on a rainy day

We are in the rainy season, called Tsuyu, in Japan now. It takes about one month to come to the end of the season, moving the rain front from west to east.

This dismal weather, however, is important for water supply in upcoming summer and for good harvest in autumn.

Hydrangeas in my garden started to colour at last. They are late in bloom because there is less light by adjacent walls of my neighbours.


 
 
Any way hydrangeas become well with rainy days.


I'll go to see them in the drizzle walking around my residential area a little.

 
 
I'm walking alone but I don't feel lonely, for I've invited my brother's soul to listen to the sound of rain of tapping lightly on my umbrella. He passed away four days ago. He was five younger than I, and it was too late to go through an operation when his cancer of oesophagus was found out about one year ago.

The language of flowers on hydrangea signifies change of heart as many of them turn from faint colour into deep one, in blue, pink and purple.


Among them white hydrangeas do not change their colour if we could say white is a colour.

I like their atmosphere as if they dream whitish dreams.

 

 
Seeing colourful hydrangeas in rain fall, like a door opened, I suddenly remembered the day when I visited a river side in Nishinomiya in Hyogo prefecture this April. It was a bright day.
 
 

A great earthquake attacked mainly Hyōgo Prefecture  in 1995. 1.17. and it brought more than 6,000 victims consequently.


By the Nigawa river, land slide occurred and 34 people's lives include students living in lodging were lost.

One of my accompanies who visited there is a volunteer who is taking care of the slope after that disaster, planting some flowers and helping the maintenance of a memorial hall and a monument.
The woman who is working for the flowers, shibazakura or Phlox subulata, is a doll like a scarecrow.

In the memorial hall, a painting of God of Mercy was beholding on souls of the victims.

And, at the opposite side of the slope many hydrangeas were planted.
They must be in full bloom now.

By a shrub of hydrangea a tiny flower, hotaru-bukuro or Campanula punctata Lam., is blooming.

I like the naming hotaru-bukuro, literally meaning sac for firefly.
I saw many flying fireflies above rivers when I was a kid.

We need daily effort more for depollution and to call them back to rivers. I really want to see their translunary flies again.

 

紫陽花はほっかり咲いて青むともひとよたやすくほほゑむなかれ　今野　寿美

Even when a hydrangea opens up

in heavenly blue

Please refrain from

letting ease your mind easily

and smiling of vanity

by Sumi Konno(１９５１～）

Many maple leaves and a water fall

Minoh city, northern area in Osaka prefecture, is my hometown.


Looking back my childhood I think that the city was like a village with many open fields, rice pappies and was close to some small mountains.

In a mountain there is an old park, Minoh park, that was set more than one hundred years ago. By a park I don't mean a square nor a plaza but a hiking trail which follows along a brook and the ascendant way leads hikers to a water fall in heart of the mountain.

 
 
This way is about three kilometers long from the nearest station and beside it hundreds of maple trees stand in a row. My family sometimes used to walk there with packed lunch in early summer and in autumn.


Walking the path I remembered the days when my parents were young and my brother and sister were very little.

 
 
Clustered Yuki-no-shita, Saxifraga stolonifera Curtis, reminds me of my olden days in this season.

 

A tiny hydrangea is already in bloom. Hello, thank you for welcoming me.

This area is famous for a variety of habitats, monkeys, deer, various kind of insects and river fish. A passenger kindly told me that there were Ōsanshōuo, Japanese giant salamanders, between some small rocks in the river.


The three stone- like round heads slowly moved to breathe.

Some parts of the brook were in emerald by the shining maple young leaves.

These young leaves and the shimmering reflection on water make me think about song in praise of adolescence.

Let me introduce my favourite tanka poem in regard to passion of youth and love.

あの夏の数かぎりなきそしてまたたつた一つの表情をせよ 小野　茂樹

 

Show me again

the totally unique

and an endless number of

your sign of emotion

that you gave me in that summer

by Shigeki Ono (１９３６～１９６９）