At Home with Venetia in Kyoto

With the severe winter just around the corner, Venetia enjoys the calm and fruitful fall season in Ohara. She arranges flowers from her garden and makes apple compote with her daughter. Another fall delicacy she finds at a morning market is mackerel sushi, with Ohara historically known for this fish. She decides to have her long-broken toy bus fixed so that her grandchildren can play with it. She befriends the couple running a woodworking shop she visited and digs up potatoes in their garden.

In Iwate Prefecture, British-born Venetia visits a workshop for Japanese chests of drawers, or tansu, dating from the Edo era. Their elaborate products impress her. Tono, where horses are integral to local life, reminds her of her horse-riding days back home. There, a couple about her age show her clothes made with a local technique and baskets made with tree barks, reaffirming the value of handcrafted life. She tries cooking a local delicacy "hittsumi" with hand-picked mushrooms and enjoys dinner with them.

Venetia enjoys a handcrafted life in Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture. On one mild day, she takes some long-unused items to an antique shop. When she comes home, her husband is working on rose fences. Preparation for spring during the severe cold of winter is part of gardening. Driven by her recent interest in singing, she visits an 89-year-old musician, who plays various instruments like piano, cembalo, pipe organ, and zither. Seeing her still actively performing and trying new things, Venetia is invigorated.

British-born Venetia lives in Nature-rich Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture. With the soundless cold hovering over the plants in her garden, she enjoys meditation. During a walk, she stops by her favorite café and appreciates homemade sweets with seasonal fruit and tea. A friend comes to check out her garden. She has been a herb expert since childhood and has edited a book about edible wild herbs. She is an evangelist of herb picking. They look for wild herbs together in the garden and cook pizza flavored with them.

Venetia lives in Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture, appreciating each season. Worried about her failing eyesight, her half-sister Lulu comes to Japan for the first time. Venetia left the UK feeling ill at ease in aristocratic society. Lulu moved to Ireland with their mother. They have kept close. They reminisce about their mother over bread & butter pudding, their childhood favorite. At Venetia's friends' herb garden, Lulu shows interest in how herbs are grown in an herb-unfriendly humid climate just like Ireland's.

In early summer, Venetia goes to Awaji Island. A horticultural-therapy school teaches Venetia, who can no longer garden the way she used to because of her failing eyesight, the importance of appreciating plants with all senses. At Ei, known for its incense production, the Koh-shi, responsible for how the incense smells, shows her the centuries-old method. A keeper of indigenous honeybees shows her the "nectar-supplying forest" he spent 7 years growing. It is made for the bees in every detail.

Venetia travels to the Iga region of Mie Prefecture. A friend here has worked long and hard to prepare the soil to plant herbs, and Venetia visits the herb garden where the sage is in full bloom. She also meets a potter, Yoshitaka Hasu, for the first time in 30 years. Hasu fires his earthenware after spending months and years to mature the Iga clay. His distinctive products are designed for serving food and Venetia savors his creations together with his home cooking. The kind hospitality of her old friends fills her with a sense of well-being.

The rice is now rippling lushly in the fields of the Ohara district of Kyoto. For Venetia, autumn is a time for sorting things out in the house. She tidies up the tea cups in the cupboard, polishes the chairs on the terrace with persimmon tannin and does other general maintenance. Then she cooks an herby lemon chicken.

As a new daily routine, English-born Venetia goes on walks in Kyoto Prefecture with a friend. Walks filled with such sounds as birds chirping and a stream babbling are precious to her with failing eyes. She stops by an old folk house/restaurant to order naturally raised, stone-baked bread. At a blueberry orchard in Shiga Prefecture run by a friend of hers, she harvests the last berries of the year and makes jam. She admires how her friend, who also grows organic cotton, appreciates nature's blessings we eat and wear.

English-born Venetia organizes an open garden for the first time in a long time. As she works with a gardener friend on her garden in preparation, she shares with him some fruit from a fig tree that recovered from damage in a typhoon 2 years ago. On Day 1, she entertains her pals with a blend of lemon verbena and English tea. Day 2 is all excitement with children in the neighborhood looking for sweets hidden in her garden. She also spends some relaxing time with her son's family.