Japan has always been a refuge for me, and with all that’s happening in the US I was looking forward to a respite. But after 2 years away, coming back to this fringe party Sanseitō gaining so many seats in the election is mind boggling. The supporters interviewed look & sound eerily like MAGA.

Tsubaki (camellia) fruits looking like apples in our overgrown garden. After using Shiseido’s Tsubaki shampoo, I learned you can make the oil yourself from the flower seeds. I love to think of my now 100-year-old mother-in-law choosing the plants for her garden as a young woman in the Showa era.❤️

Illness threatened to keep me away, but in the end I could see the fading ajisai in my mother-in-law’s garden, so astonishing 35 years ago ringed with trembling blue butterflies. Apparently my husband let the gardener go two years ago, but the seasons go on anyway, a bit ragged around the edges.

Perfect rainy day in Michigan, deer and other creatures venturing out in the coolness. Everything green, bursts of bright day lilies and all the roadside flowers, birds and bugs of my youth. My own Lily turns 18 today but is more skittish than the fawns (wisely).

Wait no

🙌

I half expected it actually was a Monet. Words fail me

This book in particular meant so much to me. I was ill as a child & recovered, but relapsed in 1994. Turned out to be a rare disease with lifelong consequences. This book was the first time I read about the interplay between the brain & immune system.

Yes

If you’re so inclined, please help take out the trash.