Flat Stanley Visits Gardens on Greenery Day

Midori no hi (MEE-DOH-REE NO HEE), or Greenery Day, is dedicated to nature and the environment.  It is the third national holiday during Golden Week.  This was a good day for visiting parks and gardens.

There are many beautiful gardens in Tokyo.  We visited two of the oldest gardens.  They are feudal clan gardens.  Feudal clans ruled Japan hundreds of years ago.  They built these gardens before the United States of America became a nation!

This stone bridge is what I liked best at Korakuen garden. The name of this bridge is Engetsu-kyo because a full moon is formed by the bridge and its reflection on the water.

Can you see the shape of the full moon in this picture?

Kyu-Shiba-rikyu (Q-SHEE-BAH-REE-Q) is the name of the other feudal clan garden we visited. There is an island in the middle of a big pond at this garden. I had fun walking across all the bridges.

We saw lots of flowers blooming at Kyu-Shiba-rikyu.

The wisteria is just beginning to bloom

Irises usually don't bloom until June or July

What kind of flowers are these?

We saw lots of turtles sunning themselves on rocks in the pond. Big carp fish, called koi (KOH-EE), swam to the edge of the pond to tell me hello. I said "Ohayo gozaimasu" (O-HI-O GO-ZAH-EE-MAS) to the turtles and fish. That is how you say "Good morning!" in Japanese.

These people are drawing pictures of the peonies on the hill. We saw other people drawing pictures of trees and turtles.

Of all the things I saw at Kyu-Shiba-rikyu gardens, my favorite was a bride and groom posing for wedding pictures.

The bride is wearing a traditional Shinto wedding kimono in the first few pictures.

Shintoism is one of the two main religions in Japan.  Four out of every five Japanese people practice the Shinto religion.  Buddhism is the other main religion.  Three out of every four Japanese people are Buddhists.  Most Japanese people practice both of these religions.

The bride is wearing a white robe over her kimono in this picture.  This is how she will look during the wedding ceremony.

The bride and groom are holding traditional umbrellas in the next pictures.

These umbrellas are made by hand from many layers of paper and glue. They are strong enough to hold an inch or more of snow.

In Japan people don't just use umbrellas when it it raining. They use umbrellas to stay dry when it is snowing and to protect their skin on sunny days.

They even use umbrellas to protect flowers like peonies from snow and sun!

This was a fun holiday in Japan but I think tomorrow will be even more fun.  Tomorrow is Children's Day!

A Delightful Japanese Garden

Matsuzaki-san is refreshingly eccentric. Although she has tossed her purple eye makeup since becoming a grandmother, there's still a purple sheen in her hair and fun artwork dangling from her earlobes.

It should not, therefore, have come as such a surprise that her garden and home are filled with whimsy. But it did. About ten seconds after we stepped out of Yuka's car in front of Matsuzaki-san's house, Fearless and I were fumbling through our purses for our cameras. When Matsuzaki-san was beckoning us into her foyer, we just ignored her and continued to snap pictures of the patio garden that runs along the side of her house.

This is not one of those raked-gravel-solemn-stone gardens we've grown accustomed to admiring when we visit Zen temples.  There's not a koi pond in sight.

But there are turtles and lots of them. Her father collected turtles. She tells us she turned up her nose at his collection when she was growing up. Then he passed away and she grew fond of turtles because they remind her of him. Fearless and I know exactly what she means because we, too, have lost our fathers and treasure our memories of them.  I think I'll scatter pennies in my garden when I get back to Norfolk or wherever it is we eventually call home.

I've spotted a few of these teacups filled with birdseed in American gardens but I've never noticed one perched on an inverted vase. There are a few crystal vases gathering dust in storage. I've never been good at remembering to fill them with flowers so maybe it's time to glue them to a few of Grandma's teacups.

Hey! I think I've just come up with 2012 Christmas gift ideas for my siblings. Please remind me of this when my stuff comes out of storage next summer.

This is the second time I've spotted these happy half-bricks in Kamakura. Matsuzaki-san is going to try to remember where she bought them so I can pick up a few for myself. She tells me the solar lights cost only 350 yen and change color like the Jackson Cascades. You can bet I'll be picking up at least a dozen of those pronto.

I know you want to see the inside of her house, especially since she has her Christmas decorations up, but you'll have to wait a day or so while I make an appearance at another JAW party and try to finish my reading assignment for book club.

Fox Faces, Bananas, and a Godzilla-size Dahlia

The salt-laden typhoon winds don't seem to have stopped the Gingko trees from changing color this year so maybe there's hope for the Maples yet.

There were quite a few rose varieties blooming and most carried a heady fragrance. We buried our noses in the velvety blossoms, inhaled deeply, and then raced along the path to the next group of bushes.

In the glass conservatory we spotted bananas after the bougainvillea but before the water lotuses.

According to Shinagawa-san, this citrus is called "Fox Face"

Fox Face or Cow Face? You be the judge.

We also some incredibly tall clumps of sunflowers and dahlias.

Japan has changed me into something of a Nature Girl. I wonder how the Norfolk City Planning Department will feel about me transforming my flat side yard into a miniature version of the Japanese Alps.

A Pleasant Surprise at Ofuna Botanical Garden

We visited Ofuna Botanical Garden this morning in hopes of seeing some Maple trees in their autumn glory. That didn't happen. Most of the Maple leaves haven't changed color yet and there's some question whether they will do so at all this year since the trees were blasted with salt water for hours on end during a typhoon earlier this fall.

But, as usual, there was lots to see at Ofuna Botanical Garden besides Maples, including a -- be still my heart -- Chrysanthemum Exhibition. And here I was feeling sorry for myself just a few days back about missing the annual chrysanthemum frenzy.

This was my fifth visit to the garden in the six months since Ishii-san first introduced me to its pleasures, and I don't think it will be my last. There is always something new and different in bloom. If I can find a willing co-pilot, I'd like to drive there next time so I can load up the car with a few dozen of the lovely plants in the nursery section.  Who cares that I won't be able to take the plants back to the U.S. next summer?  Why would you think the plants will still be alive then?  You are giving me more credit than is due.

Awesome single-stemmed purple Chrysanthemum

Hisayo, Kayoko, and Tae kindly posed for me to give you an idea of the height of some of these plants.  Artistic was with us but abhors having her photo taken.  I feel much the same so I do my best to honor her wishes even though she's really attractive and I know her mother would appreciate a little glimpse now and then.

This frail magenta mum with a yellow center was my personal favorite.

Of course I snapped a hundred or more pictures of Chrysanthemums within fifteen minutes of arriving at the garden. You would think I was planning to publish a gardening book or something.

These droopy lavender pompoms captured my attention as well. If Hisayo hadn't chatted about these flowers with a man who happened to be standing nearby, I would have thought these prize-winning blooms were bred to droop. But, no, they are simply past their prime.

Tomorrow before the Ancient Mariner throws me over his shoulder and drags me up to Tokyo I'll try to share some of the other interesting things we saw at the botanical garden.

An Autumn Stroll Through Verny Park

The blooming season here is fantastically long. There might be a stretch of three or four days between Christmas and the new year when pine trees take precedence, but otherwise there's always a flower or two offering bright splashes in the landscape.

Californians might take this perpetual color for granted, but a girl from Michigan enroute from the Navy base to the JR train station stops dead in her tracks when she spots floral abundance in mid-November.  And a girl from "The Rose City" can't help but gawk at Verny Park roses re-blooming just two weeks before Thanksgiving.  Back home we'd be begging someone to rub linament on our aching back after a day of raking leaves around about now.

"Reach for the sky, Pardner!"

A typically cloudless day

How fortunate that my camera was in my purse, and actually charged for once, and that I wasn't in a hurry the last time I had a JR train to catch.

Kenrokuen: Japan's Grandest Landscape Garden

An old Kanazawa proverb says "Forgetting your lunch box is inconvenient; forgetting your umbrella is disastrous." Kanazawa and Valdivia (in Chile) share the distinction of being the wettest extra-tropical cities of their size or greater in the world so we were not surprised to feel raindrops the morning we visited Kenrokuen. Rain or shine, the garden is breathtaking.

At 25 acres, Kenrokuen is the largest of the three great landscape gardens in Japan. Kenrokuen translates as "a refined garden incorporating six attributes" which, according to my guidebook, are spaciousness, careful arrangement, seclusion, antiquity, elaborate use of water, and scenic charm.

Matsuzaki-san points to the oldest fountain in Japan

The Maeda lords, at one time the second most powerful family in Japan after the Tokugawa Clan, spent about 150 years creating this garden outside their castle. Construction began in the 1670s during the rule of the fifth lord and what we see today was finished by the twelfth lord in 1822. The garden was not opened to the public until after the Meiji Restoration almost fifty years later.

I have 47 more pictures of this bird if you are interested

The waterfall pre-dates our Declaration of Independence by two years.

Hisagoike Pond, where the garden originated

There were more babbling brooks than I could count. Not many flowers are blooming at this time of year but the leaves on the trees were just starting to turn red, orange, and yellow. This garden is more about trees and shrubs than flowers anyway and could easily have served as inspiration to Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape designer responsible for Central Park in New York City and the grounds surrounding the Biltmore mansion near Asheville, North Carolina.

A bamboo bar prohibited us from crossing a bridge spanning one of the brooks. "What's that thing in the middle of the bridge?" we wondered.

A stone wrapped in twine. It surely means something but we are clueless. Hints from any of my Japanese friends who might be reading this would be greatly appreciated.

Fearless and Peevish with their friends outside Seisonkaku Villa

Of the many lovely stone lanterns tucked here and there in the garden, the most famous is the Kotojitoro on the edge of Kasumigaike Pond. We saw sweets in the gift shop decorated with the lantern's image and later spotted the distinctive design on manhole covers and metal railings around the city.

Here it is! Like everyone else who visits Kenrokuen, we must take at least a dozen photographs of Kotojitoro.

Two gardens down, one to go.

The Cats Ate My Homework?

The care Japanese gardeners lavish on gnarled old trees intrigues me. There seems to be as much art as science involved in the lashing of mallets to fragile limbs. Someone went to a whole lot of trouble winding those ropes.

This morning I'm feeling a bit gnarled myself and wishing the Ancient Mariner was here to prop me up.  He'll be back from San Diego tomorrow but this morning is the deadline for turning in fifty picture cards to the Japanese and American Wives Club.  My PC is not cooperating and this old laptop is not connected to the printer.  Which actually might be a blessing because I couldn't find the special picture card paper at the Navy Exchange so I was going to have to painstakingly cut my masterpieces out of flimsy computer paper.

I best go practice contrite expressions in front of my bathroom mirror.

Mukojima Hyakkaen Gardens: The Hagi Tunnel

Mukojima Hyakkaen, the only surviving flower garden from the Edo Period, is pleasantly natural and features flowers and plants mentioned in classic Chinese and Japanese works of literature.  The 29 stone monuments scattered around the garden looked something like Stations of the Cross to me but each is dedicated to a famous Japanese literary figure of the past.

My Flower Lover's Guide to Tokyo recommends this garden as a good place to see hagi or bush clover blooming in late September.  The main attraction this time of year is a hagi-covered bamboo tunnel about thirty meters long but on evenings in late August the City of Tokyo hosts gatherings to listen to crickets and other insects released throughout the grounds.  I'm not terribly sorry I missed that event.

The tunnel of bush clover

As thankful as I am that Artistic Explorer has finally returned to Japan to explore some more gardens with me, she is no more comfortable in front of a camera than I am. This makes no sense because she is attractive by every measure but, desperate as I am for pleasant companionship, I am compelled to accede to her wishes and stalk total strangers to provide you with "people pictures". I hid behind a bush to capture this interesting couple for you. Doesn't he look comfy?

His cap intrigues me, mainly because I had to postpone my hair appointment until next week to visit this garden today.  Sometime in the next day or two I'm going to have to cover my head with a cap like that.

This is the next thing I'm going to try to make

While I was busy searching for human subjects, Artistic spotted a water feature similar to but simpler than the one we discovered at a plum garden in the spring of 2010. You fill the ladle with water from the pot on the right then pour the water over the stones on top of the pot on the left with your ear against that bamboo pole to hear the water sing.

Here's the best part: Since we are foreigners, we are not expected to be as well-mannered as native Japanese visitors to the garden. So we blithely lifted the bowl of stones off the top of the pot and discovered how simple it will be to create one of these singing water features in our own Virginia gardens.

We just have to figure out how to drill a hole for a bamboo stick in a ceramic pot.

I'm counting on one of you to come up with a quick answer so I don't have to fritter away a few hours googling "ceramic" "drill" and "hole".

Thanks in advance.