A Japanese garden would not be complete without a koi pond. Siewa-en has a pretty good size artificial lake but the koi population stays in one corner. That’s probably because there is a bridge where visitors throw them something to eat. (Given local business connections, maybe it’s Purina koi chow.)
The Japanese garden has a small island containing a tea house. You may notice that the bridge is barred. The tea house is open only for special occasions and can hold a small number of people. Makes me think of the time we were at a tourist tea ceremony in Tokyo and stiff-jointed Western me couldn’t come close to sitting in an appropriate position. They didn’t kick me out.
Back to the wonderful Missouri Botanical Garden. This is part of the Japanese Garden, called Siewa-en, garden of pure, clear harmony and peace. I wish the theme was more accurate.
Springtime has come to the Midwest (as opposed to Costa Rica, where there are two seasons, hot and dry and hot and wet). Tuesday was mild and mostly sunny, a perfect day for a walk in the sprawling Missouri Botanical Garden. The cherry trees were still in bloom in the Japanese garden area.
One of Chihuly's repeated themes is brightly colored spheres in and around a small boat. This one is located in the Japanese garden area. It raises questions. Is it simply a static display or is going somewhere? What is the nature of the cargo? Why have some spheres spilled out? As with so much of art, these questions are up to the viewer.
I love the Japanese section of our botanical garden. Here and there we find areas of geometrically raked white pebbles, reminiscent of zen gardens, particularly in Kyoto. I have had the privilege of visiting that city during cherry blossom season. Although those blossoms were all gone by the time of this visit, the memories were strong.
Back to my walkabout in the botanical garden. My knowledge of trees when I was a kid was that the logo of the New York City Parks Department is a maple leaf, so I didn't know if the pink trees on the right were the last of the cherry blossoms, dogwoods or what. The Japanese section of the garden is exquisite.
There was a more distant view of this bridge to the tea house in Sunday's post. The craftsmanship is beautiful, joinery rather than nails. The up hill part feels a bit steep to old legs. It's representative of what we saw in gardens during our visits to Japan.
Photographers love leading lines and curves, so how could I go wrong with a picture containing both. Winter in the Japanese garden again.
Farther into the Japanese Garden. The light coat of snow was just enough to muffle what little sound there was, leaving only the report of your own footsteps. The bridge leads to a little tea house, open for special occasions.
A couple in the winding entry path to the Japanese Garden. A cold weekday may seem like an odd time to visit but it has a special beauty: no crowds, something interesting around every bend, little sound but the wind.
A quiet, cold weekday at our wonderful botanical garden. There had been just a bit of snow. There were few visitors but at least half of them had cameras. The Japanese garden is perhaps the most peaceful area. More of this to come.
A bit abstract. I like how the bands of algae on the pond in the Japanese garden look like geological layers, how its green blends into a reflection of the blue sky, and how the reflection of the tree adds another physical dimension.
We will be in Kansas City by this afternoon.
My best teacher for anything ever, the incomparable photographer Bobbi Lane, https://www.instagram.com/bobbilanephoto/?hl=en, got me hooked on infrared photography. You can have an old digital camera converted to an IR sensor, although the results vary greatly depending on what part of that spectrum your sensor captures (there are lots of choices.) Contact me if you want to find out how it's done. People often use this for striking grayscale images since greens come out white, or close to it. This is in the Japanese section of our botanical garden.
Back for a little more of the metal origami in our botanical garden. The paper boat or paper hat - it amounts to the same thing - is a simple, basic example of the paper folding art. Here, two of them float without ever moving in the lake of the tranquil Japanese garden. The scene looks static but the burgeoning spring is not.
Mrs. C and I are unabashed Nipponophiles. We've been there three times but the last visit was a dozen years ago. We are making long-range plans to return about this time next year.
This scene from our local Japanese garden reminds me some of of a famous walkway in Kyoto. It is along a little channelized stream, lined with cherry trees in front of traditional wooden buildings. It's an unforgettable experience.
This is the typical look of midwinter around here. Dull skies, dull ground, rare snow. Cold but not terrible. This scene in the Japanese garden, however, is a lot more attractive than the usual humdrum urban/suburban landscape.
As I got up Saturday morning it was 3 F / -16 C. The oracles say that we are in for bitter cold temperatures and a fair amount of snow Sunday and Monday. We'll see, as 45 liked to say.
Seiwa-en, or the garden of pure, clear harmony and peace, in the Japanese section of the Missouri Botanical Garden. We all could use some pure, clear harmony and peace, but frankly, in the short to medium term, I ain't optimistic.
I used to know a little Japanese but it has been so many years since we have been there that it slipped away. My crowning achievement was asking a store clerk for directions to our hotel (before mobile phone maps). Our sensei, or teacher, told us that you really can't say that you are lost. "Only a child would say that," she told us. But with knowing the phrase for "where is the **** Hotel?', plus right, left, straight ahead and simple counting we found our way home.
By the way, I found the hardest thing to learn in spoken Japanese was counting. It's mind-boggleingly complicated by the standards of European languages. You could look it up.
