Flowers and my injured uncle

The nearby river goes up and down drastically, along with the tide of the pacific.  when it's low, all these sand bars appear, and yesterday there was a massive tree root on one of them.  it looked to be in mid-crawl, trying to get back to the weightlessness of floating in the water.  

My dear uncle Bob fell off a roof in Barkerville and fractured his back, so i'm sad and distracted.  However, i do want to put some photos on here of a Japanese flower arranging show we saw yesterday.  My uncle Bob is a tough guy and i think he'll heal up and maybe even work again.  I know that work is a big part of life for him and it would be difficult to be unable to work.  At the same time though, we're given difficulties and hard times for the best reasons.  But you don't say that to a guy who's going through the hard times.  Seeing the photo of him with the neck brace made me realize that any hard times i go through, i need to regard them as for the highest good.  God lets his saints suffer for their good.  
A student of Mandy's is an Ikebana instructor, and she also teaches tea ceremony.  She invited us to a flower arranging and tea ceremony exhibition in Nishio.  So off we went yesterday, riding bike through the town, over the bridge, through the next town to the cultural center.  It's a big, brick building, and we went there once before to see a Noh play.  Ok, over to Mandy:
Within the big brick building we found about 20 different rooms that were lined wall to wall with a variety of Japanese flower arrangements.  These flower arrangements can be divided into 5 different schools.  Each school teaches a very specific style, technique, and philosophy of how to gather and display flowers.  We could definitely see the range of schools from one vase to the next and we could sense the depth this art form has within the culture.  The style would change from one of simplicity and tranquility (like those above and below) to a more garish and loud arrangement.  
I myself (Mandy) have always preferred the clean lines of simplicity, but I did appreciate the sense of dynamics and movement that some of the bolder arrangements possessed.  While walking around to each art work we could instantly travel from the peaceful atmosphere of a traditional garden to the center of a wind storm where everything appears to be in flux.  It was a joy to be transported and to have the chance to admire an art form that is very new to me.  We saw combinations of colours, flowers, tree branches, fruits and vegetables that were unexpected.  I never would have thought that broccoli would make a nice complement to orchids, but it did.  There were colours of deep plum and rich apricot and the very darkest of greens.  
We also enjoyed the sweet smells of lilies (my favorite), roses, eucalyptus, citrus, pine, and many many more that co-mingled in the air into a bonanza of olfactory delights.  

This particular arrangement appeared to be an interpretation of unknown life forms, perhaps those inhabiting the planets of Jupiter or Saturn.  A very interesting vase choice.
...Isn't Mandy a good writer?  she doesn't think so, but she is.  I saw this guy basking/napping, and i thought that if my dad was here with us, he might like to replace this guy on the couch.  Room after room of flowers combined with sunlight makes a guy schlopiche.