Table of Content
Going along with the seasons, Venetia makes cocoa butter cream to soothe her skin tanned from the garden work in summer and cleans the wood stove with lavender vinegar in preparation for the coming winter. She visits the herb garden of Noriko, an old friend who helps her with the garden work. A certified instructor of floral designs, she makes seasonal wreaths from wild herbs so that more people can appreciate the beauty of wild flowers. British-born Venetia lives in Nature-rich Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture.
She imagines the colorful floral array of spring while planting the tulip bulbs. She was surprised last year by the deliciousness of some ginger sweets a local farmer gave her, and grew her own ginger this year. She asks the local farmer around to teach her how to preserve ginger in sugar and is highly satisfied with the taste.
28 A Love of Plants - Kochi Prefecture -
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. 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. Venetia enjoys a handcrafted life in Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture. On one mild day, she takes some long-unused items to an antique shop.
She also spends some relaxing time with her son's family. 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.
Special 20 Omori Town, Shimane Prefecture
She tastes a precious cup full of the farmer's passion for 100% locally grown coffee. A friend treats her to dishes flavored with muscovado. She then visits a sugar maker who makes muscovado the old-fashioned way. He quit his job a few years ago to become a sugar maker.
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. Venetia lives in Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture, appreciating each season.
05 The White Winter
If there is someone out there who too loved this show and has seen more or all of it ... Maybe you want to start or reply to this page with a summary storyline to the show? PBS HAWAIʻI PRESENTS harnesses our Islands’ storytelling traditions with multimedia platforms for independent filmmakers, offering thoughtful, fair and diverse perspectives reflecting the history and cultures of the region. Hara where her closer proximity to nature would begin to heal her life.
They look for wild herbs together in the garden and cook pizza flavored with them. 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.
Special 12 Winter 2018
She heads to Nara City, where she sees an old friend. She walks through Kasuga Shrine's sacred forest along a mountain trail that was once a busy trading route. The hiking course leads to a view of Nara Basin from the top of Mt. Wakakusa. She goes to the studio of a young sculptor who uses his skills honed from carving Buddhist works to create his own art pieces. It was an enjoyable show and it's sad that it has been canceled due to her declining health. I just saw the other day a show with her and her sister, where they reminisced about their childhood and their mother, who was a pub owner.
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 gathers twigs for her wood-burning stove and makes 3 kinds of herbal tea with olive, lemon myrtle and marjoram to overcome the cold. In her garden, she plants winter-hardy Christmas Roses. Curious about the demon tile in her garden, she visits a Kyoto tile maker who carefully polishes the tile with a metal scraper to create the style's unique glossy finish. She also sees the production of the shoki ornaments that decorate rooftops in Kyoto. Share Venetia Stanley-Smith’s seasonal living in rural Kyoto, as she introduces us to local people, produce, cooking and crafts. During her summer trip to Okinawa Prefecture, Venetia visits a coffee farm in the mountains, with increasingly more farmers growing coffee in this area.
Hara, Stanley-Smith showcases the seasonal bounty of her adopted home, educating her audience on the richness of the broader community that surrounds her. Structured like an inimitable personal diary, “Venetia” is imbued with an intimacy, warmth and transparency impossible to resist. Hara, an ancient village on the outskirts of Kyöto, each episode is a meditative philosopher’s walk through Japan’s fleeting past and disappearing cultural memory. With each glimpse into this enchanting realm the show reveals Japan — long stereotyped as a nation of robotic office workers devoid of creativity and individuality — as deeply human and grounded in the timelessness of its historical past.
Discover her original recipes, watch her journeys across Japan, and experience Venetia’s unhurried lifestyle and truly eco-friendly way of living. I agree, this lady had a lovely life and she apparently shared it most generously with everyone who was interested, least all the NHK viewers, in Japan and abroad. She must have clearly been a bit of a rebel in her stiff upper lip British aristocratic family and then to do all the things she did ...
An admirer of Japanese traditional chests of drawers, or tansu, she takes a trip to Iwate Prefecture and visits a tansu workshop. The elaborate craftsmanship dating from the Edo era impresses her. In Tono City, she visits a couple living like she does and tries cooking a local delicacy, hittsumi with them.
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 a handcrafted life in Ohara, Kyoto Prefecture. She appreciates fall blossoms in her garden and makes apple compote with her daughter.
The taste of pure muscovado, made only from sugarcane juice, impresses her. Autumn is taking hold in the Ohara district of Kyoto. Venetia's gardening now consists of preparations for the coming spring.
