Spring is coming!

This week in tea class, one of my classmates brought in a seasonal sweet that she had made.  She called it shitamo'e, or budding grasses, because it looks like the beginning of spring underneath the snow.

Isn't it lovely?

Counterintuitively, because it is late February we performed a particular temae that is meant to keep things feeling warm during a very cold part of winter.  However, while walking around the neighborhood where I work the other day, I saw my own shitamo'e, in the form of the first daffodil shoots of the season.

Moon viewing

Right now we’re in the middle of the lunar Hebrew month. Months start with new moons, so being in the middle means a full moon. Tonight when I stepped outside of around 8:00, the moon was luminescing huge in the sky, framed by veil-thin clouds.

Chanoyu is deeply entrenched in seasonality. Chanoyu draws its practitioners into the present through careful attention to what is in bloom, what is starting to change, and which flavors are in season.