akirlu | And the Weekend Before

The weekend before last, while still recovering from the hoards of Clarion Westies, we went down to see the Weyerhaeuser Bonsai collection and Rhododendron species garden in Federal Way. We've been driving by the informational freeway sign announcing them for literally years, and it was about time we shut up about how "We really ought to check that out some time," and actually did something about it.

The gardens are side by side, set in the extensive, wooded grounds of Weyerhaeuser corporate headquarters. As you wind along the sylvan acres, through dappled sunlight filtering down between monster evergreens, the tacit message seems to be, "Logging? What logging? No, no, not us, we're Weyerhaeuser, we're in the tree business. Just look at the trees, now. Aren't they nice?" After you loop around the meadow below the low-slung, award-winning corporate offices, you park in a tree-lined lot and follow a shaded, tree-lined path up to the bonsai collection.

Seeing the collection is free, as are the lectures on bonsai technique held in the educational pavilion, and at 11:00 on a Sunday you can have the collection almost entirely to yourself. Many of the bonsai displays are cordoned off with crowd-control rope lines, and they make the collection look a bit like zoo animals in cages. I realize the cordons are meant to keep the viewing public at a respectful distance, but I couldn't help picturing them as protective barriers to keep us tasty morsels out of the reach of the man-eating bonsai. Sometimes I have an over-active imagination.

We skipped the Rhododendron species garden, since it's too late for blooming rhodies, but the bonsai collection alone makes for a pleasant stroll. Still, I couldn't quite get past the irony of a company like Weyerhauser displaying a collection of conveniently miniature, stylized trees meant to represent an abstract ideal of nature. Maybe I have an over-active sense of irony.