Our friends Jerome and Nicki live in the English countryside near Bath. They have the most beautiful little garden--truly England itself has the most stunning cottage gardens I've ever seen, even in January. Their boxwoods and standards seem always neatly trimmed, and the hills are always lush and green. They even have government subsidized vegetable gardens (which they call "allotments") that provide ordinary citizens their own little plot of dirt to dig in, if they wish. Jerome just acquired a share around the corner from his house this season, and I'm looking forward to visiting next time to see how it is progressing.
On to London to visit Robin and Maria. There the weather was decidedly colder and right after we left they even had several inches of snow. The natural parts of the city landscape looked similar to NYC at this time of year--mostly dormant deciduous trees. At the Tate Modern, a post-apocolyptic sculpture garden of sorts was growing in the atrium, complete with empty metal bunk beds, giant cat skeletons and other structures. I was impressed by a display of smashed silverware hanging knee-height from threads in a gallery upstairs.
On to Italy at the end of the month, where cypress and olive trees mingled with antique statuary in the gardens of NYU's villa in the foothills of Florence where we were gracefully put up. We visited Harvard's Villa i Tatti while we were there one day, and were given tea and a wonderful tour of the lemonaria and beautfully landscaped grounds. I studied in Florence nearly 10 years ago and hadn't been back since, so this was a wonderful respite in the middle of winter.
The grounds at the Villa i Tatti.
Forsythia being trained in an arch over two graves at the old English cemetery in the middle of Florence where Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried. The grounds sit on a mound of earth in the middle of a giant traffic circle and are tended by a nun who was once married and finishing a dissertation on EBB at Berkeley. She was really an amazing character, living in a little shed i the middle of the cemetery in the middle of a traffic circle along with a family of Roma people she had taken in and taught to read in exchange for their work on the grounds.
We finally returned from our travels at the end of the month with the promise of ice and cold and perhaps a few more fires (and most importantly own bed) waiting for us. It was nearly February, and the Hudson had completely frozen over in our absence. I snapped a few photos on my phone before it all melted away.
