Spring in Christchurch is full of floral pleasures. This week the cherry blossoms in Harper Avenue are a sheer delight, and they may well be gone by next week.
Cherry blossoms are called Sakura in Japanese, and this is the name of a popular Japanese folk song familiar to many of us. Cherry trees and blossoms have a special significance in Shinto and Buddhist traditions. Linked to the Buddhist themes of mortality, mindfulness and living in the present, Japanese cherry blossoms are a timeless metaphor for human existence. Their blooming season is powerful, glorious and intoxicating, but tragically short-lived — a visual reminder that our lives, too, are fleeting. The beauty of the flowers short and sweet, and there are contradictory meanings as well. Cherry blossoms symbolize both birth and death, beauty and violence. They are a central motif in the Japanese worship of nature, but they have also historically signified the short but colorful life of the samurai. Kamikaze pilots during World War II adorned their planes with cherry blossom images as they prepared to “die like beautiful falling cherry petals for the emperor.“
These blossoms seen along the way
remind us we must seize the day
Ruth's Reflections 
The Japanese Gardens on Messines Way, Featherston, has the lovely Cherry Blossoms… so will be a picture again this year down there… near where the Japanese Riot was during WW2. The one and only Kiwi soldier that died in that riot is buried at Geraldine Cemetery, as he was from there, Private Walter Pelvin.
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I hope you have an opportunity to visit the gardens while the cherries are blossoming.
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I have been uplifted this week by the sight of the Harper Ave blossom trees on my way to and from work. Thank you for the information you have found about them.
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