The other Tea House entry

PROJECT NO. 3

When Mark built the Tea House, he made the main entrance in the traditional Japanese style as much as possible. That means a low — very low — door that you have to almost crawl through to enter. Samurai had to leave their swords outside and humble themselves to enter such a space. While I am not averse to humbling myself in the cause of art, I requested a second door that we could walk through upright. 

We could never have a proper step up or any kind of defined path to this door until the electric and water lines (Projects 1 and 2) got buried, since they had to go under this area. Once that was done Mark could finish the entrance on this side of the Tea House. He'd set aside stone to use a long time ago. But there was no actual design even though we'd looked at ideas and talked about it.

Since there were an uneven number of pieces of stone and they were of differing lengths, an asymmetrical path seemed like the obvious answer. Until I looked at it, walked on it and decided I didn't like it now that Mark had set all the stones. I hated to complain at this stage of a job, but I knew it would bother me forever if it was left the way it was.  

So the poor guy redid it. 

Now the stones all go in one direction which makes it a bit more formal. But the edges of the path and the length of each section are not even thus making it more informal and, I suppose you could say, asymmetrical. This is a tight space to fit a defined path since it has to go to the door around the curve of the upper pool. 

But this final iteration is much more comfortable to walk on letting the visitor move as they wish rather than following the zig zag original design. Mark may have other ideas and plans but as far as I'm concerned, the Tea House is now complete.

Comments

[Lisa at Greenbow]

Oh Mark. Man of great patience and many talents. I think it looks great. When you open the door it matches the walk.

[Susie]

Smart to go ahead and get the entry like you want it. Looks welcoming.

[rusty duck]

I don't know about tea, you should be opening a bottle of bubbly in there. Congratulations both!

[Beth @ PlantPostings]

Your tea house is wonderful, and now the paths to it match your purpose and your vision. :)

[Susan Adler Sobol]

Bravo! Bravo!

[Frank]

Congrats!
I do like the path you ended up with, it has a nice flow to it, but I can see where Mark was going with the other design... a more traditional look? but I've never been all that thrilled walking that kind of path. Don't the zigzags have something to do with bad spirits not being able to follow? If that's the case just be on the lookout for freeloading spirits :)

[Linda from Each Little World]

​Frank — A zig zag path is common in Japanese gardens to deter evil spirits. We have a simple version of that concept with the bridge over our dry stream. So far it seems to be keeping bad spirits at bay.​