Q: How Many Japanese Gardeners Does It Take to Transplant an Iris?

A:  Apparently at least five.

No matter how many flowers are in bloom when I visit a garden in Japan, somehow I seem to come home with more photographs of people than flowers. Here are some of the random encounters that brightened my last visit to the Flower Center Ofuna Botanical Garden.

The wheelchair crowd in the rose garden moved me almost as much as their caregivers, a wonderfully warm trio who passed out lunch boxes and chatted merrily with their charges while I looked on from behind a thorny bush.

This young mother was kind enough to snap our picture in front of that wall of yellow flowers then grandma held the baby while we returned the favor.

Schoolchildren receive their marching orders

Camouflaged as a clematis vine, I snuck this picture of a little girl playing catch with her grandparents.

The next time I visit the botanical garden, I'm going to drag Shinagawa-san along. She has never been there. That surprised me until I remembered that I have never visited the Ella Sharp Museum in my hometown or Sleeping Bear Dunes and Mackinac Island in Northern Michigan. Tsk, tsk.