Smell the Roses

One very warm weekend a bit ago heralded the blooming of the roses in our garden. Just wanted to share one of them.

Even when life is crazy, and it feels like we're doing nothing but trying to keep up, somehow there's always time to stop and admire the incredible beauty that is right by us.

The trick is remembering to look.

Beginners' Luck

Whenever I go out with my camera, I tend to come back with a story. It's not that something happens in the "you'll never guess what happened to me" way (I seldom seem to have my camera around for those times), but rather that I've noticed that the camera tends to record more than just what's in front of it.

Each photo has a story to it -- the place, the time, the weather, what I was thinking at the time, who was around, what happened to catch my eye, how much time I put into creating the shot. Together, a series of photos tells a story in a way that no journaling (or perhaps even video, though I seldom have someone follow me around with a video camera) has been able to capture.

This weekend I went with a friend on a photo hike to the beautiful Filoli Gardens. (A "photo hike" is usually much more about the "photo" than the "hike", and can only really be done with others who, like me, when in possession of a camera tend to walk in no particular direction, stop randomly and spend minutes getting into yoga-like positions to catch a particular angle on a scene.) I hadn't been there in a long time, though years ago I used to go there nearly every week to study and relax.


This week's photo happens to be the very first photo I took out of about a hundred that afternoon. Call it "beginners' luck", but out of the whole set my eye keeps getting drawn back to this one. There are some other shots that I'm very happy with in terms of detail and color and composition. They often also took a lot more consicous effort to produce. This one was pretty much the first shot that caught my eye as I walked into the garden and pulled my camera out of its bag.

It's possible that "beginners' luck" is less "luck" (we just tend to give that term to any positive, not fully explained event) and more "intuition-driving-before-my-slower-more-analytical-self-kicked-in". It always amazes me what people can accomplish when they aren't trying to do something consciously.

It's a bit like walking into a garden and, next thing I know, I have a photo on my camera, almost like it took itself. It also tells me a thing or two about what my eye is instictively drawn to.

What are your photos that just "happened"? What is your eye drawn to?

Instant Gratification

Our fig tree is waking up from its winter slumber, and along with the first leaves also appear the first proto-figs, each smaller than my thumb. The tree will work on these for the nearly six months before they're ready to be eaten by us (or, on average, by the many birds that live nearby). We'll go from early Spring, right through Summer and out the other side to early Fall. These tiny fig leaves will grow large enough that they could actually be used for clothing in a pinch. And, in spite of the (relatively) long advance notice, the figs will most likely take us by surprise (again) when they're finally ripe.

In this age when everything is competing to be more 'instant' than everything else, it's refreshing to have something that's still connecting us to the actual cycles of nature and the seasons. And, if past experience is any predictor of future performance, the figs will be well worth the wait.

Blossoming Company

Remember that first plum blossom I posted about, oh, three days ago? Well, it most definitely has company now, and the garden is starting to look like Spring (just in time for March, I suppose!).

On Monday, Tali blogged about changes in her life, and asked her readers about their own experience. Well, can't say that I'm going through sweeping changes, but what I do see is what tends to follow the seasons. Much like the moods of a garden and the antics of wildlife, I feel my own rhythm tends to go through cycles. I think I'm not quite as awake as these plum blossoms yet, and still in "slow", home-centered, sleep-a-lot (yea, there's times I don't sleep as much!), introspective mode.

In general, I feel every moment is the moment to feel the way you're feeling in that moment

(Parse that out in 2 seconds or less... Actually, never mind -- take your time. :) )

What's often easy for me to forget, in this culture fueled by instant gratification and constant stimulation, is that feeling sluggish, introspective and sleepy are all natural and part of an annual cycle of recovery. And, that out of this recovery generally comes the renewal and energy and joy of Spring. As the garden starts to wake up outside, most likely so will I. Until then, it does make for some pretty photos. :)

The Plum blossoms have arrived!

You know you're in California when it's still February but the plum blossoms are already, well, blossoming. There's always something reinvigorating about, one day, noticing that what has been bare wood in the backyard for the past several months suddenly went whoomp! and got all kinds of little green shoots on it. That was about a week ago over here, and today the first blooms appeared. So, of course, I ran out in between rain showers and snapped this photo to share.

I'll probably get better photos of the plum blossoms later, once we start getting blooms that don't require leaning out from a wet wooden bench and sticking my camera out at arm's length to get close enough for a photo. But we all seem to have a thing for firsts and, well, these were our first ones for the year. :)

Best Shot Monday: A splash of Huntington Color

So it's Tuesday, but still... Just heard about Best Shot Monday through Lara's Message in a Bottle, and figured I'd make my own (belated) contribution and share some of the amazing color that was all over the Huntington Gardens this weekend. The entire Chinese Garden had been decorated by two incredible ladies who came from Taiwan to create flower arrangements. The garden itself hasn't quite grown in yet, and the arrangements added a lot of color and beauty to the place.

However, my chosen photo is actually of a blossom that has actually grown right there, in the gardens. It is, as it were, an early herald of the abundance of color that will sweep through as Spring gradually makes her way through in the next months.


Happy Spring! :)

New Tea House at the Huntington Gardens

This weekend I got to preview the new Garden of Flowing Fragrance that will be open to the public on February 23rd at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. It's been under construction for many years, and I've gotten to watch a good portion of that construction in my various visits to the gardens there. I'm happy to report that the new gardens are absolutely beautiful and inspiring.

Perhaps even more exciting, though, is the fact that there is a new Tea House at the Chinese gardens. The old Rose Garden Tea Room with its traditional-English-tea-turned-buffet-style was already one of my favorite stops in the area, so I couldn't wait to try out the new Tea House.

As it turns out, neither could a lot of other people there that day, so there was a hefty line. But, no worries -- unlike the limited indoor seating of the Rose Garden, the new Tea House simply handed you your tea and left you free to find a seat among the many tables spread out on a large platform overlooking the gardens, so it actually moved fairly quickly.

For reference, I've included a photo of their current menu below.

Tea selection and serving - 3.5/5.0
Not many teas featured here, but some very good picks among them. (And quite an expansion from the usual 2-3 tea selection available at the Rose Garden.) Most of them are, fortunately, loose leaf, and are served by putting the leaves directly on a tea cup and adding hot water. The good news is that they provide hot water refills (it'd be a sin not to, with some of the loose leaf teas they're serving!). The less-good news is that you have to get up from whatever beautiful garden view you've found and walk back to the Tea House in order to get that refill. (And if you go through 5 or 6 cups, as one ought to with, say, their oolong, that makes for a lot of losing your seat. If anyone at Huntington is reading this -- how about some tea pots with hot water to go with the tea service? :) )

And, of course, the disadvantage of serving loose leaf tea directly on the cup is that, if you're not into super-strong/overbrewed tea, you'd better not be into contemplation or slow sipping, either.

We tried both the Jade Spiral Spring Tea (a green tea, with pale green, long thin leaves that made for two good infusions; a very clear taste, though not quite strong enough to punch through the snacks they served), and the Flowing Fragrance Oolong (large, deep green leaves with a strong and incredibly sweet and flowery taste; definitely my favorite of the two, and could easily have made it through more refill brewings than I had the determination to go back to the tea house for).

Overall, for $2.99, a pretty good value.

Food - 2.0/5.0
They pretty much had two options: very greasy, and very greasy vegetarian. Bonus points for having a vegetarian option (not often I find a vegetarian pork bun; looks like they used mushrooms, and actually made for a pretty decent bun), but the what-looked-like-a-dumpling and the what-was-probably-an-egg-roll tasted like they'd made buddies with a whole vat of oil, and while it is possible to brew tea strong enough to cut through anything, this really wasn't worth it. (Or, for that matter, worth $8.59 for the very small portion.)

However, this was their first day, so maybe they'll get the kinks in the recipes (or cooking method) worked out over time.

Atmosphere - 5.0/5.0
Can't beat sitting by a lake within a beautiful garden on a fresh, warm February day (gotta love California weather...).