SUMMER COOL

"Summer Cool" Acrylic Painting-28"x 35" By Mary Maki Rae - 2010 (c)

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Our last spell of 90 degree weather might have inspired the "cool pastel" color palette for this painting.  I'm trying to decide - a Book or a Fan for her to hold. Both could come in handy during these temperatures - No-?  This is one way to stay cool - stationed before a Fan with a Good Book. . . Here's one that I've recently enjoyed-!

This charming memoir is about the kind of life experience most of us would "dream about".  It's kind of similar to "Under the Tuscan Sun" but from a man's point of view. I guess that's what made it different and interesting to me.

The story is about a man - knowing nothing of gardening - who buys a historic hunting lodge named Villa Massei in Marsa Macinaia.  The Villa is in need of a suitable Garden - one that will reflect and enhance it's noble heritage.

The book encompasses the author's very beginning reading about Gardening - the visiting of actual Gardens for inspiration - and the meeting of knowledgeable older and wiser Gardeners for priceless suggestions and encouragement.

I admired the author's ideas for a more formal - Romanesque  plan for his Garden. An approach based on living hedges and rows of trees in geometric formations. Not too many flowers - instead many flowering fruit trees and Lemon trees - So refreshing-! Each section unfolding into the next - some becoming like "secret rooms" - so much more interesting then to see it " all at once"-!

I think these Garden ideas - adapted on a much smaller scale - and done tastefully - could be magical - dream-like - bordering on surrealism.

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THE BOOK: "A Garden In Lucca" By Paul Gervais -Hyperion, N.Y.-2000

His philosophy quoted from the book: "The Garden - the highest expression of civility - implies the love of Nature. It symbolizes the will to shape it - tame it - as culture makes sense of Life's raw materials.

Said Francis Bacon: "The Garden offers the purest of human pleasures".

(I would add to that Art and Music as well-!)

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