only clover
flowering by the pond -
and yet
|
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Take a better look around the pond !
Read my Haiku Archives
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Finding a clover with four leaves ... this is the ultimate good luck symbol !
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . kigo for mid-spring
Chinese milk vetch, genge げんげ
Astragalus membranaceus / Astragalus sinicus
"Lotus weed", rengesoo 蓮華草（れんげそう）
..... gegebana 五形花（げげばな）
..... gengen げんげん
field full of milk vetch, gengeta げんげ田（げんげた）
This plant gives one of the most popular early honey variations in China and Japan. The fields in my area close to the bee farm are all pink in spring.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clover, a kigo for late spring
"horse manure" umagoyashi, uma goyashi, mokushuku
苜蓿 / うまごやし（もくしゅく）
Medicago polymorpha
Lucerne, alfalfa, murasaki umagoyashi 紫うまごやし（むらさきうまごやし）
Medicago sativa
kuroobaa クローバー clover, Klee
"white overgrowing weed", shiro tsumekusa しろつめくさ
"Dutch clover weed", oranda genge オランダげんげ
genge maku 紫雲英蒔く (げんげまく) sowing milk vetch (clover)
kigo for late autumn
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Milk-vetch honey, renge hachimitsu れんげはちみつ 蓮華蜂蜜
.............. rengemitsu れんげみつ 蓮華蜜
(this is NOT Lotus Honey)
Honey
ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo
Compiled by Larry Bole
A couple of haiku by Seishi Yamaguchi, taken from "The Essence of Modern Haiku: 300 Poems by Seishi Yamaguchi," translated by Takashi Kodaira and Afred H. Marks:
sankaku o imazu genge no sankakuda
A triangular
milk-vetch field that doesn't mind
the triangular.
Composed 1971.
Seishi's comment:
It is a triangular field, beautiful because of the milk-vetch growing in it. Being a three-cornered field may seem to give it bad luck, but just as it was once a three-cornered rice field, it is now a three-cornered milk-vetch field.
gengeda no koodai kore ga Mino no kuni
Where the milk vetch fields
become broad plains, there you have
the land of Mino.
Composed 1972.
Seishi's comment:
Mino provincw is given over to fields of milk vetch. The milk-vetch fields 'are' Mino. As you go deep into the province, the milk-vetch fields get broader. Those broad milk-vetch fields are Mino.
Some info from within the vocabulary notes, from the book:
'田 -da' (or 'ta' when standing alone) usually refers to rice paddies/fields, but is also used in 'gengeda', "milk-vetch fields," because milk-vetch is often planted as a second crop in dry rice
paddies/fields.
Mino was the southern part of today's Gifu Prefecture.
It appears
a stamp was issued by Japan "1997, November 28. Definitive Stamps. The Nature of Japan: ニホンミツバチ"
"20¥ Nihon-mitsubachi (Japanese honey bee) and Rengeso (Chinese milk vetch)."
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jollian/NIJapan.html
And here is
someone's reminiscence, found at Kimono Flea Market Ichiroya:
When I was a child ( approx 35 years ago ), I used to go to school walking through the rice paddy. As many customers know, our staple food is rice. From ancient days, people breed rice, and when I was a child, there remained many rice paddy even in cities. In the winter, rice paddy don't have the rice and water, but when spring comes in the many paddy 'renge'(Chinese milk vetch) bloom.
Girls used to play with renge flowers. Yuka (she is from Nara--near the famous deer park)has nice memories of playing for hours in the renge field. Right by her house was a renge field so she spent hours there everyday--making garlands, lying down on the ground and sucking the sweet flower nectar. Unfortunately, renge field are not seen everywhere any more.
http://www.asokagakuen.jp/nakatajima/H12/spring/1/sp3-1.html
http://www.ichiroya.com/newsletter.htm
And finally, from Asahi Haikuist Network, March 1, 2004:
closely viewed
a wisp of spring haze
is milk vetch
-Kitazaki, Motoaki
(Chiba)
http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/040301.html
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Amulets - o-mamori お守り
kuroobaa クローバー守り clover, four-leaves clover
to find a good partner in life (enmusubi 縁結び）
shiawase mamori しあわせ守り for your happiness luck
. Koofukuji 興福寺 Temple Kofuku-Ji Nara .
clover amulet for good luck クローバー
- - - - -
. Aoshima Jinja 青島神社 Aoshima Shrine - Miyazaki .
. Amulets and Talismans from Japan .
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