spectacular, but better than venting.

I was feeling just dandy last Saturday morning while we awaited the airport shuttle to pick us up to start a five-day mini vacation to a somewhat tropical island in southern Japan, so I was more than a little dismayed when after hauling the luggage down to the van and settling into my seat that I suddenly realized that my cold – one that plagued me for a month but had, I thought, been over for the last week – had returned with the almost audible thud of a proverbial ton of bricks hitting me. I suddenly felt miserable, and [...]

I'm not sure what variety these blossoms are, but they're quite different from the standard white blossoms that are just getting going in Kyoto, the late-blooming fluffy pink variety, and (of course) the deeply rich plum-blossom pinks. The colors are much like the shidare zakura ("crimson willow cherry") that fill the nearby Heian-Shrine, but the tree doesn't seem all that willowy, so I don't know.

I've been busy on Lightroom projects, and trying to get ready for a short trip to the Amami Islands that we're starting tomorrow morning, but I knew this tree was at full bloom, so I [...]

As I mentioned on my recent Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post, I've been meaning to write about Hirozou Yasuda (安田ひろぞう, or just "Hirozou-san"), the guide we had for a day on Kakeromajima, one of the small southern-Japanese Amami islands in the East China Sea.

We're getting ready for another trip to Amami this weekend, having visited the first time over the New-Year's holidays. I don't know that we'll run into Hirozou-san, but Fumie has been exchanging emails, so I hope so. We really enjoyed the day we spent together.

I tended to take pictures of Anthony, so most pictures [...]

Well, at least the first that I've noticed. Returning from a trip to the store around 2pm, I noticed a few blossoms on the trees near my place. It's just in time, too, because as I noted in the last couple of posts, the plum blossoms have started to wane. So, I grabbed a few snapshots of them, and even turned a couple of ones with blue sky in the background into desktop backgrounds....

Using the time-lapse sequence I made last year as a guide, it seems that these trees have started to bloom about one day earlier than last [...]