Posts filed under ‘Gardening’
Champagne, Alsace and Burgundy
For the past four days we’ve been touring French wine regions along with 30 other people from my husband’s company, which serves as the importer for many of the wineries we’ve visited. It’s a fascinating way to travel and I’ve been learning so much about the history and culture of the region. The food and wine have been spectacular, so much so that I have started to crave a plain salad instead of the amazing meals that we’ve been eating.
We did get some exercise today, though, with a cycling and walking tour through the towns and vineyards near Beaune.
Here are a few photos of some of the beautiful places we’ve seen, the food we’ve eaten and the flora and fauna encountered along the way.
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Beautiful Barolo
It’s difficult to capture the beauty of this place in a photo. Barolo is a famous wine region in Piemonte. We’ve visited many of its towns and villages over the past few days – La Morra, Alba, Asti, Treiso and Barbaresco, to name a few.
Everywhere you go there is a panorama of rolling hills threaded with thousands upon thousands of rows of grape vines and pretty towns at every turn and vista. The churches are particularly beautiful and I am enchanted by the Italians and their quiet but clear love of gardening and flowers – roses, irises, olive trees, and window boxes stuffed with petunias, pansies and geraniums are a constant preoccupation for me and my camera.
The food is wonderful, too, although it is not the easiest place to be a vegetarian – this is a region that loves meat. I’ve only ordered wrong once, but it was really wrong as you’ll see from the beautiful plate of salumi below. The area is packed with Michelin star restaurants – too rich for us, but we’ve heard wonderful things from others. I think I’m happier with the traditional food in the osterias, trattorias and pizzerias, anyway.
Wine rules everything in this place. It is serious business and all the other tourists we’ve met are here for the wine and well versed in the intricacies of the region. I’m trying to keep up…I don’t have the same knowledge base or passion for the ‘big name’ wineries, but my taste buds are definitely enjoying the education.
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Two days in Tuscany
Two days is only enough time to get a little taste of Tuscany, but it has been a perfect start to the Italy trip. Our home base has been the Ricasoli guest house at Castello di Brolio, which is a beautiful place to be – full of both solitude and hospitality. From there we’ve toured vineyards, country roads and nearby towns, and spent all the rest of our hours on the classic Italian pastime of eating and then eating some more!
Our hosts are the inventors of Chianti wine, and today we visited their castle, a national monument that dates back to the 12th century. There is nothing like wine to make you appreciate history.
We’ve tasted some wonderful wines, of course. My favorites so far are those made with the Sangiovese grape – the fragrance of it is unmistakable when you hold the wine up to your nose.
We had a lovely lunch at the Osteria del Castello today and the drove about 30 minutes to Siena, which is full of amazing architecture and little streets and piazzas with people, shops and restaurants. The Duomo pictured below was a highlight for me.
Tomorrow I will hope for a sunny day with a bit of time in the morning to enjoy the pool at the guest house, and then it is on to Firenze (Florence) for museums, sculptures and shopping.
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Magnolias
Spring’s delicious smell is wafting through Vancouver right now and magnolias like the ones pictured here deserve a great deal of the credit. When their large, leaf-like petals fold open they fill the streets with fragrance and beauty – I especially love seeing them against a blue sky or littered on the ground beneath a towering tree.
When we first moved to Vancouver just over two years ago I remember being enchanted by the smell of it every time I stepped outside. I still am.
We have a star magnolia planted in a large container on one corner of our patio. It came into our lives via the sale section at the garden shop. A clearance section pot became its keeper and it is blooming beautifully in its second season in our little garden.
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Flowers from the garden
All winter long I’ve been buying cut flowers from the store. No longer. Now I just need scissors. My container garden is full of spring blooms: tulips are opening up, pale daffodils that came up late are just starting to fade away alongside the long, variegated leaves of the crocuses, which are quite beautiful all on their own even though the flowers are long gone. My hanging baskets are filled with a mix of primulas and the pink and orange ranunculus and purple periwinkles you see here. All are plentiful enough that I’ve filled a little vase with them.
For those of you who are counting, there are 25 flowers and leaves in this little vase, picked in honour of a sad but special day. Life is a strange place, and hard to deal with at times. Somehow everything feels a bit lighter with flowers brightening a space, especially when you’ve been outside carefully plucking them from your own garden. It’s easier to find a sense of meaning and calm when you’re surrounded by beauty. It’s a simple thing, maybe silly, but there’s a little voice in things like flowers from the garden that calls at you and pushes you to try to make the rest of your world just as right – whether it’s indoors, outdoors, or like these flowers on a windowsill, somewhere in between.
