Japanese Festival at the Garden

The Missouri Botanical Garden was founded in 1859 by Henry Shaw. It is the oldest botanical garden in operation in the U.S. and one of the few to achieve National Historic Landmark status. It is located by Tower Grove Park and in a funky, eclectic section of St. Louis. Once again, the Berkeley in us loved the neighborhood! Over Labor Day weekend, we became members and took advantage of our membership by heading to their Japanese Festival, one of the largest and oldest festivals of its kind in the United States.

We parked in a nearby neighborhood and walked over to the Garden. The temperature was nearly 97 degrees that day. It was hot, humid and sticky. I honestly didn’t know how long we would last. As soon as we walked through the air-conditioned building and out to the gardens we were ooh’ing and ah’ing. The Garden was spectacular and on top of that splendor, was the added dimension of the Japanese culture and people and food and decor. It also seemed like everyone from St. Louis was here. I mean, we hardly know anyone and even we bumped into someone we knew- what are the chances of that?  As we walked along the pathways a dashi passed us by. The dashi is a parade float that is typically pulled through town by children. This dashi was part of the opening festival procession and was pulled by the students of the Japanese Language School. As we made our way to the Japanese Garden, we passed several art sculptures that had nothing to do with the Japanese Festival- I think they might be permanent art in the Gardens- I guess I’ll find out on our next visit there but they were outstanding in their vibrant colors and just so unique. I had to snap a few pictures and share them with all of you.

Unpredictability

Okay, I’ll confess- I got cocky and confident. I thought I had this Mid-West weather thing all figured out. See, what I’ve been doing is checking my weather app at least once or twice a day. It’s pretty accurate and so when Team Jackson attended our first Cardinals baseball game this past week, I knew it would be a cool evening in the 60’s. We all had our sweaters and I even took umbrellas just in case and we did get rained out at the top of the 6th inning and it was okay because it was 8 p.m. on a school night and we needed to get home anyways. Silly, silly me thinking I had this whole weather thing under control.

Fast forward to this morning. When I checked the weather app last night, it didn’t show rain until at least the middle of next week. I set out for my usual Saturday morning walk. I looked up at the sky and thought- hmmm – well it is a little overcast but it should be fine. Walked for about 30 minutes with a little drizzle and I’m thinking well there are a lot of trees and if it should perhaps rain a little harder I could always run for cover under the trees. But then- BAM! From one minute to the next, it completely poured down on me. There was no warning. No rain one minute and then complete downpour the next. I tried finding a tree- I really did but I had no idea that rain could come down so hard in such a short amount of time. I finally found a solid, broad tree and huddled over my phone under my shirt. My phone! That’s all I cared about. I thought to myself how in the world will I get home? I’m literally trapped under this tree and I’m getting wetter and wetter by the minute. The wierd thing too is that when it downpours like that- all you see is white mist everywhere and all of a sudden you feel like you are in an episode of the Walking Dead and you are the last person left alive- no cars, complete quiet except rain. Then I thought- I’m not going out like that – I need to keep moving.