Zen Garden

For the letter Z I wanted to make this post about Japanese Zen Gardens in Switzerland. Turns out there are two official ones. Both in areas I couldn't get to within a reasonable time. 

So instead I'll give you this neighborhood garden buddha statue:

A Zen garden is a traditional Japanese garden style that originated in Kyoto, Japan, during the Muromachi period (14th–16th centuries). It typically consists of carefully arranged rocks, gravel or sand, moss, pruned trees, and bushes, all within a confined space.

The design of a Zen garden is based on principles of simplicity, minimalism, and harmony with nature. These gardens are often meant to evoke a sense of tranquility, meditation, and contemplation.

Many people also create miniature versions of Zen gardens for personal use, relaxation, and stress relief.

I made mine over 20 years ago, but I still remember the day it happened:

After a long-ish process of changing careers, my new employer was located in a new city which was, depending on traffic, a 45 - 60 minutes' drive away.

My family and friends, hairdresser, dentist and gynaecologist of course were still in the area I lived in, so for maintenance procedures on either my hair, my teeth or my female parts, I needed to take a (half) day off.

On one of those rare me-time days I came across a crafts supplies store and decided to go in and check it out. They had all kinds of stuff that attracted me:

• Decoration items for birthdays, christenings, weddings, you name it
• Paint, glitter, paper, cardboard, felt, wood
• Miniature furniture for a doll's house or tiny veggies and fruit pieces for a toy grocery store 

I especially liked the cute little deck chairs with an umbrella attached and the (proportionally) oversized lifebelt, and it made me think of a project I had in my mind for some time:

Some kind of miniature beach for those days you need to escape but can't. 

How to go about this? 

I remembered an article I had read (it was a time before Pinterest and blog posts existed!) about mini Zen gardens: Throw some hummus soil into a rectangular container, plant some herbs or other low-rise plants, arrange some  moss and a couple of pebble stones and voilà, your own little Zen garden!

Ha! I could totally do this!

I purchased the following:

• Fine sand
• Fence
• Tools: a rake, a sieve and a spoon
• Said life preserver and beach chairs
• Shells

I couldn't wait to get home and arrange everything in a glass baking dish! This is how it turned out, and I was pretty pleased:

The next day I took it to the office. 

Everyone who stepped into my office immediately grabbed the rake and began to "work". 

Some cleaned up my beach, arranged the shells by size or just randomly played around.

As soon as they were gone, and I was on a lengthy phone call, I rearranged everything how I liked it.

Days and years passed.

I left this job and moved my sandy beach to a new office twice. 

My beach Zen garden even spent a while in storage while I had packed up and left my country to go live near the real beach.

Days and years passed.

One fine night in December 2014, Cookie, our Elf on the Shelf, decided to spread out a towel, set up her own deck chair, chill out at my beach and recover from her busy day_

There you go, your turn not to create your own miniature Zen garden - what is yours going to look like?

That's a wrap, guys! 

Thank you so much for being part of my blogging journey throughout the alphabet. 

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