Tale of two Tokyos - Domestic Robots and Permaculture bathrooms.

Roving, roving.
I'm now staying in Central Tokyo, at my usual home with the Ota family.

Robot and charcoal-fired tea ceremony brazier

This morning I reached for the broom, I got a surprise. Professor Ota came running out "No No!"
He bent down, fiddled with something on the floor, and out it sprang - the floor-sweeping robot.

I'm not a squealy girl, but this was festive, and a squeal was the natural response to having a robot scampering around. I'm living in the miracle-world future. The Jetson's cartoons I watched when tiny are now my life.


We sat and enjoyed our whisked macha green tea, with Chestnut sweets. It it bounced around irrepressibly, gobbling dust and fallen petals, then wiggling into its dock when it decided its task was complete.

Moss-eating bathroom snail

Here is a solar-powered, silent version, spotted the other week on a visit to my friend Phil Cashman's place, in Zushi, Tokyo's outskirts.
Its a particularly well-designed snail, cleaning the bathroom slowly but steadily.



Phil made his bathroom himself, from an old Miso barrel, and other reclaimed timber.
To reach it you cross a bridge, the lively stream below flows from the greywater-reclaiming system he is constructing. Unwanted nutrients are removed automatically by useful micro-organisms and plants. No recharging, all on site, and again, silent. Oh, and free.

Wooden Tub

He's become so skilled at recruiting mirco-help, he put together this daisy-fresh compost toilet.

And while he was at it, he put in an outdoor shower, probably with water caught from the roof and warmed by the sun....
Its a Toilet Tower, actually, to make sure there's room for everything. Instead of flushing, our contributions are followed by a cup full of sawdust, to get the carbon/nitrogen balance just right, heat-treating the mix below. There are two old bathtubs, the second one full of crumbly humus, happy earthworms.
The toilet tower and other buildings are veiled by this Egyptian bean vine, which Phil said just thrived over the hot summer holidays, with no watering. It scrambles up the sunniest walls, just where its needed, a self-installing, self-directing awning. Solar powered.


But wait, it does more.
This bean employs microbes, right at its roots. It trades them sugars, in return for converting air-nitrogen into usable nitrogen for itself and its neighbors in the soil, making it a rich community down there. Its beans are also good for people, making them happy at dinnertime. And its strikingly beautiful.

Phil Cashman

Robust, pro-active, productive, and multi-skilled. And gorgeous. A real treasure.

My friend YumiBear babysits Phill Cashman's daughters.

Roses for every edible balcony garden

The hot day encoraged my ten-year-old potted rose to blossom. Not wanting the rosebuds to get toasted the next hot day, I brought them inside, and arranged as ikebana.

Inside I could marvel intimately at their unfurling, peaking, and decline over two days. But not wanting the young petals to fade before being appreciated fully, I sprinkled them into in the evenings salad. Rosepetals have a velvety texture, and taste like...salad dressing.

Thai rose petal and cucumber salad by Jill Duplix, photo by Marina Oliphant

Flowers are sometimes maligned as 'Useless ornament' in Permaculture circles, but roses can certinaly defend themselves.

Yes, they give me salad garnish. They also fill the air with fragrance, and give me good endorphins with their beauty. I love blooms as a renewable jewelry alternative, a year-round valentine's day present from God (bless him!).

Cecilia and fragrant rose trout fishing on January 1st 2010 from New Year's Adventure

Aung San suu kyi with her flowers, unsuerpassably beautiful woman.

Some women give more honour to the flower's life than others, by living out the flowers generous, life-giving spirit long after the bloom would have faded. Aung San, I still have lots of good years left, I might still do something special with my life. And my flowers.

Find thorny climbing roses, and they can replace barbed wire and protect your balcony from marauding possums, as the african villages surrond themselves with Briar Hedges to keep out the lions.

Protection by law?
Thorny climbing Rose photo from 'Gardening Resources for Attorneys'

Patio Roses are miniature, prolific flowering, and very tough. The potted one above was reduced to a mere stick after getting lost in the bushes and forgotten. Then with almost no sun, it produced this single brave flower. Lets see how many blooms some regular watering and Seasol liquid will stimulate.

I put its sick mate, the more vividly pink rose, into the ground, where it is taking very good care of itself.

Roses like sunshine and an airy spot, for maximum flowering and to keep any mildew from developing. If their pot is little enough, you can re-position it if its not doing well on a cramped balcony. Better still, gift it to a sunny friend.

For a list of what flowers are good for eating, click on this marvelous website all about edible flowers. I'm now looking for recipes for fuchsias, my favorite balcony garden flower, and now I have a Permacultural excuse for growing them too.

Merry Balcony Gardens of Carlton

This edible & useful two-story balcony garden brought joy to my world.


I came across it wending my way home though Carlton's back streets, after a delightful afternoon tea at Brunettii's with Laura and Daniel. "How can I make these people my relatives" I was thinking. When Santa parachuted down.



The edibles included cherry tomatoes, basil, nasturtium leaves. Like almost every successful balcony garden, it had a filled container of water, ready to be scooped from.


If you are of Irish Catholic Stock, you too would notice the cloth Scapular of Mary, a powerful 'sacramental'.


Here Mary serves this garden in multiple ways:

• Tying back unruly vines

• A water-wise addition to Greenery

• Expresses the character of the gardens owners - probably Lapsed Italian Catholics

• Ensures that if the tree dies wearing this scapular, it will not face eternal flames (The blessed Virgin herself promised this to any wearer, hence my grandfathers attachment to his)

• Keep Evil spirits off the balcony, and possibly pests who busy themselves with baleful actions:
  

"One of the most remarkable effects of sacramentals is the virtue to drive away evil spirits whose mysterious and baleful operations affect sometimes the physical activity of man. To combat this occult power the Church has recourse to exorcism, and sacramentals" (The Catholic Encyclopedia., 1913, VXIII, p. 293).

The neighbour who caught me photographing has now promised to show me his rooftop garden for this blog. But not till things grow up a bit, so in a couple of weeks, I might have lovely new photographs, and a new gardening mate.