Hi Scott I dicover many things while attending Korean temple and reading Sutras. since I have no guidance to reading sutra. I may not understand sutras fully. small portion of words in sutra is some how relate to Japanese garden. I found why willow tree is used around pond also found why willow tree is symbol of long life in book of divination . old photo of Ginkakuji had lotus in the pond , but there is no water liliy now ,and planting of tree and shurb in peninsula are much different than today. planting of willow/ choice of willow came from sutra . silver of Ginkakuji temple and gold of Kinkaji also written in Sutra. I thought "sama" at end of name is pure Japanese word, but now I know it was ancent Korean custom to call Monk. Samma is the way Korean write and pronanceation a little different than today's Japanese. And now I see Chinese temple has stone lanterns, according my a Japanese stone lantern book, Chinese temple's stone lanterns are not exist many. It may be true statement, may be what I saw in photo of Chinese temple could be replica of old stone lanterns since China had many domestic wars thousand years. I see different between Korean and Chinese stone lanterns . and Japanese stone lanters are different than Chinese and Korean. Tanyou sho VS Tagyo sho : now I know which book made miss take and when. It was not Dr MIcheal Dirr. It was more 100 year ago . ( I have to save this part for my future book ) If I did not study sutras my self, I would not understand many parts of Japanese garden and it's history. It took me hundreds of hours and reading lot's more than 100 books. once I can reach to some point to understand buddhism and history, then I have to go back to designe and horticulture of Gardening again. About edzard : He is faceing serious wild annimal problem. Bear dameged his truck already. now trying to get his horses. wolf and coyote as well. He is spending sleep less nights quite some time. Please give him time. I was going to make joke about bear but seriousness of problem , It is not good time for joking. As we get old ( I am talking to you, heheheh ) we gaind experience and read more books and contacted many knowgeble peoples and gained more information from them , and we get stone head/ stubborness ( now I am talking about my self ;)... ) Edzard is well educated, soft spoken man. much different than writting when I talk to him. once I settele in Salem Mass , I am going invited edzard to our home . since your are not very far from Salem, we can get togather face to face, we can know each other well. If I send smell of a good Cuban ciger to INky , He may visit too. while you give edzard time to cacth up, you will find many intresting things in the sutras. If you want to take shout cut and want to know what sutra and where in sutra relate to Japanese garden . I will show you secretly... (I should not tell to every one whole story of Movie, right ? ) Oh ,,Well, it's about time to go to bed..... mike

Thanks so much for the kind words. I appreciate them more than I can possibly express. We just returned from visiting with my grandparents - Grannie is in the hospice wing and Grandaddy is still in their room in the nursing home portion of the facility, so we spent a little time with each of them. It's heartbreaking to see my grandmother looking - well, just positively skeletal is about the only way to accurately describe her physical appearance now - but she still has that old familiar light in her blue eyes. She still calls me "sugar" and asks my husband "what's new?". Today she said she sure would like to have a Dr. Pepper, and when I asked her when she was born (1917), I told her that the years have gone by so quickly and made the brilliant observation that "time flies." Never one to miss a beat, she came right back to me with, "when you're having fun." Bless her. It's so painful to see her this way, but I am very much aware of how fortunate my family is that we have this time with her. We are truly among the lucky ones. At 96 years old, Grandaddy is still relatively spry (he still attempts to work the daily crosswords although admits that there are now some new pop culture and technological references in the puzzles that make it impossible for him to complete the entire thing). We got him to talking about trips he and Grannie took to Rome, Paris, and Copenhagen. You can tell when his mental wheels are turning; it's like in his mind he's revisiting those places all over again. Now I'm in my pajamas and having a glass of wine, and there's pretty much nowhere else I'd rather be than home.

since we've had kids we always stay home for christmas day. my mom and mil were big on this. mil- always had to travel across Ma. to her grandparents for the day. they got to be there for about 2-3 hrs and then return home. no presents from her grand parents and no chance to open them at home before they left. no turkey dinner either. pretty sad tale of woe, she didn't wish that sort of xmas on any one. my mom said it was important for us to have our own traditions. so we stay home. usually our family gets together sometime over the holidays, but no matter whose house we're at everyone has a 300-400 mile drive-- so we usually have to commit to a weekend of guests. my wife and i have always giving everyone in both our families an ornament for christmas. we try to stay under $5. for these, but are on the look-out whenever we travel during the year or pay attention to what people are interested in, or some significant event in their life that year. for the kids, it gives them a collection so when they leave home they have something for their own tree. for the adults it avoids having to buy a fan-tab-u-lous present. since we live the farthest away from all our relatives, ornaments are easy to ship. when kids were little we usually send their moms & dads a check so they could do the shopping for us, now we send the ornament and a gift card. we've tried a gift exchange where we draw names, but my youngest brother whose kids are 10-15 years younger than the rest of our kids thinks that his kids get gypted (everyone still gets his all kids presents, because they still get a big thrill out of opening them, and no one else has kids under 10 anymore)with this method--so we all get everyone a present-- an ornament works nicely there too. at home because my kids are autistic and don't deal with their routines being changed, we eat xmas dinner at dinnertime. so we have plenty of time in the morning to get up and open, play, watch tv, before we have to cook. we usually let the boys open their stocking(usually all the goodies are consumed for breakfast) as soon as they get up, but they wait until we get up to open presents under the tree. We we join the land of the living-- about 8am, we get out the cranberry bread, stollen and panetone the coffee and hot chocolate and start unwrapping: kids first, then mom and dad. about 11, we'll make 'brunch'-- eggs and sausage, toast and juice. then we get started at dinner. about 4pm we put out a relish tray and cheese and crackers so we can make it until dinner time. since my wife and i arew both in food service, and the week before christmas is the busiest time of the year. we usually have a tradition of doing laundry all day long every holiday while watching football games. on christmas eve we usually have seafood for dinner about 10:30 PM after finishing wrapping and then go to service at the church, so that when we get home we can go to bed!!!! sometimes we'll exchange a special present when we get home from church. diggerb

Good idea. Thanks. We're so rambunctious, that I think this year we'll probably have to blow the horns louder to wake some people up at midnight! LOL We've been doing this for 20 years. We had a child late in life, (and couldn't/didn't want to,) go out with the neighbors, so we had it at our house. Our son is 22 years old! We've kept the tradition. It's very nice.