The Dewdrop World

Meanderings through the seasons...

Orange and Lemon Trees in bloom

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For the Love of Oranges

Gulf Coast Journal

For the Love of Oranges

Leanne Ogasawara

American consumers have been stocking up on staples as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, giving one struggling beverage a much-needed boost: orange juice.

U.S. retail sales of orange juice jumped about 38% in the four weeks ending on March 28 compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen.

–CNN Business

2.

“How did you reach adulthood without learning how to cook?” 

According to him, all women in Japan learn to cook before they get married. On our first date, I had made the mistake of serving him an apple. Not that he expected me to slice them with cute bunny ears like the girls he knew back in his hometown near the foot of Mt. Fuji. But at the very least, I could have cut them in slices of roughly the same size. 

He had found himself fascinated by this aberration in female decorum. 

And not surprisingly, he wanted to marry me. 

Before our son was born a few years later, he got it in his head that even if I couldn’t cut apples properly, I might be able to master oranges. 

In Japan, oranges are sometimes served in place of dessert. The fruit is sliced away from the peel, cut into wedges, all pithy bits removed. Without the work of peeling and cutting, the sticky juice running down your arms, an ordinary experience is elevated into a delicacy, even a luxury. It can become an expression of love.

3.

One of the most treasured works of art held in the National Palace Museum in Taipei is a short three-line piece of calligraphy called Presenting Oranges. The original—now lost—was written in the fourth century by Wang Xizhi. Considered the greatest Chinese calligrapher of all time, anything in Wang Xizhi’s hand was said to be priceless during his lifetime. For over a thousand years, students of calligraphy have looked to Wang as a model. But none of his original works have survived. Instead, what we have are seventh-century copies. 

Every year, my calligraphy teacher in Tokyo would organize a pilgrimage to the museum in Taipei so his top students could stand in front of Presenting Oranges. Those trained in the art of writing in brush and ink are not only able to admire the work in terms of its formal aesthetic qualities, but are able to actually feel what it felt like to create it. This is what is so unique about Chinese calligraphy. There are rules. And so, by following the correct stroke order in your mind, you can physically experience the speed and pressure of the brush, as well as take pleasure in the flourishes and full stops. You breathe along, almost as if you were writing it yourself. 

Calligraphy is a performance art: the moment the ink touches the highly-absorbent piece of rice paper, there is no going back. No retouching. No changing one’s mind. And so, the calligraphy—dashed off in semi-cursive script—conflates time and space to capture one precise moment in time. It reads: I present three hundred oranges. Frost has not yet fallen. I cannot get more.

Fig. 1. Presenting Oranges section (center left) of Three Passages: Ping-an, He-ru, and Feng-ju (平安何如三帖), Wang Xizhi (王羲之, ca. 303-361), Jin Dynasty (265-420), Album leaf, ink on paper, 24.7 x 46.8 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei.

4.

Japan’s oranges are not great. Not compared to what we have in California. But what Japan lacks in delicious oranges, it more than makes up for in tangerines. And nothing says winter in Japan more than a bowl of tangerines placed in the middle of the table. And this is no ordinary table either, but a winter table. Called a kotatsu, it is where families gather. Sitting around on low cushions on the floor, they warm themselves by stretching out their legs under the blanket that covers the kotatsu, beneath which is a heat source, once a charcoal brazier but nowadays electrical. It is the epitome of winter coziness.   

Nine times out of ten, a TV will be on. But this is just background noise for what happens next, when family members—one by one—pick up a tangerine and begin peeling away. The only truly affordable fruit in Japan, people eat tangerines with abandon throughout the winter. Often you will see mothers carefully peeling them for their small children. Never ripping the skin, they carefully peel the fruit in long strips that come to resemble a blossoming flower. 

I used to peel tangerines for my son like this when he was small, always careful to remove the white pith before handing him the fruit, still cradled in its skin. The perfect little bowl for his perfect little hands.

5.

After twenty-five years in Japan, one day I finally went home. Arriving back in Los Angeles when the orange trees were in flowery bloom, their fragrance nearly knocked me over, flooding me with childhood memories. The poet Mahmoud Darwish said that, “cities are smells.” Well, I can tell you, Los Angeles is the perfume of orange blossoms, jasmine, and the salty sea. 

When I remarried a few years ago, my new husband and I were astonished to have found love again. Neither of us had dared to believe love could bloom again in mid-life. Wanting to celebrate this greatest of gifts, we embarked on a series of honeymoons. Following a trail of oranges, our first stop was Jaffa, in Israel. Once famous for its citrus, we stumbled on “the last orange tree.” Floating a foot off the ground, Orange Suspenda by Israeli artist Ran Morin is the sole survivor, cradled in its stoneware urn and suspended by metal chains to the walls nearby. It is supposed to be a symbol of home, a guide told us.

In Versailles, the orange trees are also in motion. Originating from Portugal, Spain and Italy, some of the trees are quite old. Not suspended off the ground like in Jaffa, instead they are wheeled around, cradled in their boxes. Kept warm in the Orangery during the winter months, they are rolled back out to scatter the Parterres in late spring. 

All for the love of oranges.

There is an even grander orangery at Schönbrunn in Vienna. But perhaps no one celebrated oranges in Europe like the Medici family of Florence. This passion began in the early 1400s, when Cosimo de’ Medici grew citrus trees in giant pots in his palace gardens. In Sandro Botticelli’s painting, LaPrimavera, all the action takes place in a garden that is really an orange grove. Perhaps this was an homage to the painter’s Medici patrons, who were known to have conducted trade with the East in the wildly expensive fruit. Or perhaps it is suggestive of the fact that one of the Latin words for oranges is medici.

Fig. 2. Orange Suspenda, Ran Morin, 1993, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo courtesy of the author.

6.

From Florence, we headed north, missing the infamous Battle of the Oranges by a few weeks. The event happens during Carnival, when the citizens of a town north of Turin called Ivrea celebrate by pelting each other with oranges. The action is said to get a bit rough so we were happy to head to Milan instead. On our first morning, we hopped on a tram and headed over to Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper can be seen. One of the best-known dinner parties in history, the meal is remembered for the bread and wine on the table. But we wondered what else might have been on the menu. A guide, who overheard us, smiled as she told us that artists of the Renaissance loved imagining what might have been served that evening. Because The Last Supper was painted on the refractory walls of the church, where the monks sat around a long table and ate their meals, Leonardo painted the foods that he thought the monks might actually be eating. And so you can see, she said, pointing up toward the middle of the fresco, plates of eel garnished with sliced oranges.

7.

Our final honeymoon took us to Spain. Arriving in Seville, just as the sun was peeking out behind the clouds after a violent rain shower, the smell of orange blossoms was overwhelming.

The Spanish word for orange blossoms comes from the Arabic, azahar. A beautiful-sounding word, it is widely known in Spain as one of the invocations of the Virgin Mary, Nuestra Señora del Azahar. The origin of "Our Lady of the Orange Blossom" is a statue of the Virgin holding a bouquet of orange blossoms found in the Spanish city of Beniaján, near Murcia. 

Spain has long been famous for its oranges. The first orange trees arrived in Spain along with the Muslim invaders of 711. That is when Persian-style gardens with peacocks, fountains, and orange trees became de rigueur in the region. And the Spanish of the south have never looked back. It was Christopher Columbus who brought orange seeds to the New World—these seeds which the Muslims had first brought with them from their gardens in the Middle East. He probably brought sour orange, sweet orange, citron, lemon, lime, and pummelo fruits aboard his ships. And it was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro who brought them as far south as Peru. 

Not far from Seville stands what is considered to be the oldest garden in Europe. Located inside the precincts of the Mosque of Córdoba, it is known today as the Court of Oranges. Dating back to the end of the 8th century, the garden was once filled with palms, cypresses, and olive trees (the latter supplied the temple’s oil lamps). The orange trees arrived in the 10th century, when—along with lemon trees, apricots, bananas, sugar cane, and date palms—they were introduced into Europe by the Arabs, who valued them for their use in perfumes, jams and medicines.

Fig. 3. Court of Oranges, Great Mosque of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain. Photo courtesy of the author.

8.

After our honeymoon in southern Spain, I insisted to anyone who would listen that I wanted my own court of oranges. My new husband, a patient guy, told me to look out our kitchen window, where I would find a lemon, grapefruit, and yes—an orange tree. 

But our oranges taste terrible, I complained. 

He reminded me that in Seville, the oranges are bitter and mainly used for preserves. 

That was a few years ago. Now, in the time of the pandemic, I no longer have the luxury of being so picky. I also have more time to see what is right in front of me. And our tree is dripping in oranges. 

It’s like Candide, if he hadn't been kicked out of his homeland, if he hadn't met with a shipwreck and washed unto Lisbon shores only there to be almost killed in a mega-earthquake, if he hadn’t gone up against the Inquisition, if he hadn't traveled across America on foot, if he hadn't killed a baron, if he hadn't lost all his sheep in Eldorado, well, then he wouldn’t have ended up sitting there in Constantinople eating some nice candied citron and pistachios.

"All that is very well, said Candid, but let us cultivate our garden." One day, I grabbed an orange off the tree and carefully peeled it. I removed all the pithy bits and, separating each sliver carefully, I arranged the slices on a reddish-black stoneware plate from Japan. 

I had to admit, the orange slices looked beautiful against the dark plate. 

Setting it down in front of my son—now nineteen—I watched as he ate the orange slices with relish. Smiling at a long-forgotten childhood memory in Japan of being loved and cared for, he told me the orange was delicious.

Leanne Ogasawara has worked as a translator from the Japanese for over twenty years. Her translation work has included academic translation, poetry, philosophy, and documentary film. Her creative writing has appeared in Kyoto Journal, River Teeth/Beautiful Things, Hedgehog Review, Entropy, the Dublin Review of Books, the Pasadena Star newspaper, and forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine. She also has a monthly column at the science and arts blog 3 Quarks Daily.

 

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My favorite Cotton Tree

 

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I think this is the most interesting Tree on the walk I take every day. I think it might be a cotton silk tree. But I’m not sure. When the seedlings explode it looks like somebody had a pillow fight because there’s cotton everywhere. Really fluffy cotton balls. And the tree has the most beautiful color bark. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.

Min says it’s Floss Silk tree. One of my favorite trees around this area. 🌳🌸

Erica says: We call that the sausage tree

And Michael says:

They have some very nice examples at the Huntington Gardens and the LA Arboretum. They used to have them planted around the Glendale Galleria. I have one that I started from a seed from the Huntington one in front of the mansion and several others. The one in your photo is probably Ceiba speciosa (silk floss as others have said) the world tree one is Ceiba pentandra, which might be what is in front of the mansion but it is difficult to tell since they grow differently outside the tropics. The attached photo is the trunk of my relatively young C. speciosa.
 
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Time of Fallen Leaves

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Fall doesn't really happen until December in Pasadena. And by early January, the trees have shed their leaves. Of course, in California, people dislike a messy yard so before there is time to enjoy them, the gardeners have blown the leaves away...

I remember my joy as a child to stomp through the fallen leaves in Westlake. I even remember how good it smelled. This is the most beautiful time of year. Why can't the leaves stick around a little anyway? I texted our gardener, asking him not to come for a week or so and not to blow them away... but there he arrived. Today we actually took the leaves back out of the trashcan and sprinkled them back on our back steps because I love them so much. It’s like a beautiful carpet of leaves and I enjoy them. Chris sprinkle them perfectly because the bottom picture is the one that Chris did and the top one is the one that nature did. It’s a weird California obsession about lawns and landscaping. 

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time of gingko trees fruiting

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It is thought that the twenty-four solar terms (節気) of the ancient Chinese calendar were codified as early as during the Warring States period (475–221 BC). Kind of amazing to realize that these terms have come down to modern times --through time and space (place)-- unchanged.  

Each of the solar terms lasts about 15 days. And for further precision, they are divided into 3 sections of about 5 days each.

IMG_3499These "micro-seasons" became known in Japan as the 72 kō (72候).

Originally the word “kō” in Japanese meant “to go out to meet someone,” and in time came to signify “looking forward to” or “expecting something.”

Perhaps this says something about the way the ancient Japanese saw the turning of the seasons-- as something to anticipate, like the cherry blossoms of spring!

But anyway, like the 24 sekki, the 72 kō also have their origin in classical poetry and are thought to express the finer nuances of the changing of the seasons captured in short, 5-day intervals.

But again, this was the seasons as expressed around the Yellow River in China. 

Unlike the 24 sekki, though, in time the Japanese developed their own terms which were more demonstrative of what was actually happening seasonally in Japan-- though this wouldn’t happen until 1685, over 800 years after the Taien-reki Tang Dynasty calendar was first introduced. 

It's interesting to take a look at what kinds of changes were made in "translated" Chinese seasons into Japanese ones.

The most striking feature one finds in the Chinese calendar is the dominant place the sighting of birds plays. Out of the 72 kō, 23 had bird-related names, making it the largest grouping of seasonal names in the Chinese calendar, pointing to the particularly special place birds had in the hearts of the ancient Chinese. Bird-related names was followed by 19 names related to the weather (such as the wind or thunderstorms), while plants, insects and animals were represented by 13, 9 and 6 names respectively. There were only two fish-related seasonal names in the Chinese calendar.

IMG_3509Not surprisingly, it is plants and flowers, rather than birds, which are most conspicuous in the later Japanese-adapted calendar, with 27 associated seasonal names. Still, birds far outnumber animals, insects and fish making it the third largest grouping.

In Tochigi, I always wanted to make my own seasonal calendar--my own 72 kō. 

In Westlake too. I even started one in Westlake revolving around the changes and moods of the lake. 

So, I was so delighted (and not at surprised) to find that Liza Dalby, in our memoir East Wind Melts Ice had done just that.  

In the back of the book, she has a chart--just like my Japanese almanacs have-- listing the 72 kō by:

"Ancient Chinese"  "17th Century Japan" and "Modern Japan" 

To this, she add a new one:

"Northern California" 

IMG_3512I love it!

For the time of Cold Cicada Chirps (which appears a week earlier in the 17th century Japanese calendar), she lists the modern Japanese season as "Crepe Myrtle Blooms."

Right now in Pasadena, the crepe myrtle is blooming like crazy--deep pinks and magentas! It makes me so happy to feel the overlap. 

According to Dalby, in Berkeley it is the time of "Crickets Crying."

Tentatively, if I was going to designate this time in Pasadena, I would probably go with the crepe myrtle blooming. Except that the gingko trees are fruiting! I have never seen this before. Turning a deep green, the leaves are glowing in the mid-summer sun. But now they are fruiting? My sister didn't think people were planting the females anymore because of the stench--like a durian?-- so she suspects the tree in question changed sex. 

Michael asked me if I am going to collect the nuts--a great delicacy in Japan (one of my favorite foods that I have made here in Pasadena is chawan mushi). 

Michael is a great forger and collector. I guess I am too timid for that (afraid of pesticides). But I am watching those babies grow really heavy! I've never seen fruit this big actually... even in Japan. 

If it happens again next year, I think I will designate this the time of gingko fruiting. Leaves light up like sycamores in the sun.

++

Laura sends this for citizens scientists to help count the leaves!

NYTimes:The Female Ginkgo Tree’s Acrid Smell of Success

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