VERY interesting and beautiful! Everything looks so pristine and well-cared for. I like the background of the tall cedars with roses and then with the water with irises in the foreground. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. Ingrid

Fascinating conversation. Here in the Ottawa Canada area I never noticed any Japanese Beetles until a few years ago, although I've had roses for about 20 years. I wish they "just lasted a few weeks", but even here in chilly zone 4B the irridescent green vampires hang around pretty much the whole summer and into fall, sucking the life out of the rose blooms. Sure roses are bothered by other things, but nothing like the Japanese Beetles, at least for me. I have a very early rose (Therese Bugnet) that gets a few blooms out before they take over, but then it's a free for all. I have noticed that the most fragrant (Hansa and Blanc Double de Coubert) are the most popular and they don't even open before the blooms are totally covered and devoured even with twice daily visits and "debugging". They are less aggressive on my Knockouts and my Carefree Wonder, the Knockouts seeming to be the very least bothered of all my roses, but they are also the farthest physically from the most scented roses. After they find the roses they are on to the raspberries (leaves) and they bury themselves into the hibisucs syriacus (rose of sharon) blooms. Ah, yest they certainly do fly and probably 1/3 of mine never "drop" into my soapy water container, regardless of how many partners they are mating with at the moment or how carefully I "sneak up" or how close I hold the container. I did see a suggestion of using geraniums to "draw the beetles away". They are supposed to be attracted to them, eat the geranium flowers and then fall over and pass out like drugged party goers so you could sweep them up. Sounded worth a try. This article didn't specify a colour and I had bright pink geraniums. Even when I put the pots of geraniums directly under my handsome "Hansa" they didn't land on the geraniums. Since then I've read that it's the white geraniums that they go for. So, if anyone wants to give that a try, I'd love to know if the white ones work for anyone. Or I've also heard of using catmint, or members of the onion or allium family planted close to the roses Going to give those a try since many are pretty and purple anyway, but I think you'd need something with persistant leaves to keep the scent going. I'm thinking perhaps I should get more of the early blooming roses like Therese Bugnet so that I might enjoy the blooms before the vampires descend, but I really want my roses to bloom all summer and for as long as possible. Just as a point of interest I do work in a garden centre and none of our roses had a Japanese Beetle. I had to fight off other rose thugs that I don't remember, but no Japanese Beetles. Perhaps it's the fact that the garden centre is on pavement and not surrounded by lawn where the lady vampires (JB's) lay their eggs and the adults winter over. Mary

I have a bit of Japanese china as I used to like to pick up various pieces at flea markets. Your set is not a particularly "fine" piece objectively - meaning no disrespect as the design is not particularly intricate and doesn't appear to have been done by a skilled artisan but executed as quickly as possible in order to sell cheaply for export. There are some lovely examples of hand painted Japanese china that were intended for export and not as super high end but this isn't one of them. The paint job is relatively crude and doesn't have any fine details. If this is a small size it was intended as a toy for a little girl and probably sold at the equivalent of a Woolworths for not very much money. Since you indicate that it is damaged there is even less value to it so any value is for you as a sentimental object - either someone you loved owned it or it was given to you as a child. I have some childhood tchotchkes that make me feel good when I look at them and I also kept a few tchochkes that belonged to my grandmother and mother because I remember how they looked in their homes. My grandmother and mother were more into the "Meissen" style of European tchotchkes rather than the Japanese but in terms of economic value it is the same. My mother also had some Rose Medallion style stuff and one can trace the age and "value" based on how the paint work declined as the stuff became more mass produced. However even the relatively high quality Rose Medallion isn't worth too much at this point because it simply isn't what people want or are looking for.

Elena, Name of dwarf cherry? Interesting-pretty Japanese tree! . I have a few cherry trees… Kwanzan, Wowza Cherry, Weeping Cherry, Okame Ch blossom trees. My Okame tree is 2 1/2 years old. I olanted it in Aug, 2nd, but trunk died over winter except 6 inches left above ground. So I grew another trunk & tree branched out now at 7-8 feet-looks very hardy now. I hope this spring to have blooms finally. I will keep pruning it small in width at 6 ft, because it is next to a rose garden bed .