there’s a little bird that somebody sends
down to the earth to live on the wind
borne on the wind and he sleeps on the wind
this little bird that somebody sends

Building a second-floor verandah is both tedious repetition of simple timber work like cutting out halved joints and thrilling tightrope-dance-like balance work on a crossbeam.

With all the joist work done, I can start planking the deck, which can be only a one-day job. Planking is also boring but doing tenons and mortises of the banisters and handrail is even worse.

I don’t stint myself of time and effort to figure out the  corner-cutting way, but at the same time, I have to think about the structural strength for safety of the railing– that’s why I can’t sleep now.

I have been working on renovation of my house in Hanase.

The floor is done, the washbaisin is installed, and the kitchen components are put together.

These days, I am concentrating on the second-floor verandah and doing a sort of aerial act. With an impact screw driver in hand, standing on top of a ladder, it’s hard on my right foot, which has been aching from the nail wound I got the other day.

Well, it’s almost done and I can move onto the next work to do: toilet installation– another hard job.

In front of my house are rhododendrons coming into flower buds. They are of wild species but might be planted by someone, and will beautifully bloom soon.

There is a little plant with cute flowers in the fallen leaves at the edge of a slope where I park my car, and just across are daffodils still in full bloom by a neighbor’s place.

On the way to Hanase, I saw cherry trees start to blossom. A magnolia tree was showing off its white flowers full of the branches. I passed by a hedge with full of flowers with single and double petals. I mistook them for roses at a glance but found out they weren’t. I wondered if they were also a kind of rhododendrom.

It’s a beautiful and joyful time to eyes, but unfortunately,  it’s also a torturous season to my eyes with the allergy to pollens. (Well, the pollens as the allergens are from anemophilous plants that are cryptogamous and different from the plants with those good-looking flowers, though…)

There were patches of the snow on the ground in the shade under a tree when I went beyond the Hanase pass. Although it was rather warm during the day time as I was working on building a sun deck, it rained with sleet on the way back after dark. It seemed like the season over there was still one month behind.