I had spotted this fungus a little more than a year ago growing on the lowest part of the trunk and roots on a tree in a temples courtyard.  It’s brightly colored orange ears creating a patchwork, families, against the dark tree bark.

I was captivated by the hues.  I had to get in for a closer look.  I wanted to know what shapes it had taken.  What makes it grow?  Why does it only grow on one of the trees in the temple’s yard?

I don’t know.  These little fungus blossoms help me to focus, to be on my watch. For no one knows when the return will come.

Coming from Miami, Florida I am one that is pretty accustomed to stormy weather.  As a youth I remember storms that would blow through town, knock out the power, and leave trees upturned.  Many of these storms weren’t even hurricane strength.  They were just storms that packed a lot of punch.

I have now been in Japan for more than a decade.  I have seen typhoons come and go.  I have yet to see one hit Tokyo with as much force as some hardcore Miami thunderstorms.  This is not to say that the Japanese typhoons are weak, they surely aren’t.  I wouldn’t be writing this if I lived in Okinawa, or more southern Japan, where the majority of the gale force storms come ashore.

In some ways I usually look foreword to the storms.  The howling winds and the gushing rains bring me back to those humid day of my youth in Miami.  I keep an eye out for the bustling winds.  I peek out my window to see how the storm is progressing.  This storm I learned some lessons the hard way.

My wife and I decided to start a patio garden this spring.  It had been something that we had talked about but never had put it into action until this year.  We have always had plants, but they were mainly large potted fruit trees that have been on our patio for many years.  Actually, they really aren’t that large.  The are more like giant bonsai, because of being restricted to growing within the boundaries of their white pots.  This garden was different.  We were trying to supplement what we eat with fresh herbs and vegetables from our own garden. We put many hours in to the garden.  My wife in fact had become a bit obsessed with gardening and I could often find her out on our veranda tending to our plants.  We had to fight back infestations of bugs with soap and oil.  Cut off leaves that seemed to catch some mysterious ailment.  We had planted baby carrots, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, all sorts of leafy veggies that made our way into our dinner table.  We even had a little bit of excess that we started to pickle from scratch.

This all changed this typhoon.  Our garden was decimated by the strong winds.  Stems snapped, green tomatoes were thrown about the patio.  The eggplant leaves were so battered that they look as if they had been nibbled on right on down to the spines.  The meter high corn stalks were all laying flat out on the container next to them.  I was a bit upset and at the same time I knew that there was really nothing we could do.  There was no way we could have brought the plants inside.  I had to have faith that they would survive at least some of them would.

On my way in to work the morning after the storm I got to think about most of the world that are subsistence gardeners.  They grow food so that they have something to eat.  I was came to a realization that our garden only supplements our diet and I should be thankful that no one in my family was injured by the storm.  If this had happened in a land of farmers who very live depends on what they are able to reap from the earth they would be facing hunger after this storm.

I am sure that our plants will rebound.  Nature has a way of fighting back against itself.  Already my mint plant has started to sprout some new leaves out of the blackened sufferers. The rain also brought out a field of mushrooms at field on my way to work.  The spores had managed to spring up inspire of the torrential rains and forceful winds.

Somethings have to wither so that others can grow.  I am thankful that I have access to food and I can spend time gardening as a hobby.  My heart goes out to the farmers in Japan that lost crops because of the typhoon.  My heart aches for those that would have gone hungry if a powerful storm had hit their farms.

The beautiful cherry blossoms are out.  They survived the near typhoon force weather that hit Tokyo the day before I returned to Japan.

I really haven’t had the time or energy to go out and enjoy them this season, basically because I have just been in a haze of jet lagged exhaustion.  That all being said, I did get out of the house for a bit of a walk around today.

The sun was beautiful and the temperatures made me feel like it really is spring time.  The previous days all felt pretty cold to me.  Especially after spending such warm days in Miami and Huntsville.

The wind was whipping in over Tokyo Bay as this let the cherry blossoms do their dance for me.  White ones, pink ones all out their boogying to the spring time jam.  People were out enjoying some picnic lunches with friends under the canopy of blossoms.

As I wondered around a bit this afternoon I found myself remembering what it was to walk around last year at this time.  The Tohoku-Kanto tsunami and earthquake were on everyones mind as well as the ongoing nuclear disaster.  So much has happened in the course of one year.  We in Japan had to face every known disaster imaginable at one point over the last 12 months.  It was a year I would not like to repeat again.

It was at this time that my eyes truly opened to the beauty of spring.  The rebirth of all the nature that lays dormant during the cold short winter days.  The flowers were a sign of strength for the future.  A sign that we had made it this far, and that out of the disasters beauty can once again be found.

I have since found myself paying closer attention to the natural world even if they may be confined to terra-cotta pots and curbside gardens.  I make an effort to observe the moon as it goes through its phases.  Which fruits are ripe and hanging from the trees.

Even in this concrete jungle their is nature.  We should all pause to take notice among the neon glow and the endless data byte streams.  Nature is there.  All we have to do is to open our hearts and eyes to fill our hearts with joy.

It is sometimes hard to view myself as a survivor, but being part of life is a struggle.  Being able to maintain, strive and hopefully thrive is surviving.  I may have not have gone through some of what life’s more terrible dishing outs, but that doesn’t mean that our own personal troubles are any less real to us.

I think of this flower here on the edge of Tokyo bay.  It has somehow manages to wiggle its roots between the cracks in the concrete.  Not only was it able to get its roots in where there is no soil, but it has managed to be whipped by the winds, battered by the storms, and somehow bloomed in the middle of winter.  Now that is what I call a survivor.  If this weed can do it, so can we all.

First step survive, second step, learn to thrive.

The lack of sleep is catching up with me.  The wandering back to the station seemed like a dream.  I was jut floating on snow the road, being pulled this way of that way by something that caught my eye.  I am not sure the path I took, but i do know that it was the right path for today because I came upon this tree that was shedding violet tears.

Those patches of colors fell from a small street side shrine in Ichikawa.  Violet teardrops on the cold cement side of the road.  There they were just lining up to catch my dream state that I was in.  I just lost myself in the violet bokeh softness as I wandered back to the station.

Shedding those violet tears again.  For a autumn that was too short?  For a winter that will be too long?  I do not know, but there are these purple drops to comfort me in my waking dream.

Today was one of those days that I just didn’t want to get out of bed.  It was 6:30 in the morning and the skies were so overcast that it seemed like it was still night.  Not only was it rather gloomy outside, but it was pretty nippy for my south Floridian blood.  I struggled to get out of bed, and made my way to the kitchen to fix up a bowl of granola.  When I was sick I couldn’t eat any milk so I have been craving cereal over steaming oatmeal the last week or so.  I ate quickly as I caught the morning’s international news.  Waited at the bus stop which was more crowded than the day before.   I guess the people were preparing for the rainy weather that was going to come later in the day.

Even though I was wearing a big fluffy fleece hat, I put my headphones on and pushed play on Sekajipo and the Jungle’s first album Revolution of the Mind-State.  I thought that I needed a bit of a boost on this gray Thursday morning.  Sekajipo definitely delivered the goods and helped to elevate my spirits.

I was walking along the path with the song Revolutionary Love coming though my Sennheiser PX 200 headphones.  The vibrations were coming through so clear even though they had to pass though my fleece hat.  That is when I spotted a tiny heart on the side of the road.  A heart that had been placed there by some one.  It was an amazing synchronous moment.  I’ve got Sekajipo in my mind, singing about Revolutionary Love, and then I spy a heart.  I would have said that it was a lost heart.  One of the many lost and found items that I have taken over the years.  But today I saw this heart in completely new way.

This was not a lost heart.  It was a found heart.  It was part of the Revolutionary Love I have been searching for.  There it was.  The love had manifested itself in front of my lens.  Just another reason to be thankful.  I have found a bit of Revolutionary Love that I am sharing with all of you.

The autumn colors have been super late arriving this year in and around where I live.  I has very happy to have found that the Japanese Maple trees around are finally displaying their explosive colors.  These five-pointed leaves are alive rich hues that bound from the deep wine burgundies to multicolored mix and matched colors of yellows and reds.  The hues awaken my senses and I am always amazed at how vibrant these colors can be.

I found these all at a little temple complex on top of a small hill in Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan.  There were all amazing hues that teased my Ricoh GR IV out of my pocket and into my hand.  I searched out those hues that pulled me like a magnet towards them.   I wasn’t the only one wandering around this small complex looking at the autumn leaves.  There were several groups of mainly older Japanese looking at the trees.

Just another reason to be thankful.  I am thankful to the Creator for splashing my cold gray day with the explosions of color from the Mimoji trees.

The weather continues to be changeable.  I never quite know what to expect from day to day.  The skies in Japan are so clear this time of year that I can often see all the way to Mt. Fuji.  Sometimes it is just a lofty silhouette in the setting sun.  It is a reminder that I am in the land of the rising sun, and not anywhere else on this planet.

Strolling back to the station in the afternoon sun I came across a pomegranate tree with its fruit so ripe that the pomegranates were bursting open and spilling their juicy arils on to the ground.  These succulent red hues were filled with the potential to bring forth another life.  They all have the chance, under the right conditions, to grow into a lovely mature tree.  As I looked up at the fruit still hanging from its branches I wondered what will happen to them.  Will the owner come out and harvest them to feed his family and others?  Or, will they just be left to rot on the branch?  What about the seeds that fell onto the asphalt?  Surely, they won’t be able to sprout into a new tree.  Will the local wildlife in this quite suburb on the outskirts of metropolitan Tokyo come along for a juicy snack.

I find myself thinking about these issues these days and how they relate to my life.  How I try, and many people I know, go out into the world trying to spread goodness.  How much of that goodness will find the fertile soil to be able to grow into a fully formed accomplishment.  Will our labors of love be able to bring forward fruit from the tiny seeds that they came from.  It always feels good to know that the seeds one has planted gathers the water and nutrients to return with fruit.

Just some issues, topics that are wandering around in my lucidly communicating mind.

The weather peaked at a high of nearly 25 (77) today.  It actually felt a lot hotter than that.  We are back to having that schizo weather that afflicts Japan in its transitional seasons.  The light from the autumn sun was beautiful and hitting at just the right angle as I was making my way back from the station to my home.  The walk back always gives me some time to reflect on my day.  The walk also gives me a challenge by training my eye to seek out something that I had not seen before.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that I haven’t seen today’s focus on a urban bush before, but it is more in the way that all of the photographic elements of light, composition, color and subject all align themselves and move my spirit to photograph the scene.

The combination of these elements have to speak to me as a human being first and then I must be able to communicate what moved me to those that view the images created.  Today was about how the light were hitting these tiny fruit on urban bushes.  These were plain bushes that had been planted as a hedge to hide some of the industrialness of Kasai Rinkai Station.  But here they were; one blue and one red.  The setting sun was just hitting them with that autumn glow and moved my spirit.

The idea of change began to bubble up in me as I observed these two stages of fruit.  One in it blue hue that has yet to mature into its red cousin on the same bush.  How does it feel to change?  Do we, as humans, change as slowly or quickly as these fruit? Or are they (we) just two sides of the same bush?

The light is really changing.  That autumn light that streams down that falls somewhere between yellow and orange hues depending on the exact time of the day.

As the world is cooling off my eye is still ever searching for nature that thrives no matter where is might has grown its roots.  Roots that seek out the nutrients in the soil as the leaves catch the rays of sun.

Today these tiny berries caught my eye.  A small bush near the ground that had clumps of these autumn red hued berries.  I have no idea if they are edible or not.  I just stood there amazed by their minute stature.  These little berries spoke of joy to be out in the sunshine.  They are signaling the autumn hues that will fill the parks soon enough.

The temperature may have dropped in Tokyo, but the autumn leaves have yet to arrive.  I am not complaining, I am immensely thankful for the cool weather that I have breezing in through my windows.  I am, however, anticipating the changing leaves.  Those colors that dance on my lens as the long rays of autumn light struggle to reach earth.

Today I kept my eye peeled for any signs of the changing leaves to come.  Have the tips of any leaves started to morph into those autumn hues?  Not yet.  They will come soon enough.  In the meantime I found a bush of these flowers tucked behind a huge hydrangea bush at a small buddhist temple.  They are just a taste of the colors that are to come.  I give thanks for all the bursting colors of summer that are still hanging on into autumn.

It seems like only yesterday that the heat and the humidity were oppressing my body.  Now, wait a minute, it was only yesterday.  Today the clouds and some misty rain have rolled in and the mercury has taken a refreshing dip.  On of my truly last days of summer, I have my windows open listening to the a unusual quietness drifting into my room.  The cicadas screeching has been silenced.  There is only the occasional street noise coming in from my neighborhood.

This summer’s heat has been long and hard.  Even though we didn’t get any days over 40 in my part of Tokyo, we still had day after day of hot humid weather.  The weather just wouldn’t quit except for a few freakishly cool days end of August.  Today it is the stillness.  It is as if the entire neighborhood knows that the heat is gone and that the cold is not that far away.

I am thankful for being able to see the four seasons here in Japan.  The four seasons were something that I never really experienced growing up in the two season weather of South Florida:  hot and not so hot.  To be able to experience the gradual changes with my senses is a blessing.  The cool feeling of cold as it hits the side of my face.  The bright colors of autumn leaves as they float down from the trees.  The smell of fresh flowers in spring.  And the tastes of those wonderful summer blueberries from my patio.  The seasons are in tune with the world.  Now we need to be in tune with them.

So in this season as summer is quickly fading into autumn, let those short sleeves soak up those last rays of sunshine.  Let the last of the summer blossoms fill our senses.  Don’t worry what time the sundial flower says, for there will be another one is only nine months away.

They are here.  And they are everywhere.  They are growing up in between cracks on the side of the pavement.  They are sprouting all over the empty lots in my neighborhood.  In Japanese they are called Nekko Jellasi.

A great natural cat toy.  Pick a fresh one and drive your kitty wild.  When the kitties are through with them they can just be tossed into your compost pile.

Play with your kitties today.

The rains seem to come and go these days.  We are suppose to be having a rainy season now, but it looks like mostly the southern islands of Japan have been getting most of the rain.  We have had some, but nothing like it should be.  However, one of the upsides of the rain, are the proliferation of little mushrooms that just sprout up over night .  I am always amazed at how quickly nature works.  One day there is nothing, the next there is one that is just shrooming in the morning sun.

The first fruits are bright and red.  Plump with the summer rains and the early sunshine.  They are waiting to be plucked and honored as the firsts of the season.