Pumpkin Flowers

It was last year or so that I was in actual curious manner to find out more about pumpkin flowers and looking at the flowers at close range. Like before, after enjoying the short lived blooming of St. John’s wort this late spring or early summer, I was already anticipating to see the blooming of pumpkin flowers again. The St. John’s wort was short lived this year due to the then all too frequent heavy rain that came smashing up the fragile beauty of the abundant bloom.

It was only a few weeks ago that I started to see some creeping pumpkin vines with smaller green leaves that later grew to be bigger and bigger. These leaves were springing up again; however, I was not seeing any of the flowers as yet. Sure enough, after these weeks of patient anticipation with daily desirable intention to walk by the neighbor’s garden grove, the pumpkins flower are there now but not as many.

One after another, almost in slow motion enticing ways that these flowers begin to bloom while the green leaves continue to vigorously creep and crawl all over the neighbor’s shrubs and ground covers. They creep along the apartment wall and following the telephone lines. Should they vibrantly grow, I am sure they will take over anywhere and everywhere they move along. And I do not mind that at all for I always wish the neighborhood to be greener than ever.

Only after all these years of knowing pumpkins being useful to be turned into various kinds of consumable products, together with seeing kids enjoying their Halloween nights when living in the United States, that I found out more about the pumpkin and its flowers. Over here in China, and closest to my apartment blocks, then and now I can actually see the pumpkin flowers although few pumpkin fruits are still seen grown to be that dramatically large as in the pictures or movies.

The pumpkin flowers are indeed some beautiful flowers; they are also of the same golden yellow of the St. John’s wort.

Yes, the Americans will soon be celebrating their Halloween while the Jack O Lantern will grace the center of media attention. The annual Halloween will be celebrated at the end of October in USA.

At this mid-September, the day is still hot. Although windy at night but the temperature is gradually dropping from day to day or from night to night. October will be cooler. After the end of October, the cold shall set in soon after. This signifies the end of summer and autumn and the beginning of winter only if the cold arrives sooner.


Jeremy
Shanghai upon the Sea
September 9, 2010

Guyi Garden in Nanxiang, Jiading of Shanghai

Like it or not, I was sure to see the Guyi Garden after all these years wishing to check this place out.

To me, this charm has gone mostly unnoticed at the near north from central city since few talked about it or even sensed its long existence. With the newly inaugurated metro now serving Nanxiang town and within several minutes of easy strolling, I finally made my move but in the rain on weekend.

It began to drizzle when I was on the way out to catch the Metro Line 2 and later changing to Line 7 north to the Nanxiang station in Jiading District. When exiting the metro station, it started to rain lightly. By the time arriving at the entrance of the Guyi Garden, it started to rain heavily.

This was supposed to be a garden dating back several hundreds years during Ming Dynasty. The site remains while legends were being scripted and history lives on.

Erected upright in a smaller pond, a large stone tablet with poetic lines on it depicts the origin of the town Nanxiang, literally ‘flying southwards’. Legend reveals that a crane had taken off and gone southward.

It is a rather big garden generously sprinkled with variable wide, open and enclosed, secluded niches to explore all over. Centrally located or in a reclusive areas, spacious green plateau or in gentle mount with gazebo or pergola, there are also large and small ponds, and shorter trees grown in between taller ones while these trees dominate over the lower shrubs below. This is how green the garden could be. At this time of summer, ponds were largely filled with water lilies and many other species of plant types.

Despite rain, there were already quite a number of visitors in the garden and those invariably streaming into the garden. Although visitors were found here and there, the garden maintained its unassuming solitary and solitude nature.

The entrance fee at Guyi Garden was an affordable RMB12. It is worth the visit for this amount and even during rainy days. With the rain, the garden seemed to more exude or extrude its intrinsic natural charm. The rain sprinkled and inspired much poetic mood onto the garden. The garden took on a very melodramatic ambience.

To explicate the title, in its hierarchical sense: Nanxiang is a township; Jiading is a district; and Shanghai is a city; hence, Guyi Garden is located in Nanxiang of Jiading District, Shanghai.

Jeremy

Shanghai upon the Sea

July 11, 2010

Fenestrations of Guyi Garden, Nanxiang

Fenestration is generally the window and door openings, an arch way or a structural entrance piece. Looking at the pictorial ensemble of fenestration, there are not less than some fifteen variable types of fenestration.

Some built together with intricate lattice work, many of these fenestrations found in the Guyi Garden derived directly from the everyday objects, symbols and images; inclusively vase, a fan, a gourd, a ruyi plaything, cumulus cloud, and geometrical shapes.

Fenestration serves as a physical or visual opening from an area to another; it is a view to another world beyond. It demarcates a context from here and there, a transitional setting. Fenestration can be ceremonial or casual, formal or informal, large or subliminal, central or secluded in location and position.

The variety of fenestration reflects an artistic or décor expression in appreciation of nature. Nature inherently tends towards irregular and curvilinear form. Due to its garden nature, the fenestration of Guyi Garden is a direct derivative of the organic environment.

Jeremy
Shanghai upon the Sea
July 11, 2010