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Harry the Hawk grew up on my deck … we’ve captured numerous photos and videos of him flying through the Japanese garden. Harry often moves too fast to be photographed clearly. (See gallery of photos and videos below.) One month ago, early in the morning of November 20th, one of Harry’s children, a beautiful juvenile hawk, smashed into a high window and tragically died: his parent

It took a year and a half and a team of potters to completely dismantle Teruo Hara’s kilns at the Japanese House. The potters took apart the kilns, brick by brick, and plan to rebuild them in southern Virginia. Mr. Hara had built a large gas kiln and a small wood fired kiln. And now we’ll begin to rebuild the kiln house as a studio

The Japanese House (with Karl and workers) in early stages of rescue. There were no interior stairs; the upper floor had to be accessed by ladder! (Click to enlarge photos.) After the first wave of restoration of The Japanese House.

This is the state in which I found the house, kilns and teahouse in 2010. Click to enlarge. 

These are photos from the 1970s when the Hara family lived there, with photos of the kilns and a pottery exhibition in the garden. Click to enlarge.

Fay’s “other house” was quite a bit different from mine: hers was famous. I’d already read about it, in Architectural Digest. It was called Chogetsu. (Moon Tide.) In the 1980s, Mr Hara had been commissioned to build a Japanese complex on seven acres of oceanfront property, in Martha’s Vineyard. Hara and Fay’s late husband had gone to Japan collecting art and artisans who created the furnitur

One very hot June, shortly after buying the Japanese house, I was standing on the west lawn of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, waiting for us to be called into the big open tent for our annual Cabinet dinner. The 250 Cabinet members fly in or drive in from everywhere and meet once a year for a weekend “retreat” on the mountaintop, to learn what’s been going on at Monticello in archaeology, science

As part of the restoration of the Japanese House, a team of professional potters is dismantling Teruo Hara’s historic, hand-built kilns, which will be reassembled at a pre-designed location for continued use. We are documenting the complete deconstruction/reconstruction process. Teruo Hara was a famous potter serving at the Corcoran School (now part of George Washington University) in Washington,

When it comes to gardening I’m into instant gratification. I can’t stand empty spaces anymore, I’m planting every plant I can before snowfall! Here are a few highlights from my recent gardening endeavors at the Japanese House. New ferns in the garden beds Ginkgo fruits Sedum with bees White wort Winterberry  Nandina Tree of Heaven Please feel free to join me on Facebook and Twitt

Scott, the director of my heating & plumbing company, sent me a surprise that he’d found in his mother’s attic, along with this story… When Teruo Hara built my Japanese house in 1965, Scott was a child and his own father was Mr Hara’s mortgage banker. In the course of constructing the home & kilns they became friends. So from time to time, Teruo Hara brought them gi

A look at some of the trees (some new, others very old) growing around the Japanese House. The Cryptomeria Japonica was just planted recently (Kousa Dogwood & Cryptomeria Japonica) and we planted the Green Giant Arborvitae last fall, they are coming up nicely.  The herb bed is edged with the same stones used inside for stone central cylinder (Wind & Water).   More springtime garden up

Some more springtime updates from Ludovico – the Kousa Dogwood will be flowering soon, the Azaleas are well in bloom and we’ve just planted a beautiful Cryptomeria Japonica (a birthday present to Katherine).     Click image to enlarge into lightbox gallery     More springtime garden updates from Ludovico & Katherine Flower buds, Fiddleheads & Myoga Trees &am

Ludovico (Katherine’s assistant and gardening guru) is always busy in the garden that surrounds the Japanese House.  Here are some recent updates of springtime in bloom!   Click image to enlarge into lightbox gallery     More springtime garden updates from Ludovico & Katherine Kousa Dogwood & Cryptomeria Japonica Trees & Herbs  All of Katherine’s House &

KATHERINE NEVILLE’S Autumn Equinox Newsletter September 21, 2016   Autumn Equinox Equinox (the day each year when day and night are equal in length) is the time to sow and plant, to prepare for us to reap next Spring! Today is one of the eight Celtic Festival Days, when it is time for us to plan for the next cosmic cycle.   Discovery in the Autumn Garden Just before equinox, when m

Cherry blossom festival is the best week in Washington DC, and always falls on my birthday. I wrote an entire scene in The Fire set during that first week in April. Here is a vase filled with cherry blossoms from my own tree, a 60-foot tall ornamental cherry planted fifty years ago by the famous potter Teruo Hara. Below is a picture of the same tree today, planted down in the gully, it soars way a

The Mysterious Symbol August 8, 2014 Late at night, my first winter in the Japanese house, I was sleeping on cushions on the floor when my resident herd of deer ran through the front courtyard, and set off the motion detector light at the upper entrance, flooding the interior with light. Wearily, I crawled out of my improvised “bed.” While trying to figure out how to turn off the light, I suddenly

“Wind and Water” (Feng Shui) There is a system of building design that precedes Neutra’s by millennia: Feng Shui is the ancient oriental art of siting and designing buildings in keeping with key features of the natural landscape, like mountains and valleys created by “winds and waters.” I had studied it for years, including a stint with Stephen Karcher and Rudolph Rit

Escape from Structured Environment As a child, I’d always wanted to be outside climbing trees, picking persimmons or pears to eat, or buckeyes that bring luck if carried in your pocket. I hated being trapped indoors in the sterile “educational” environments created to torture young children. Some of my least favorite recollections are of being stuck in cafeteria lines with a plas

As layers and years of neglect of the Japanese House were peeled away, something interesting emerged: a vision of “the house within the house.” It was not my vision, however. I am not an expert in Japanese architecture or any other. It was the vision of what the house itself wanted to be. I had noticed that, of the three architects I invited to look at the house (all of whom declared i

The sounds of Japan are evoked by temple bells, wind chimes, water over stones, wind in bamboo groves, taiko drums (first created, as myth assures us, from a Sake barrel!) – and one of my favorite combinations of all of the above: Jazz Impressions of Japan, the 1964 album of musician Dave Brubeck’s trip to Japan. One of the tracks is called Zen is When. That recording had been out of p

When I write a piece of music I note on the score the kind of emotion I have in mind. A garden should be calm and still, but at the same time it should be a strong calm. So I say: ‘Ecstatic’. One might think you can’t combine the two – calm and ecstasy. But there are moments in a Japanese garden that are very still and restful – but something intensely sensual, almost

One August, decades ago, I journeyed to Japan. It was the hottest August on record, the Tokyo sidewalks were scalding, one couldn’t walk on the pavement after five o’clock in the morning; when we went to the fish market at four a.m., the fresh fish were already spoiling in the heat. Even up in Kyoto, the sacred Temple Deer were lolling in the shade of the Gingko trees, too weak to move