Ruffles sent sweet photos of the wonders of her garden–“CORIANDER SEED….if you let the cilantro in your garden ‘bolt’ & go to flower, you will have the seeds too. They are so perfume/delicious . …& just to see….I let some Romaine lettuce go to flower & then to the pretty soft puff balls here. Time now to turn the earth & begin new plantings. Who knew that romaine flowers to clouds of puffs!”
Clouds of puffs!
And a dancing dandelion from her garden… In Japan, I so loved the way dandelions and little flowers would grow in the green grass in spring.
Like the tapestry of grass and wild flowers in the Ghent Altarpiece.
I love dandelions.
I even love their name in Japanese, tanpopo.
In California, we hardly see them anymore, but in Westlake when I was a child, there were dandelions all over the grass along the greenbelts and in the park behind white oak.
Ruffles’ pictures remind me of the Japanese photographer Kazumasa Ogawa–the Getty has a nice collection of his photographs.
[And what a coincidence that Brooks asks me about them on the same day that Ruffles sends her evocative photos!]
Tochigi, where we lived, was the hometown of one of the shogun’s photographers, in the day when photography was first introduced into Japan. Kazy had his first baby pictures taken at the photography studio of the 4th generation descendent of the man who opened the Kataoka Photography Studio in the Meiji period, which was itself opened by the 4th son of the shogun’s photographer.
Tochigi lie on the road between Edo and Nikko, where the Shogun stayed.
The first floor of the studio had a small exhibition area displaying early period photographs.
Kazumasa Ogawa (from Saitama, not far from Tochigi) took all kinds of photographs, but his flower collotypes are his best known. And the Getty has a nice book out about their collection.
It is so artistic to portray the flowers abstracted in this way, isn’t it?
They look like glamorous fashion models!
Anyway, Tanpopo is a spring theme. So I will pick this up again in the spring…
But Ruffles also sent one with the moon. Dandelion and the moon….
What a shot!
She reminds me that,
Wonderful to think isn’t it
About Virgil, the poet/writer of Epics~~Aenead
That people of more ancient times read his GEORGICS, the praise & love & care of the land, of earth & tending farm….
CRAZY, but I felt that about ALL the many families that I visited when in Montana ~~
I cherish my conversations with Ruffles so much. I am so blessed.
Dewdrop World 