Cherry blossom

[wongkk]

When I visited Japan in late March 2009, I was fascinated by the cherry blossoms and the habit of hanami (friends and family meeting to look at the blossom and to eat and drink beneath the cherry trees as they flowered and shed petals over the food).  It was a very metaphorical experience.

Comments

[wongkk]

Hmm - I can see that you and trees don't have the easiest of relationships if they drop all that stuff on you! Cherry petals and plum blossom blowing across your path in the wind is a strange experience. Like dry snowflakes.

I know what you mean about animes. One of my favourite screen caps is of hijikata toshizo lying in a pile of cherry petals - snitched from bugackt's old layout:



Your "flying spinning leaf-bean looking like v-shape thing" - is it this one? Is a sycamore.



You will definitely know that a conker is not a chestnut if you try to eat one! No-one will make sweet soup from conkers :-)

[brotherskeeper1]

That green double pod looks like the whirly-jiggers that are currently on our maple trees except there is only one pod. And each one is capable of being a new tree. They are a massive nuisance each spring.

[wongkk]

In the UK, ours are usually sycamore and, yes, I know the shape of the seed leaves and pull them up by the handful before they reach 2 inches tall. I don't want to lose my house in a sycamore forest!

[brotherskeeper1]

The same is true here with the sweet gum tree -- those green sticker balls that form over the summer and fall throughout the winter must be raked before the grass has any height and can be cut. If they land in a flower bed, they will take over. I've dealt with them over and over. Now, the whirly jiggers are coming down. It appears that we have a huge crop of them this year :/

[wongkk]

The twirling spinning sycamore key things are fun to chase and follow, especially if you don't have (like a child) any responsibility for a garden. So they are amusing and not amusing - like people :=)