explore your own "backyard": hakone gardens

My husband hates to travel. "Why?" he'll ask rhetorically, "when I live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country? Tourists come here to the Bay Area!" I get it. It's no fun for him to cram his 6'2" into a ridiculously uncomfortable economy seat, suffer jet lag, only then to do it all over again for just a few days in one city. That's my jam. But he's right too. I do love my own backyard of the San Francisco Bay Area and showing it off to visitors. Over the past summer, we got together with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law at the Hakone Gardens and Estate in Saratoga. Below the entrance to the estate. I love flower gardens--Filoli in Woodside is awesome and so is the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park--but I love the simplicity and asymmetry and emphasis of evergreens of a Japanese garden too.

Japanese gardens also highlight the rocks, gravel, ponds and waterfalls of a natural landscape. We entered and walked over the moon bridge to the sound of rushing water....

 

and observed a small waterfall and fed the koi in the pond.

We also climbed up into hillside....

....and thought the upper house and views quietly spectacular.

The tea rooms available for rent to picnickers are also very lovely.

There's a lower house with a large pavilion and museum rooms to describe the Japanese carpentry.

Simple saws and wood carving tools were used by the Japanese artisans commissioned to build the houses.

No nails! Just interlocking timbers.

Fortunately, Hakone was saved from developers and purchased as a community park for Saratoga.

Maybe I'll come back for a quiet birthday celebration. My milestone will be upon me before I know it. I know I want to celebrate with an open water activity like a sea kayaking tour and an informal feast either at a bocce ball court or in a meditative garden such as Hakone.

Patrick and I also traipsed further up the hill to the bamboo forest and tea plantation. The buildings there looked a bit forlorn.

 

And tea needs sun to thrive, which the plants were not getting in this forest. The terraced hill was barren.

Lastly we shopped at the gift shop which had pretty textiles and ceramics.

On this Labor Day weekend, rather than battle airports and art and wine festivals because I abhor crowds, I plan to read, sew and work clay. But perhaps I will also bring my watercolor pad to the Japanese Tea Garden in my town's downtown for a bento box lunch and an afternoon of painting.