In April the hanakaido in the garden behind our residence comes most exquisitely into exuberant flower. It is a blossoming tree that my mother had insisted on having replanted, when we removed to our present abode; and every year, as soon as it had burst into bloom, she would rather wistfully suggest to me, 'It does seem rather a pity - that these lovely flowers shouldn't be used as chabana ' The fact is that these blossoms are very difficult to manage in the essentially spare mode that is the soul of chabana; and so no one had hitherto attempted to share their beauty with our guests too, by using them in a tokonoma - they remaining outside, in their natural state, and every year offering a delight to the eyes of our family members, alone.

　　Caring as I do for my mother's feelings, this year I bethought myself to meet her so-long-held desire, and so to contrive to tame a selection from this beautiful tree, to the requirements of chabana. The results are what you see. Upon the surface of the water filling the low, extensive receptacle floats a single hanakaido petal, suggestive of the flower-viewing (of flowering cherry-trees) that, in Japan, is one of the traditional key-notes of this month. And, as anchor for the flowers that I chose, I have used a kettle-lid-rest shaped as a miniature three-armed trivet , since the full-sized article is something that, with the ending of the winter season of the sunken hearth, disappears from the tea-space - being first replaced by a chain hung from the ceiling to support the kettle from above, and, later, by two small pieces of wood , place on the plastered, uppermost shelves of two of the walls of the sunken hearth, and supporting a kettle cast with broad lateral flanges.

　　In order to give a sense of focus to the vagueness endemic to the manner of blossoming of the hanakaido, I selected a single flower of the tamatebako camellia, and set it so that the tip of the lowest of its accompanying leaves should trail in the water nourishing the arrangement.