Return to the teahouse

I am visiting Descanso Gardens several times a week now, weather permitting, just to capture the changing beauty of the season. Day by day the garden seems to change. The rain that nourishes some buds to open washes away others in full flower. It reminds me that beauty is very fleeting and that the time to appreciate it is NOW, not someday. A trip to the garden in May will let me paint sunflowers but not cherry blossoms.

This garden area incorporates the Japanese landscaping principle of “hide and reveal.” You enter the garden through several gates, and as you follow several meandering paths, new vistas appear before you. If you stroll by the garden from the outside, you may glimpse a different view through the camellia shrub hedge, such as this one.

If you were to move yourself 90 degrees to the left, you would see this view – that flowering tree is the same. (Oh, and Go Bruins … onward to the Final Four!)