Nature’s paint brush
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
"Patient gardeners now proud and replete".
Autumn in Gifu the temperature is beginning to drop as nature adjusts to the coming cold temperatures of winter. In Japan nature paints from its palette of a million colours.
In Gifu Park a lot is happening. The leaves are turning the canvas of nature into a glorious abstraction of light and colour.
There is red, there is orange and there is yellow. There is the green of cypress and an often clear blue sky, shafts of sunlight now penetrating the once dense summer vegetation, projecting gently shifting patterns on the earth.
The layers of colour make us contemplate how complex nature is and how precious our world. Here is the nature that sustains us for all to see.
In Gifu the Chrysanthemum Doll and Flower Festival is in full bloom. Patient gardeners now proud and replete.
The streams in Gifu Park meander below the glowing canopy adding their song and dancing surface light.
On one such autumnal morning we meet a Japanese Raccoon Dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus) who looks at us with a slightly worried expression and ambles off again. Were we the first Europeans he had ever seen?
This is also a time of sculptural transformation. Gardeners wrap the straw Komomaki (komo, straw mat and maki, wrap) around the trunks of pine, Edo style insect control, and the mats will be burnt along with all hibernating insect species in the coming spring. While far far more sensible than using pesticides, still strange in contrast in a park that includes a significant insect museum.
Here too, and of gentler purpose, making plants' winter coat of Komomaki, happily in its traditional form of straw, keeps gardeners busy as they skilfully prune, gather, wrap and tie the most fragile of plants.
During these painterly days the Peregrine Falcons glide high above their castle cliff home. As the sun sets the crows return to roost, dotting the reddening sky with their silky blackness, and now, as the sun drops below the horizon, the temple silhouettes against the new moon sky.
In Gifu Park a lot is happening. The leaves are turning the canvas of nature into a glorious abstraction of light and colour.
There is red, there is orange and there is yellow. There is the green of cypress and an often clear blue sky, shafts of sunlight now penetrating the once dense summer vegetation, projecting gently shifting patterns on the earth.
The layers of colour make us contemplate how complex nature is and how precious our world. Here is the nature that sustains us for all to see.
In Gifu the Chrysanthemum Doll and Flower Festival is in full bloom. Patient gardeners now proud and replete.
The streams in Gifu Park meander below the glowing canopy adding their song and dancing surface light.
On one such autumnal morning we meet a Japanese Raccoon Dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus) who looks at us with a slightly worried expression and ambles off again. Were we the first Europeans he had ever seen?
This is also a time of sculptural transformation. Gardeners wrap the straw Komomaki (komo, straw mat and maki, wrap) around the trunks of pine, Edo style insect control, and the mats will be burnt along with all hibernating insect species in the coming spring. While far far more sensible than using pesticides, still strange in contrast in a park that includes a significant insect museum.
Here too, and of gentler purpose, making plants' winter coat of Komomaki, happily in its traditional form of straw, keeps gardeners busy as they skilfully prune, gather, wrap and tie the most fragile of plants.
During these painterly days the Peregrine Falcons glide high above their castle cliff home. As the sun sets the crows return to roost, dotting the reddening sky with their silky blackness, and now, as the sun drops below the horizon, the temple silhouettes against the new moon sky.
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