Why I Oughta...

This is a photo I took from my cab one early morning that shows off some very large street trees in Tokyo that have been heavily pruned.  I've posted about street trees like this before here .  But, if you look closely behind those larger parkway or street trees, you'll see some smaller, very thin conifer trees that have been trained or pruned to be long and leggy in the style of the larger spruce/pine trees that I saw in the Imperial Gardens.  Remember that photo of a beautiful tree that I posted from outside the Peninsula Hotel ?  I think these little trees might be on their way towards something like that one:  a big, strong singular trunk that can be wired to create some of that curvature and longer limbs with needles clustered on their tips.  Scroll down on this post from my last trip to Tokyo where I visited the Imperial Gardens and you can see more of these mature conifer trees. #8 on my 2019 Garden To-Do List is to plant more conifers .  I know I want to look at

On a recent Sunday morning, the kids and I found ourselves out at Forest Glen Park in Woodridge.  It is right on 75th street and we've driven by it hundreds of times on our way to Nat's folks house over the years, but we've never stopped.  The park has a couple of tennis courts facing 75th Street, but tucked in right behind the courts is a nice playground setup with a soft surface, a bunch of unique equipment for a variety of ages.  Our kids - who span from the upper single digits to just past potty-trained found a place to have fun.  Together.  That's pretty nice. But, the park also has some nice plants (or what appeared to be nice plants since Spring hadn't quite emerged when we arrived) and a neat-looking fountain and/or pond.  You can see the size/scale of the fountain in the photo at the top.  Of note, the fountain is totally out of the ground and at a perfect kid height of like 30" tall.  I call it a fountain/pond because it is kind of a linear pon

"Aurora Borealis?! ...At this Time of Year.  At this time of day.  In this part of the country.  Localized entirely within your Kitchen!?" No.  Not in my kitchen.  But outside of the window of my JAL flight from Tokyo to ORD a few weeks back. The Northern Lights are one of the seven natural wonders of the world and now I've had the pleasure of seeing them with my own two eyes.  And now, thanks to Google Photos NightSight, you guys can see them in pretty much the same fidelity that I saw with my own eyes.    I've written about the Wonders of the World when I posted about the Southern Cross here on the blog . You can see in the photos that I witnessed plenty of greens, but not any purples or blues or yellows or the various other colors and what-have-yous that you expect to see in the Northern Lights.  Green was good enough for me.  No steamed hams, though.  For those of you who have no idea why I opened up this post with that line, here's my first

Not only do they make toilets (excellent ones at that, btw), they also make this child restraint system.  So Moms and Dads all over Japan can sit on the pot in peace. 

On a recent visit to NYC, I decided to ask around for a good recommendation for a black and white cookie.  There are a bunch of lists of the *best* black and white cookie out there on the web, but I figured some local might know the answer to my question:  the best black and white cookie that IS WALKABLE from where I was staying. The answer turned out to be the same:  Russ and Daughters.  It was both walkable and it turns out, #1 on the lists. I walked over there and was immediately struck by the place.  Beautiful sign.  And an even better experience inside.  The store was split down the middle with their smoked fish on the left and the bakery items on the right.  They bagged up a few cookies and off I went. Have a look at one of the cookies below.  These were different than the black and whites that I had been buying at the little bodega across the street from my normal hotel.  These were almost glazed, not frosted.  And definitely not fondant. I liked them and I thi

You can see over the rooftops in the photo above a look at Mt. Fuji that I snapped outside the Shinkansen Train (the bullet train!) from Tokyo to Nagoya one night on my trip.  This was the third time I'd taken that trip, but the first time I was able to see the mountain.  Between night time darkness and/or clouds, it wasn't visible to me on the other trips.  Mt. Fuji is a World Heritage Site and one of Japan's 3 "Holy Mountains"  and is home to a pilgrimage that has taken place for centuries .  Those of you keeping note at home, you'll notice that I've used this photo as the header of the blog for now.  On mobile, I think you only see the sky in the top left portion, but on desktop, you get the full mountain.  Around the archives of the blog, you'll find similar photos of t he Rocky Mountains from Denver and from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs . 

My trip to Japan (with brief stops in Tokyo on either side of a few days down in Nagoya) coincided with the Cherry Blossom Trees being in bloom.  This was the second time I've visited Japan during the Cherry Blossom bloom with the first one being back in 2017.  Here's a post showing the trees then .  I loved the experience so much that I decided to try to find a flowering Cherry Tree to add to our own backyard.  I ended up with this Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree .   The trees this time weren't as full as I think we came a little bit later (late March/early April) this time.   You can kind of see that in the photo above.  It has already bloomed and has lost some of the flowers.  In the photo below, you can clearly see the blooms had mostly fallen off already.   Doesn't mean it wasn't as beautiful.  It was and these photos don't do the trees justice.   This marks the third straight year for Cherry Trees with 2018 being a visit to DC for those alon