OUT AND ABOUT

Last week we visited friends who live near Port Fairy, a couple of hundred kilometres west along the coast from Torquay.  

Low sand dunes separate our friends' property from the beach. A famous landmark in the area is Tower Hill, an extinct volcano, which has a nature reserve within the caldera.  

Seen here from a high point within the nature reserve, the caldera lake is in the middle distance and the flat coastline in the far distance. The Tower Hill Reserve had become badly degraded in the early part of the 20th century, but is now famous for the significant environmental restoration that has been achieved over the last 40 years. One of the interesting information resources in the restoration process was a large landscape painting from the 1850s that showed the flora and fauna present at that time. 

Here three emus are grazing beside the visitor centre.

Four years ago we visited this reserve with our Canadian friends, Dick, (Laurie), Leonora, and Eleanor.

This time we saw a kangaroo grazing at the top of one of the hills.

Meanwhile back in the Torquay garden...

...this eucalyptus tree needed to be rather severely pruned because it was crowding a Cook Pine araucaria columnaris. The pine is in the same family as the Norfolk Island pine.

The Cook Pine is in the centre of this photo and some of the pruning is apparent on the eucalypt on the right.

When the arborist dropped some of the lopped branches on the driveway, I noticed that there were masses of flower buds that I had not seen in the high branches.

I could not resist gathering a few small branches because of the striking brick red of the flower caps that were about to fall off. They teamed beautifully with this vase by the Sydney ikebanist and potter, Margaret Hall.

Greetings from Christopher

27th April 2019

SIGNS OF AUTUMN

The weather here on the south coast has been unseasonably warm with quite a few days in the high 20sC and even the low 30sC in recent weeks. However, some of the nights have been cool enough to give autumn colour to various plants in our garden.

This is the Boston Ivy Parthenocissus tricuspidata, that grows on a wall near our front entrance. It is a very satisfactory replacement for a climbing ficus that had started to damage the brick work.

Being deciduous it also rewards us with seasonal colour change and a scattering of leaves on the path at this time of year.

This photo shows the ornamental grape on a frame. It has some well coloured leaves. However since I planted it into the ground last winter it has suffered with the very hot weather over the summer. In the foreground of the photo is a flourishing Miscanthus sinensus 'Zebrinus'. It was given to me by an ikebana colleague Margaret L. and is only surviving because it is in a pot that I can manage to keep moist.

The prize-winner for colour is this hydrangea that was given to me by Rosemary and David. Again, only surviving in our garden by being kept moist in a pot and sheltered against a south-facing wall.

What amazes me is that the photo above shows the same plant in the first week of January. As you can see the flowers initially are quite a pale pink.

With these latter two treasures in the garden what else did I need for the 'Autumn in a basket' theme at the April meeting of Ikebana International. The unusual Japanese basket is quite dark and almost spherical in for. It seemed to have sufficient mass to take such large and strongly coloured flowers.

Greetings from Christopher
21st April 2019

MINIATURE IKEBANA

On Monday two weeks ago, the Sogetsu Branch workshop was led by Helen Quarrell. The theme she chose was 'miniature ikebana'. This is a concept that was developed by the Sogetsu School's second Iemoto, Kasumi Teshigahara. 

Her idea was that by using very small vessels the ikebanist would arrange botanical elements, rather than make arrangements in the traditional sense. The elements could be a single leaf, flower, seed-pod, stem or even just a part of one of these. In one of her examples the Iemoto used a single stamen from a flower. In this way miniature ikebana shares ideas with the curriculum exercise of 'Deconstruction and re-arrangement'. 

These two photos show Helen's demonstration examples at the workshop. The 'arrangement' aspect of the exercise comes from the considered placement of the materials on a board, platter or cloth, on which the work is set. Helen made the observation that this is an interesting way of making ikebana when the physical space is very limited.

This is my example arranged on a cloth base provided by my colleague Barbara. I had left my lacquered stand behind and had to improvise. One of the delights of this exercise is choosing little objects as vessels that are not thought of as 'vases' and also may have special meaning to the ikebanist. My vessels included two sake cups, a box, a test-tube, an ornamental bottle cap, a serviette ring and small ceramic vessels that were given to me by friends. 

This link will take you to more photos from the workshop. Emily Karanikolopoulos also has some lovely photos on her blog: Emily in Tokyo.

Greetings from Christopher

13th April 2019

ARRANGEMENTS WITHOUT USING A KENZAN

Last week I had intended to mention that the Sogetsu installation at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show could be thought of as a large scale version of a 'no kenzan' arrangement in the Sogetsu style. 

The emphasis in this case is on the vertical lines with a focal mass placed high in the arrangement.

Here is an example I have shown before. I made this 'no kenzan' ikebana at a workshop I gave in New Zealand four years ago. This practise of making an arrangement in a suiban without using a kenzan is one of the exercises in the Sogetsu curriculum. A closely related exercise is 'Showing or emphasising lines at the base' of the arrangement. 

In both of these exercises the space created within the suiban becomes important and draws attention to the surface of the water. In the Sogetsu School it is permissible to use a variety of fixing techniques, including wiring, as long as the fixing is very discreet and not noticeable.

One of the events at Ikebana International Melbourne's 60th celebrations a week ago was a members'-only workshop given by Mr Naohiro Kasuya, the Iemoto of the Ichiyo School. His topic was an arrangement in a suiban 'without using a kenzan'. 

Interestingly, this turned out to be a subtle distinction. The Iemoto asked us to think about the exercise as making an ikebana arrangement in a suiban, or other shallow vessel, in which we were using nageire techniques. That is, the sort of fixing techniques usually used in tall vessels. Then photo above shows the Iemoto critiquing one of the participants.

All of the workshop attendees were given 4 or 5 stems of tortuous willow, salix matsudana, and then were able to choose flowers to use as an accent in the arrangement. 

In my arrangement I have curved the bottoms of the stems to create arches which I braced against the sides of the traditional-style ceramic suiban. I wanted the curves to reflect the circular form of the suiban and also create an open space to show the water surface. I finally added three stems of white snapdragon, antirrhinum, which also curved well to follow the lines in the arrangement.

Greetings from Christopher

6th April 2019

Thank you to Helen Mariott for the photo of the Iemoto.