The zinnias in our cutting garden (in Rwanda) have begun to bloom this week.
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th day of each month. To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens, check out May Dreams Gardens.
. . . So unguardedly, unthriftily
do they open up and show themselves that subtlety,
rarity, nuance are almost put to shame. . .
— Mona Van Duyn, from “A Bouquet of Zinnias”
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Our oldest daughter has been visiting us — which is very nice — so this weekend, we took her to see the Nyungwe Forest in the south of Rwanda and to stay at the beautiful Nyungwe Forest Lodge.
The Lodge is located on the western edge of the Nyungwe National Park in a tea plantation picked by a local cooperative. The cabins front to the tea fields and their back windows look out on the forest.
The area is currently having clear blue mornings and rainy afternoons. On Saturday, our one full day there, we hiked the canopy walk before lunch (more on that later this week). Then we actually talked about going on another hike that afternoon.
However, with the first raindrops, we gave in to the luxury of just parking ourselves in front of the many picture windows looking out on the gorgeous view and napping and reading until the 5:00 p.m. tea, cookies, and cocktails in front of a fire.
Just before tea time, we were rewarded for our indolence by finding about a dozen blue monkeys in the trees right outside our cabin’s back patios.
I wanted to show you these side tables in the main lounge, which I loved.
Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if they were locally made or imported — next time.
The big chandelier was appropriately made of tea strainers.
Camellia sinensis leaves have little or no smell (only if you crush them hard) until they are processed as tea. But the hotel smelled very lightly of green tea fragrance from the soap and hand lotion in the bathrooms and gift shop. So, sitting on the terrace or in the main lounge looking out, I could smell what I thought the fields should smell like (but really don’t). I thought this was an interesting little manipulation of experience in a landscape.
My daughter brought me a Kindle Fire e-reader, another really nice thing, which allowed me to spend the afternoon switching from Vogue, to the third book of the Game of Thrones series, to Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.
I’ve written about Nyungwe Forest Lodge previously here.
How lovely.
Until recently, I had somehow missed the blog, Creating my own garden of the Hesperides. I found it last week, via a picture on Pinterest.
I wrote to Christina, who gardens in Lazio, Italy, and asked her if I could share some of her pictures of her “Formal Garden,” which is so beautiful and simple.
The garden was laid out and planted in 2008. The soil is soft volcanic rock, which is fertile and free-draining. The area usually receives no rain from June through August, and Christina does not irrigate. In the winter, there is “bitingly cold” wind.
The four identical beds are planted with Perovskia (Russian sage), edged with lavender, and accented with boxwood cubes at the corners. The two beds nearest the house are underplanted with tulip ‘White Dream‘ and allium.
Christina also has large and small island-shaped borders with mixed plantings, many old roses, and a vegetable garden. Here is how she explains the name of her blog:
The garden of the Hesperides was where Hercules had to go to find the golden apples, references to it in Italian Renaissace gardens are a symbolic way of comparing the garden to paradise, a way of achieving immortality through hard work. So this garden is, for me, my paradise and certainly the hard work in achieving it will bring its own reward.
All photos above ©Christina at Creating my own garden of the Hesperides. Thanks!
How do you define ‘elegance’?
“Simplicity and imagination.”— from an interview with actress Helen Mirren
enclos*ure 