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OT (very): Bamboo, 4-29-2009


Coytee

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We did a day trip to Shirakawago up in the Japanese Alps. It has many traditional Japanese farmhouses. I saw one that was 4 stories tall and probably had extended families of 15 or more living in them.

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Dtel you should go to Kyoto and maybe Takayama. Takayama is about 4 hours by train from Kyoto and is a beautiful trip.

Someday will go back.

This is my Japanese garden between my house and garage. About 2/3 done.

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I would love to go visit there,............you are convincing me to redo our garden in Japanese style, we already have most of the plants needed and maby even enough stone.

I would love to do koi pond like the ones you posted but I would have to win the lottery considering we have to buy stone by the pound here, no natural stone here bigger than road gravel size.

We got into the landscaping business about 15 ? years ago by building ponds and waterfalls, also tropical waterlilies and Koi. It was kind of an accident someone was looking for Koi and water Lillie's and seen our garden ( other house), he wanted his yard done and it just took off from there, no advertisement just business cards. For many years, before we could finish a job people would stop to see what we were doing and ask us to come look at there yard to see what we could do with it, we had deposits for jobs 6 months in advance for work. People would put up a deposit and wait, they would know who was ahead of them and visit us on the job and look at what was going on, many would get ideas from other yards.

It was fun but hard work, for a while we tried working 7 days a week to catch up but the more we were out there the more people wanted work done.

After looking back now I would say the biggest mistake we made was not hiring more people to help. We wanted to do things just how we wanted and never hired anyone except a friend or relative who wanted to help occasionally, 95 % of the work was done by us two which was good in a way. If things didn't go just how we wanted we had no one to blame but ourselves.

We are for the most part out of the business now, although we have a few people who keep calling so we do a little here and there.

It was fun, people would ask us how do you work like that every day ? It's easy when you love what you do and can't wait to go to work the next day, and get paid for it ! And there's nothing like when the customer See's the finished job for the first time.

We would get to a certain point (if possible) and have everything kind of done here and there so you could not get a real good idea of how it would turn out and try to plan it to fall out on a week end or when the customer would be out of town. Or we had even asked them to try to go off for the weekend and call when they come back Sunday evening. We would finish everything while they were gone and clean up and move trailers and everything out. They would call shocked, the last time they seen there yard it was a mess, trailers, tractors wheelbarrows and all the other tools all over the place including plants not planted or even where they were going to go and dirt on sidewalks, empty pots everywhere, the normal mess when you tear up a yard.

I do sometimes miss it, but not the heat.

Edit; that's what the dtel was for " Down To Earth Landscapes " [:S]

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that's what the dtel was for " Down To Earth Landscapes " Tongue Tied

I have wanted to ask for 6 years now, but never got to it. What a great story, and beautiful that you could do something you love while getting paid for it.

Bruce

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