A stroll into the Village - bike riders make their way up the hill and into the village - Australians all approaching middle age - another tour to see the Giro and pretend to be their heroes? - probably! - female and male alike sport calves born of a dedication to bicycle riding - they will have stories to tell their peleton friends when they return - will they be fitter than they were before they left?- probably! - will they have absorbed the soul of Tuscany? - probably not!
Leave the others to their wanderings - sit and look over the valley - write.
The others return - they discovered the Tuscan garden a few hundred metres from the Villa - private but open to the public - huge - the lifelong work of an expat American artist and poet - they enthuse about it - listen for the Dove they say! - We lunch on bread, cheese and local meats - Bernie naps - lets see what this garden is like - it cannot be that good! - tiny little San Giovanni D'Asso could not sustain both a great restaurant and a great garden!
The garden? - more magical than the others had described - they visited in each other's company - I only share the experience with my soul - why does the human soul find the imposition of structure within the confines of the natural environment so pleasant, so reassuring, so calming? - this is not trying to be a manicured garden of Vienna yet it uses the same geometric structures - it is not trying to be a botanical garden yet it makes use of imported plants - its hedges are unkempt - its paths are un-swept - the distinction between its ordered structural elements and its natural environment deliberately allowed to blur - surprises at every turn - "everywhere you can see some of it - nowhere can you see it all" - sit - stroll - sit - recognise myself to be different to the person who entered the garden - I suspect this might have been the designers' intention.
The Tuscaneers send out a party to hunt and gather - they have to travel afar since this is Wednesday and the commercial inhabitants of this tiny Village stick to tradition - shut up shop for Wednesday afternoons! - therein lies a message for David Parker.
A Saliba barbeque - Royal sweets and accompaniments - a Rebbechi fire - stories - stories - stories - stories of children - stories of family - stories of friends.
One of Sam's contributions:
Four Students are scheduled for University exams on Monday - they misbehave badly over the weekend - realise they are unprepared - devise a plan for deferral of the exam - the plan?- we were driving through the country side to the exam - flat tyre - no spare - walk for miles - missed the exam - please Sir let us sit the exam tomorrow? - OK - see you tomorrow - they arrive - you are all to take the exam in different rooms - each settles into their room - their exam paper looks conventional - Page one? - standard instructions - conventional question - Page 2? - another conventional question - last page? - special question for this deferred version of the examination - "Which tyre?"
What a beautiful garden!! :)
ReplyDelete