I am quite exhausted from hard work of trimming the trees.

Today, both in the morning and in the afternoon, I worked in the garden trimming the trees in the garden. As I mentioned yesterday, it was really a hard job, so I was quite exhausted. But while working hard, seeing beautiful flowers in the vaces on the wood deck relieved me very much.

Trimming the trees in the garden is hard work.

 It was a very fine day today. I worked on my garden, trimming the yew trees. I set up a ladder and climbed it, stood on the top of it, and trimmed with big pruning scissors. It was a very tough job, especially for an old man like me. These years, I have cut down trees and decreased the number of trees in my garden, but still there are more than 10 tall trees including 6 yew trees, four hinoki cypresses, a lilac, a magnolia, etc. I will have to cut them down before I become too old to take care of them.

I drove back Chiaki's children to Sapporo with Ayako.

With Arashi and Tokio

At Chiaki's house in Sapporo

It was cloudy, but didn't rain. Our grandchildren woke up before 7:00, had lunch, but after that they were playing with their video game software almost till noon. At 1:30, we started by car for Sapporo, and arrived at Chiaki's house at about 2:20. We stayed till 3:20, and left leaving the children behind back to Tomakomai. Chiaki would not return home from work until 6:30, so her children would have to wait until then. But the children were used to it.

Chiaki brought her sons, Tokio and Arashi, left them here, and returned to Sapporo alone.

  This morning I went to Furusato Noen with Ayao to take care of our crops there. We were glad to see all the seedlings of soy beans had taken root and were growing. While we were working in the field, Ayako's mobile-phone rang. It was a call from Chiaki from Sapporo, saying she would come to Tomakomai bringing her sons to let them stay with us overnight. They came at around 2:00 pm, and Chiaki returned to Sapporo at about 3:30 alone.
   In the late afternoon, we took the grandsons to a recycle shop on foot, because they wanted to buy some game cards. I didn't know how they played with them.

Children's festival in Shirakaba Higashi neighborhood association.

  I had forgotton that today was the children's festival in our heighborhood association. In the morning, when I arrived home from walking as far as Kawazoe riverside park, I heard a loud speaker car announcing the opening of the children's festival in the 6 cho me mini park. At the moment, I remembered it was the day of the festival. After having lunch, I hurried to the mini park where the staff members had finished setting up three big tents, and decorated two portable shirines and two big Japanese drums with paper flowers, golden bells, and other ornaments, and were waiting for the children to gather. About 40 children including some preschool children gathered. The children and some parents were divided into two groups, and each group started to parade around the community beating the drums and whistling and shouting "Wasshoi ! wasshowi!"  People were waiting in the front doors to see the parade and donate some money.  

I enjoyed gardening today, too.

The weather has been fine since morning. I went out and worked in the garden to weed, today, too, and finished cleared almost all part so my garden. I look forward seeing beautiful autumn flowers blooming.  What I will have to do next is to trim the trees, which will be a very hard task. 

Heavy rain in northern Kyushu has done a lot of damage.

  In the morning, it was a little rainy, but in the afternoon, it cleared up. I worked to weed in my garden. I have finished weeding in in half of the garden, and I will continue to weed tomorrow.
 In western Japan, especially in northern Kyushu, many rivers flooded, and houses were swept away, and roads were cut by landslides. The weather forecast says it will continue to rain in western Japan. I hope it will do no more damage.