flower salad

I try to get the Etegami Fun Club involved in the Flower City Fukushima Etegami Contest every year. We've produced at least two award-winners so far, although I do recognize that the Japanese judges probably give our entries special consideration because of the novelty of submissions from "foreign lands."

But the Etegami Fun Club is much larger now than it was a few years ago, and this year, members from Italy, France, Canada, the US, Poland, Belarus, (and more) came up with an unprecedented number of submissions. So many, in fact, that submissions from foreigners may soon become so blasé that it will be much more difficult to impress the judges. That, of course, is a good thing. It's further proof that years of effort to spread interest in and passion about the art of etegami has produced results.

The two etegami shown here are from my on-going Flower Salad series. The one at the top is my submission to this year's Flower City Fukushima call. It says "Let's eat flower salad and become beautiful." In Japanese, the word for "beautiful" (kirei) can also mean "clean, pure, pristine" much like the English word when used in a sentence like "What a beautiful day it is!" It is more than physical beauty; it can refer to the spirit or character and, most definitely, the heart. 

flower salad

My father-in-law is an avid hiker, bird watcher, and admirer of wildflowers. He often sends me photographs of colorful flowers to inspire my etegami.

His birthday is coming up, so I asked him if he had any special requests, or did he want to take a gamble and let me surprise him. He sent me more flower photos and then added that he wouldn't mind taking a gamble.

I did make an attempt at the straight-forward approach-- using his photos as a model for painting wildflowers in their natural setting. But mischief, that constant companion of my heart, raised its tousled head, and the next thing I knew, I was painting flowers as food. As in food for the stomach, not food for the soul.

The words in the etegami shown above say o-hanami yori hanami (preferring flower-tasting to flower-viewing), a play on the same-sounding words hanami (flower-viewing) and hanami (flower-tasting). Actually, I made up the second expression by forcing together the word for flower and the word for flavor. I just can't resist wordplay, and Japanese is the perfect language for it.

The words on the etegami shown below quote a poem by haiku master Matsuo Basho. He was reflecting on fate and the fragility of life. Only, it wasn't a horse that ate the flowers. It was yours truly.  I wonder if my father-in-law will think that his gamble paid off.