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～）