October 2018 Nishuike Shoka with David Payne

How do you brighten a day of pouring rain in Phoenix?  You fill a room at the Japanese Friendship Garden with bright fall-colored daisy mums and fuji spider mums and add Sensei David Payne.   And, voilà, a few fun-filled hours creating shoka nishuike arrangements.  The rain drops fall, the fingers fly, as we take advantage of David’s years of practice and his expertise in explaining what he considers “one of the more difficult” Ikenobo arrangements. We keep our stems in a straight line; be sure we have a clean mizugiwa and carefully add the nejime with tai shin, tai tani and tai saki all in their designated places.

Then, of course, we have to figure out how to get our carefully critiqued arrangements out to our vehicles and into our houses before they become the victims of the remnants of Hurricane Sergio.  Fortunately, if we arrive home with a set of misaligned and drenched flowers, we can always check out our Ikenbana-Ikenobo website to take a look at Wanda LaLoggia’s wonderful photos of each of our creations when they looked their best!