As many of you know, my plucky mom is 96 years old and has been living alone since my dad died many years ago. Sadly, there was a health crisis recently and she went to the hospital. She lives a 10 hour drive away from us and we dropped everything to rush to be with her. We are now at her home dealing with the many things involved, day by day: back and forth to the hospital, setting up rehab, and finding a permanent care home that will meet her needs.
It’s sad, it’s hard, it’s scary to contemplate one’s own inevitable future, and it’s exhausting.
We haven’t had time to do anything worthy of a blog, but yesterday we stopped on the way back from the grocery store to spend a few minutes at this pretty place …
Penjing Bonsai Gardens
The owner, Feng Gu, originally from Shanghai, China, learned the art of bonsai from his grandfather in China.
He started the gardens near Melbourne in 1988 (some of the plants, as you will see, are even older than that).
Besides selling plants, you can watch Gary, as he is now called, as he tends to hundreds of miniature trees with his tiny tools and scissors.
Or like me you can just wander around and admire.
The above two trees are about four feet tall and since they only grow two to five inches a year, you can guess that these would be very old.
There are benches to sit on by the different
koi ponds, watch the fish, listen to music of the water,
and
just
breathe!
It was a wonderful break in a tough day!
