TRANSITIONING TO SPRING

Today the sun is shining brightly, the breeze is gentle and spring is definitely in the air. I began the morning by doing a little removal of weeds before they become a problem that requires a chainsaw. There is one little pesky weed that flowers very quickly and sends out seeds in great numbers. With the spring also comes more blossom like the tree below.

Every year it suddenly has a mass of white blossom transforming not only the tree but the streetscape near our city apartment. 

A few weeks ago I noticed this beautifully-shaped blossoming tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. I did not stop to check its name as I was hurrying elsewhere at the time. However, I could not resist a photo.

As ikebana pays attention to the seasons, I recently set my students the exercise of making an arrangement with narcissus; by which I meant any flowers from the narcissus family.

Eugenia created this very informal freestyle work in which the leaves were the principal subject. She has used a double nageire style black ceramic vessel.

Helen N has created a modern-style ikebana with a small bunch of daffodils and three leaves arranged to create repeating geometric forms.

Margaret also focused on the leaves to create rhythmic lines that flow around a small bunch of white narcissus. In class we discussed the challenge of arranging narcissus in Australia, unless you grow them. Our florists usually sell bunches of flowers only, or sometimes with two or three leaves.

Last Tuesday was the annual general meeting of Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter. After four years on the committee I retired from the position of Vice-President. It is the custom of the branch that the Heads of the Schools each give a demonstration of their ikebana.

The Heads of four of the five schools in Melbourne participated. In this photo, from the left are: Yukako Braun, Ikenobo school, Lyn Wong, Ohara school, Christopher James (me) Sogetsu school and Chieko Yazaki, Shogetsudo koryu school. After making the arrangements we each spoke briefly about our work. The next three photos are of the completed arrangements.

Yukako Braun, Ikenobo

Lyn Wong, Ohara

Chieko Yazaki, Shogetsudo koryu

Here I am speaking about my ikebana in which I have used Japonica from our garden. The white Japonica (Japanese Flowering Quince) is from a bush given to me by my ikebana friend, Joan Norbury.

This is the finished work (that did not photograph to my satisfaction). There are more photographs from the AGM on the I.I. website blog. 

Tomorrow we are expecting rain (back to winter?).

Greetings from Christopher
17th August 2019