I did it. In Golden Gate Park. With absolutely no prior planning. In fact, when I left home in the morning, I didn't even know that I was going to do what I did.
But I did it. And it was appropriately organic.
First, I dropped my kid off at Summer Art Camp at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. It was an unusually glorious day because it was already warm and sunny in JUNE in SAN FRANCISCO. Everyone knows this is rare. It doesn't bode well for July or August...we all know what's coming.
You probably know that the Japanese Tea Garden is right next door to the deYoung. In the tea garden is a tea house. I went there first, and was the first there. From the modest but ample menu, I ordered gen-matcha and ochazuke. It was my first ochazuke, and it was perfect. Rice, with puffed rice for crunch and seaweed for salt, is bathed in steaming hot green tea.
You would have loved the plush green, finely manicured garden. Japanese in its attention to detail and design, quiet in the middle of a city. My peace was interrupted by a generous Frenchman who first asked the time and then kindly offered to escort me through the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit next door.
An older woman cackled her way up the gentle slope to the tea house. Panting, she reminisced about how much more quickly she made it here as a young lady so many years ago.
A cuddly couple, honeymoon style, came and went. Americans, oversized camera lenses projecting from their bellies, trundled through. It was time to go.
After a quick walk up to and through the Conservatory of Flowers, it was back to the car for the drive to wherever, and whatever it was that needed tending.
