TANABATA - Star Festival Celebration at the Garden

The Tanabata festival (the seventh day of the seventh month) is a romantic festival, with wishes tied to tree branches and love poems written and read...all in the hopes that the star lovers will have clear skies and be able to meet in the sky tonight.  Visitors wrote poems and wishes and painted sumie-pictures of bamboo, and Duo En played with poet Michael Welch's presentation of his translations of love tanka. It was a wonderful day, with the sun breaking through periodically from between the clouds....which might break up just in time tomorrow evening so that the two sky lovers can meet.

This is one of the last days the garden entryway will look like this, because it is going to be rebuilt this summer.... 

Tanabata poems hang from branches near the front of the garden....
Wishes blow in the breeze...

Visitors of all ages wrote tanabta poems....

Thomas Hargrave, from Seattle Parks and Recreation, talks with haiku poet Michael Welch. 

Midori Kono Thiel shows guests the fine art of Japanese sumie painting techniqes.

The teahouse garden is starting to take on an autumn tinge....

A lilypad bud floats among leaves in the pond.

Reflectons of trees in the lilypad-full pond.

A turtle enjoys the summery tanabata afternoon.