plant magic

I discovered one of my favorite places in sapporo yesterday, the botanical garden at Hokkaido University. Located in the heart of downtown, it includes an herbaceous garden, a garden of utilitarian plants of the northern asian ethnic peoples, and several greenhouses filled with tropical fruit trees, cacti, succulents, air plants, orchids and ferns.

I love a place entirely devoted to plants - the warm moisture on my skin, the too-sweet smell, the chaotic growth of limbs, the sound of a room filled with silent creatures - all amplified yesterday by living in a country so well-structured and clean. These musty greenhouses seem almost relics of a time when Japan was less tidy and anti-septic. Walking through the rooms, I thought back to a summer I spent tending plants at a nursery in Idaho. I cannot remember another time I so enjoyed working and so liked being alone...