A few nice mouth wash images I found:
shel
Image by Maze Walker
Lantern and Tsukubai
Image by jpellgen
There is a Japanese garden at the Arboretum. It includes this toro (stone lantern) and small fountain which I believe to be tsukubai. Tsukubai is similar to chozuya in the sense that it is for purification. One uses a chozuya to purify their hands and mouth before entering a temple/shrine, and the concept of the tsukubai is the same only in reference to tea houses (usually). It literally means "stooping basin," and as you can see here one much bend down to use it.
The University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is part of the horticulture department in the food and agriculture college. It contains over 1,000 acres of gardens, groves, and forests and has 12.5 miles of garden viewing paths. It is best viewed in spring and fall, in my opinion.
Tomb with A View
Image by bossbob50
www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8-Fe_hznoU – music by Frank Smith, “Porch with a View”, CD: Gardens of Hope ~ You can listen to the music, and not read the narrative. The music fits this place wonderfully.
This narrative isn’t as morbid as it might sound. ~ View On White (please)
I don’t know about everywhere around the world, but Americans run from death, hide from death, deny death. It takes place out of sight, out of mind; on the streets, in hospitals or nursing homes – anywhere except in the home.
In the dead of night, various styles of vehicles – usually black in color – come to take the dearly departed quickly and quietly to the Funeral home.
“Fix’em up, please and call me when they are ‘done.’ I’ll come say goodbye, then.” You wanna’ say goodbye in some cold, clean, sterile, anonymous viewing room or chapel? Oh, my goodness, NO!
(In the last 15 years, in all of my work with seniors in Chicago, the one recurring theme I can say I’ve heard with certainty, is a desire to end one’s days at home: current, former, home from childhood, whatever. Just in a place where they once lived.)
I’d rather die at home; especially in a room with a view, surrounded by loved ones. Come say goodbye there; even if I can’t hear you or see you. Touch me; listen to me breathe [or not]; look at my face (Yeah, true. I don’t look my best, but you ain’t lookin’ so hot from where I’m layin’, either, Buddy).
However, if I’ve no loved ones who can stomach that, I’d prefer to simply be surrounded by my things at the end (just like many “primitive” cultures where they bury you with a few of your precious little items. Or, as in the case of Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, with a whole tombful of your shit, along with a gaggle of reluctant, if not completely pissed off concubines, wives and retainers).
I’d like to go surrounded by my fishing equipment, my photographs, my art, my music, those little pieces of paint peeling on the wall, the rugs with footprints where I walked back and forth, the candles that I burned at night to comfort me. Or the computer where I created this.
AND THEN: I’d like to be placed outside, thank you very much! Not in a BOX, but on the bare ground! Somewhere like THE ABOVE image. Somewhere ABOVE ground, where I might be with life continuing, life renewing (as with some Native American tribes who buried their dead outside, on elevated stands). Outside, where I can take my place with the earth, with nature. Some place where my corpse can breathe, witness the sun, the moon and the stars, and have rain fall into my gaped-open mouth.
You can put a sign on me in case people might wander across my decaying body or bleaching bones: “Don’t be scared, don’t be alarmed. This is what he wanted: more than anything else – to be here.”
You can cover me with a sheet, or some other biodegradable cloth. Then it’s wind, rain and time; insects, animals and snow, each passing through me in turn through the changing seasons until this carbon-based part of me is once again root, soil, moss, leaf.
"Don’t you want your family to know where you are? So they can visit you?"
No, not really. Because that means everyone will know where I am, and what some people will do on my grave, won’t pass for rain. 
If family asked, "Where’s Bob now?" , you could just point to the woods, smile, and say, "in there, somewhere."
Or you could put me, whole, in a river. Wrapped in a silk shroud (with a couple of lures, naturally). And weighted down, so I don’t go floating off to the shallows where some hapless chap would hook me while fishing. Not that such a thing would bother me or hurt my feelings. I just think that’s a heart-attack-in-waiting for some poor-schmuck-of-an-angler.
“Hoo-boy, I got somethin’ good. I got a big one! Hey, hey, Joe! C’mere, and bring the net.”
“Aw shit! It’s just Bob! Dammit! I knew he’d do somethin’ like this. Forget it. Just cut the line, and push him back on out. Oh, God, I think I’m gonna’ throw up. Whatta’ ass he was.”
It is comforting to me right now, to even consider such possibilities.
And, with so many millions of Baby Boomers coming on line, our nation is finally going to have to address all kinds of issues and requests dealing with death and dying.
Yeah, I know. I’m a weird piece of work, ain’t I?
