Japanese Tea Garden at the Arboreteum, Seattle, WA

I simply love any place that can take one away from the petroleum, honking cars, blinking lights, and ironed collars of the city and transport them to another world in the blink of an eye. I could spend days here...dangling my feet over the small wooden bridge, inches above the still pond, watching gigantic tangerine and calico-dressed goldfish wibble and wabble from one end to the other, their backs emerging above the water causing their scales to sparkle like bright orange and gold coins ...and of course simultaneously sending their duck neighbors into a tizzy...


... spying on the rock-resembling sea turtles as they sop up the sunshine
and return to "turtle island"...


...naming the buttercups, enshrouded by a Wisteria Canopy, whose dark, knotted and knarly arms contradict it's delicately drooping lavendar blossoms and subtly create a fragile curtain...


...napping underneath the shade of a cherry orchard to the background music of a hidden waterfall...

...and so so so many more magical things....