cc Not too long ago, we did an entire segment on the ancient Japanese art of ikebana which is the art of flower arranging. I did it with Kazuko Bressler. She's on the board for the Green Bay Botanic Gardens here in Green Bay and is an ikebana instructor. I was so intrigued, that I thought that I would come back and see if she could teach a total novice how to do one of the simpler ikebana designs. So that's what we're here to do today. I'm going to try to follow along as best as I can, Kazuko. Okay. The neat thing is with ikebana we can use any plants from our own backyards. It doesn't have to be something grown in Japan. It's celebrating the nature of what's outside right now. Yes. We start with a container. The size of the container is important. Yes. Today, we are doing an upright style Moribana arrangement. The container is shallow, flat bottomed and inside the container we have a kenzan the flower frog, is what you call it to anchor and place the arrangements. Now we have that. The placement of kenzan is very important. Today we will put it in the front, right. We're working with this facing us so the finished product should be looking at us. That's right. Then we will turn it around. Okay, shall we start? I'm just going to follow along, I hope. Okay, and moribana consists of three lines. The major line, call it number one. Okay, the tallest one. Yes. The number one line was already prepared. You precut it for me, thank you. Yes, precut it. So you place this in the center back. In the center back, okay. And it looks like-- The tip has to go up. Push it down pretty firmly. Yes, straight down, like so. Okay. Once you do that push it five degrees to the left and five degrees forward, okay? Okay, and since we're doing this to face us we want the leaves. We don't want the back of the leaves looking at me. No. Okay. Then also next one, number two line will be placed-- This one's shorter, isn't it? Yes, two-thirds of number one line. The number one line should have been the size of the container, plus? The depth of the container. The depth and size of the container, plus? Times 1-1/2. Times 1-1/2, so there's a formula here. Yes, we have a formula. This one will be placed in the left front. Okay. Push it in. Push it straight in. Then bring it about 45 degrees. Okay. Okay? So the next line will be flowers. Okay. We cut that, so we will put that in. This one is even shorter. Right front, yes. Okay. I'm glad you precut mine. Yes, and right front. That one did not... The length will be half the length of the number two line. So left front, like so. Front, okay. And then, so now... You're creating a triangle? Yes, we're creating the triangle. Inside, we've created the triangle. You really have to push to get these in this. Oh, yes. Then next one, leave the two flowers together long and short and then fill it inside the triangle one by one. Maybe this will be easier for you. Okay. Going toward you, you know... Part of that triangle concept. Yes, then we have all the yellow flowers. So to cut the color, we will put something white. Just for some contrast. Yeah, contrast the color. Put it inside. A little shorter would be nice. Then again, kind of following one of the angles at least. Yeah, maybe you can cut the flowers a little bit. I think it just broke. Here. This is so much different from our American lush bouquets. We're looking at space. We've got the triangle. Okay, you have a better triangle than I do! Like this. Then we use some of this other plant material just for filler? Yes, we will use the other material as a filler. I'm going to cheat and look at the finished one to see what I'm looking at. This has me so intrigued. Kazuko, thank you so much for teaching me something that I have a feeling I'm going to play with a lot more. I think you will.
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