Patterns in Nature


Last night, I went alone to the garden. Anne was under the weather and did not feel well enough to go to. Too much electioneering on Tuesday. Those fifteen hour days are killers. I got there at six when the garden reopened for the night. However, sunset was not until 7:30. So, I walked around, got my 10K steps. Played a lot of solitaire and basically killed time. Eventually, it darkened enough to begin taking pictures. It really wasn’t until the last hour that the light got really good. I closed the gardens at nine. There are twenty-one installations in this show, and I have included a few of my favorite ones with this post.

Karesansui 

Raking the Sand in the Japanese Garden

We saw this garden employee, raking the sand in the Japanese garden. His action reminded me of a story I heard last summer up at the cabin. Judd told the story of when he was young, he and his brother were sometimes tasked with raking the beach sand. They always viewed this task as a punitive one, considering that the beach in question is a half mile long and from year-to-year can be quite wide, but they were young boys then and probably needed an activity to keep them from trouble. Their work was a far cry from the decorative raking, or karesansui, practiced at the garden. Karesansui means dry mountain water, which speaks to the major components of this Japanese form of gardening.