This week, Sophia hosts Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #420 with a final look-back theme of 2026. This time, we are looking back at #125, which I did not participate, and this time around, Sophia has picked the concept of Wabi-sabi as the theme.

Wabi-sabi, according to Sophia’s post, is a Japanese concept centered around imperfection, impermanence, and incompletion. To me, that is a hard concept because I’m the kind of person who always strides to be perfect and someone who is always looking to improve any perfection and imperfection. So, I hope I have some photos to showcase this concept.

These photos were the firsts that came to mind. Having to grown dahlias once, I found I want to grow them again. It’s hard to find such large gorgeous blooms when growing flowers from seeds. Large blooms seem to often come from bulbs rather than seeds. I grew these in 2018 and my favorite was the orange dahlias and this bloom was caught in a transition. I just love orange and yellow blended like that, what a great combination of colors.

I was supposed to grow dahlias this year because after so many years of gardening, I now know I can’t grow dahlias in ground as they do not survive my winters. I buried new bulbs earlier this year but none of them came up. I hope to try again next year and hope my blooms will be as beautiful as those in 2018.

Nothing lasts forever. Civilization advances. City modernizes. However, it seems like something do last forever. During my trip in China, I saw permanence blending into impermanence like this ancient city wall in Nanjing in the middle of the city among modern skyscrapers and high-rises.

I saw this artwork while I was touring one of the ancient alleyways of Suzhou, China.

This photo was a last addition to this post because this photo was supposed to be a favorite of mine but because of how it came out, I couldn’t bring myself to like this photo due to this one tiny imperfection. I took several variation of this photo and they all came out off-centered and tilted and I am a stickler for leveled photos.

Anyway, I didn’t know what this artwork was made from but upon close inspection, this was constructed with broken china – bowls and cups. Whether it was broken on purpose or the artist went around collecting chipped chinaware, I don’t know. What I do know is something beautiful was made from imperfect material.