Category: ZenGarden

This brief collection of plum blossom haiku celebrates the “Winter Gentleman”. In the art of Chinese painting, the “Four Gentlemen” are plum blossom, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum. The order of these flowers agrees with their corresponding seasons: winter, spring, summer and fall. In addition to their importance in Chinese painting, the Four Gentlemen, also called […]

Haiku, with its gentle guidelines and rules, is much more than counting syllables! Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694), the father of traditional haiku and one of the most revered poets in Japan, is credited for refining the haiku from a stylized form of 17 syllables to a poetic framework of simplicity and depth of meaning. […]

Basho’s haiku about lilies consists of only three short lines, containing a few brief words. Those of us who love this haiku have discovered that it gets deeper and more meaningful on each consecutive reading. Try memorizing it, and starting or ending your day with it. Try saying it when you’re on the verge of […]

For some of us, a constant buzzing, clicking, humming sound is the very epitome of summer. What would a balmy July night in the garden be without the never-ending songs of crickets and cicadas? The envelope of sound is so constant, so all-consuming, that we would feel lost without it. In fact, when the cicadas […]