There's a wonderful story from the Way of Tea which directly challenged my approach to flower arranging, my appreciation of beauty and my attitude to simplicity. It goes like this.
The Shogun heard through the grapevine that the front garden of Rikyu, the founder of the Way of Tea, was overflowing with Morning Glory flowers. Apparently it was a sight to behold. The Shogun thought that this was too good a sight to miss and therefore invited himself over for Tea early one morning to catch the flowers at their most beautiful and brilliant. Imagine his dismay when he arrived at the small cottage to find that all the Morning Glory flowers had been chopped down. He had made the journey out from his palace for nothing.
Or so it seemed.
Furious, and struggling to hide his wrath, he bowed down to enter the tiny door into Rikyu's Tea Room. There, on the shelf, was a solitary, perfect, beautiful, let's say divine, Morning Glory, arranged in a simple (and probably bamboo) vase.
Immediately, he understood.
This story embodies the concept of Wabi, the fresh simplicity and understated elegance that underpins The Way of Tea. I was reminded of it during the last few days when our postcard size City garden was groaning under a canopy of climbing white roses. We've trained them to cover half of the garden to create a secret sanctuary for both us and the myriads of wild birds - blackbirds, robins, sparrow, blue-tits, greenfinches - who sing for us all day from early dawn. Interwoven is a white jasmine with petals so delicate and sweet that it looks from up here as though I am looking down from the window seat of a Jumbo 747 onto the fluffy cumulo-nimbus below. Photographs have just rendered it into a flat abstract piece of incomprehensible modern art.
Out of sight there is an urn filled with mint and there are pots of rosemary and white geraniums too. We call it the fragrant garden at this time of year. The breeze is intoxicating us even now. Close your eyes, and inhale that heady scent to be transported to cloud nine.
It is oh-so-very English to bring in home huge armfuls of flowers, have big scale floral decorations, and emphasise abundance. The Japanese way is to allude to it. The Way of Tea is described as "the sound of windblown pines in a painting" and that is the beauty that it seeks to conjure up. As if by magic. Not full frontal, show us what you've got, opulence on display.
