Plum Blossoms 観梅

         I was watching the above family from a bench in the park. The father is just off screen. There was something special about the way the parents shared the flowers with their daughter.

As you can see, there are two main colors for the plum blossoms: pink and white. The combination of these two colors brings fortune or luck, and is thought to be especially beautiful. The combination of these two -- either a bi-colored flower or a tree with grafted branches -- has its own name: o-mai-no-mama, "red and white thinking tree."

This is a view of part of the gardens from the second floor of the manor house. Within the gardens there are over 3,000 trees and 100 different species. 

Each species of flower has its own name, as well. The white trees below are called "pure water reflects the spirit" and "balding old man". What is amazing to me about the plum blossoms is that they lack luster. Each individual flower has a crisp beauty, but as a whole the trees are non-assertive. You have to be still to admire them. Perhaps that is one reason that they are not popular in America (that and the fact that raw plums from these trees are toxic).

Since you have to be still to admire the blossoms, you notice much more than the blooms.I believe the most beautiful part of my blossom viewing were the trees themselves, not their temporary adornment. Each branch is so unique, and seems to grow without any plan. Sometimes the angles they grow at seem impossible, or at least impractical.

 

I particularly admired the old trees. 

Look closer at this old tree.

Where is the tree?

The plum trees are highly susceptible to mold and fungus, which eats away at the inner parts of the tree. It is said that a tree without damage to the wood must be young, because an old tree would necessarily have damage. This tree is one of the worst damaged, but every tree in the garden was missing some degree of wood.

This tree seems to be nothing but an empty shell of twisted bark, and yet it blooms.

 苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて 

which is read ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote.

"A world of grief and pain, flowers bloom, even then" 

or

"Even though the heart is slowly dying, the flowers still bloom"

 Below is one of the six trees in the garden which were chosen (by whom, I don't know) 

to be the most beautiful.  These special six trees were separated from the rest of the trees with this kind of bamboo fence. 

This tree is named "Tiger's Tail." 

Everything came in different colors: the bark, the buds, the flowers. 

There number and size of the petals varied. 

And each tree - trunk, flower, and bud - had something to be admired.