Found a ladybug walking around in our garden. It was enough big and outstanding for a couple of far sighted eyes of an old man :-) If the black marks on its back were 7, we call it "Nanahoshi tentou" because this "nana" means 7. But this one had a lot more. Wonder what's its name though.
Finally all the guest rooms in our place got airconditioned. Hope everyone likes it.
Went up to Hakuba Goryu Alps daira botanical garden to pick up weeds there. I prepared some towels to protect my neck from sunburns and a hat to do my head. Noticed that when we get older, we prepare something different for different purposes which we never needed when we were young lol......
The altitude of Alps daira is around 1,500 meters. It was 20C today with cool and dry windblow which made us comfortable to do the work.
We started transplanting some inpatience flowers in our garden. They bloom better in the shades rather than under sunshine. When we hang some like this picture, we use lighter sand.
Another shot from a bit further distance. It's a little bit tough to choose flowers if your house is painted in red like our house because many flowers are like red in color but not so many other colors like blue, yellow or white. If we choose red flowers, maybe you can not find them good if they are located just close to our house. And still can not find any favorite flowers which can be in bloom good at the shade in our garden because we left some trees around which make shades. After all, we are to choose inpatience because they bloom in the shade and we like them.
Sometimes we put pots full of red flowers which are the same color of our house in some area full of grasses around for our customers to see from their rooms. They look pretty especially after some rain falls. We make our garden little by little :-)
As there are ravens and hawks in the forest, it was clear that his life was not guaranteed if I got away. I knew a small bird like that didn't understand what I said but I could not help talking to it like "Are you okay?". I felt as if I were a stupid boy. Blue and white flycatchers are small birds like sparrows. Perhaps a little bit bigger than them. Males and females of this bird have totally different body color. Male ones are clearly blue, white and black as you see. But female ones are moss green if I can describe. With that tiny body, they fly over than thousand kilometers from the south to Japan to spend their time in summer here to breed. After they reach Kyushu island, they can fly along the shore, rivers, roads, railways whatever on the ground but before the Kyushu island, they have to fly on the sea which is tough.
I am not sure how often I have ever described the GW scenery here in Hakuba. But a picture could describe much more than words do. Japan North Alps mountains with snow around the peak at the background, maybe you can find the Hakuba Goryu ski slope Alps - daira gerande there. You can also see some cherry blossoms are getting in bloom in the pic. 
The other day I transplanted more than hundred pots of pangies into our flowerbeds. Since we still get some frosts even at the last half of May, we can not put any summer flower there. If we would do it now, probably better have them in some flower pots then move them below the roof when we get some frost notices.
Someone told me that rosemaries would survive outside of the house even in winter so I tried that way but see, they were all dead! Actually they looked almost surviving in March but they got worse and worse in April. I think Hakuba is not an easy place for them to survive.
I purchased some new rosemary pots. Would keep them inside of the house in winter because we need them for cooking.
Air guns which take snow off from snowboards and skis. It seems some compressers were hid in the wall besides them, tough to hide that kind of stuffs from train fans while trains have some compressers to open/close the doors. We are used to the noise, so we know what's inside the wall! :) Seems very convenient to skiers, snowboarders.
They say people in Finland make ice candles in their gardens at this time of the year when it gets coldest.
