Brooklyn Botanic Garden Revisited

On Thursday morning, I decided to relax at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and took the pictures you see here. The BBG is turning out to be one of my favorite places in NYC (you may recall from a few months ago my pictures of the cherry blossoms). As you can see, the lilies are in full bloom. At the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, I sat in the bamboo pavilion and watched the koi for quite some time. It's fascinating to see them swim about, their enormous heads, eyes, and mouths bubbling from just below the surface of the water. They move in and out among one other like a form of synchronized swimming. Most are black, but others are gold, white, orange, or a motley of colors combined. Their eating habits can be a bit bizarre. Every so often a group will swarm with their mouths opening and closing above the water. It can look like a scene of sucker monsters from a horror movie if it weren't so funny to watch. I discovered that they make noise too. At first I thought it was a water filtration system, but then I was startled to realize some of the koi were actually eating algae off the wooden posts along the water bank. They were making this loud brushing-sucking noise as they used their lips to brush the algae off the posts and take it in. Who knew they had such powerful lips!?

This Torii gate points to a Shinto shrine nestled in the pine trees above the pond, dedicating the area to the god of the harvest. The characters on the gate read "Dai-myo-jin," Great Illuminating Deity, or Spirit of Light (according to the sign outside the bamboo pavilion; I can't read Japanese).

Just nearby the Japanese garden is the Celebrity Path. This is a trail with stepping-stones inscribed with the names of famous Brooklynites past and present. There are stones for poets like Walt Whitman, artists like Lee Krasner, actors like Marisa Tomei, and then of course there is one of the most important Brooklynites...


The lotus blossoms were also in bloom. In Eastern religions, the lotus plant is associated with the Buddha's teachings. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are often shown in art sitting on a lily pad and holding flowering lotus buds. The lotus shows how the teaching of the Buddha grows out from the murky mud of the materialistic world, but rests above this on the water's surface, then blossoms and points to the great spiritual heavens of Nirvana.

Do you know how hard it is to get a dragonfly to sit still and pose for a picture? I'm very happy this one came out.