Every year I visit the Iris fields at Kijoka. https://thequietripple.com/2013/03/31/flags/

There are acres of irises growing in paddy fields. The fields are surrounded by wooded hills and all in all it is super beautiful. This year I decide to take good photos. I set off with macro and wide-angle lenses, flash, tripod. I am very excited. But the camera is dead. I have not checked the battery, which is totally flat. How stupid I feel.

Mind you, as we all know, the IPhone is more or less as good.

Having strolled around, I buy big bunch of coconuts, no irises. No one is there to sell them. There is an honesty box and lots of pre-prepared bunches. The idea of people just walking off with them without paying is absurd.

The back of my truck is full of yacht paint, varnish, teak oil, rope, clamps and stuff. It is now upgraded with a big bunch of about to flower, irises.

Anyway, about a year ago I took an Ikebana course taught by the very learned Okubo sensei. https://thequietripple.com/2019/07/07/ikebana/

I look forward to making dazzling displays. I have amazing Yachimun vases.

I wander through the fields near my house and collect leaves, grasses and flowers.

Unfortunately, every attempt I make to build the clever internal structures fails. These structures allow you to hold the flowers in interesting positions. In the end I am obliged to, more or less, dump the flowers into the vases, as I have done most of my life. Very disappointing. I am a bad student.

So my apartment is full of flowers. This can never be a bad thing.

On a darker note, I hear that there has been a coronavirus death on Okinawa.

Only the beginning?