During the last month, things have picked up on the terrace. The trees have turned green, and everything is growing fast. The azaleas have put on a beautiful show of pink and white blossoms. Only the magnolia has decided to skip blooming and moved to green leaves directly 
Also the vegetable garden is doing well: these days, homegrown salad and sugar snaps are on our menu.
Mixed greens - Azalea - Sugar Snaps
I have harvested more of my compost, but since it did not get sufficiently hot in winter, it is teeming with seedlings of everything I have ever thrown in…
Since the above picture was taken, the house plants have moved outdoors as well, increasing the jungly appearance of the terrace. Also our watering system has seen some upgrading, in particular we have come up with a way to reduce the water leaks between the pots: we simply slipped a piece of bigger hose over those sections of the soaker hose that run in between the pots!
My bird problem has taken on a different character after the hiyodori who threatened my peas and strawberries have moved on. You must know that Tokyo’s airspace, like of that most other Japanese towns, is reigned by ginormous ravens. So a raven couple has decided that our terrace is a suitable place to procure nesting materials from. Now ravens are very smart birds. Our ravens decided that gardening wire is a durable and useful building material, and subsequently, they figured out how to undo the wires with which I had fastened the reed mats I use for shading the pots and part of the terrace. When I found the first mat untied, I was puzzled. But the next day, I caught one of the ravens red-handed, pecking away at a wire. It had been hard at work, three of the big mats were partially untied, with a smaller one missing altogether. 
(Which also explains the sudden disappearance of a reed place mat which we had left on the garden table in spring two years ago…). The raven showed itself unimpressed by my presence, and only flew away when I made a run for it. The next day, the mats were untied again, and as a token of revenge, a raven swooped past my head so close by that I could feel the wind of its wings. Maybe they were more impressed by an intervention of my husband a day later, because the untying and wire stealing stopped after that. Or then they had simply finished building their nest by then…
Now are the best days of the year to enjoy our outdoor space before the heat of summer comes on. We already did a barbecue, and even the Easter Rabbit passed by our terrace!
Ich bin beeindruckt, wir haben inzwischen auf dem Schweizer Dachgarten eine “japanische” Glocke gegen die Raben. Hilft hier!
wie habt ihr denn die Aufnahme von eurem Dachgarten gemacht, seid ihr auf das Dach hinauf geklettert?