It seemed so welcoming, so friendly, so colorful and unique you just KNEW the owner had to be a…read moregood person. Who else would put together such an eclectic, sensual collection of fountains, incense, edible plants and flowers, all for strangers to enjoy? And things were always changing! A little copper pyramid would grace a table one day, then be a hat for a buddha the next week. Little plates of shells, colorful pebbles or coins would appear, move around, then vanish. I loved it! It was the greatest place EVER! I went every week, watched fish come and go ( I rescued them a few times, too, when their water got so low their fins were sticking out. Luckily I found a garden hose and filled their basin again. ) I left coins and the occasional dollar bill, and contemplated taking dead plants and replacing them with new plants, but I thought that might be a bit much. Anyway I loved going there. When I had a baby I started taking her as well, and as she got older she looked forward to going to the "Water Garden" with me. Two years of going every week and I never got the opportunity to meet the owner and tell her how much I loved this bright little space. As a matter of fact, I never met anybody else there at all.
UntiI one day. When I met the owner.
I was sitting on a bench watching my toddler take pebbles from an offering plate and plink them into the water, joining the other pebbles that were scattered at the bottom of a crowded fountain. She brought me the figure of a man fishing, the sort of thing that probably sat on a bonsai at one point but broke off. I put the fishing man down on another fountain where I'd seen him the previous week, thinking he looked better there. There was a woman who was putting away a hose as we came in and had been ignoring us, but apparently the fishing man was the last straw for her and she came over to me, bawling me out for letting my kid touch her stuff. According to her, everything was placed *just so* in it's own perfect space and touching ANYTHING would mess up all her good energy. (You've GOT to be kidding me! Stuff was moving around ALL THE TIME! That was half the charm!) She also accused me of letting my child kill her fish with pebbles (there were no fish that week -I checked) and kept on rallying on until I left. There are no signs saying "No Children" or "Please do not move anything" or "No Touching", no warnings of any kind, and things moved from here to there every damn day, so I don't see how I was supposed to know this.
So just like that, we were cast out of Eden, and the mysterious woman who I once thought was kooky-artistic and thoughtful turned out to an ordinary, run-of-the-mill psycho control freak with delusions. Eh. Every art "colony" has one. This one made a nifty water garden but, hey, it's not like I'm going to leave my kid at the sitters so I can go back alone, sit on a bench, listen to the fountains and reminisce about how I got bitched at, so long ago.
Yeah it's a nice place to sit. But not for long, and not with kids which is sad because SWORK is right around the corner, so you'd think lots of mommies and kids go there after classes and coffee. More than anything I'm angry because she just started yelling at me with no prior warning and no build up. It's not like she told me to stop two or three times and I kept on going. So I leave it to you. You'll probably enjoy the water garden and quirky statues. And if you see her watering her plants or letting her fish dry up or adding a new painted fountain to her collection, just be sure to tell her that you didn't touch ANYTHING. Then steal a pebble when her back is turned. For me.