In mid-March, The Hailstone Haiku Circle held a haiga walk at Umenomiya Taisha in Kyoto. The shrine’s history dates back to the Nara period (710-794). There are four deities enshrined here. They are all known for blessing easy child birth, and sake making.
click on pictures to enlarge
In addition to its history, the shrine has a gated garden. In the garden, visitors can stroll around two distinct pond areas, and view a variety of flowers in season. The noteworthy flowers in the garden are its different types of iris, blossoms such as plum, double flowering cherry trees, camellia, azalea, and hydrangea. We came to seek inspiration from the garden’s mid-season and late season plum blossoms.
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Jiko, who soon will be relocating to Andalucia Spain, immediately found the spirit . . .
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Tito’s good-bye haiga for Jiko
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Moments of humour were captured by Ursula and Hitomi . . .
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Duro
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Jiko
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Kyoko
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Peter
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Tito
Icebox 
Have enabled comments now! As the overall appearance is still a bit ragged, when you’ve time it might be nice to trim away the tatami mat backdrops from some of the haiga, so that we can concentrate on the artwork itself. It means uploading trimmed photos and then putting them in instead. I don’t know whether that’s a possibility? I’ll see if I have any replacements myself.
what a midnight pleasure to revisit this snowy – blossomed event