cold season row covers at the American Academy in Rome kitchen gardens

…at the American Academy in Rome tonight (over the delightful food prepared in the kitchen she revolutionized, and presided over by the indomitable indefatigable Mona Talbott) was a highlight of autumnal Rome for me , as we sat for 3 hours absorbed in conversation about food, art, gardens, and culture occasionally interrupted by animated stories of people we both love and admire like the brilliant Peter Sellars – who she had to drop everything for in the middle of the meal to have a picture of the two of us taken by her assistant Verun with her iPhone to immediately send to Peter and let him know we were both thinking of him – and at some point in the future I might get my hands on that photo of us smiling in the Academy dining room and post it here, but in the mean time I share with you the image of the plastic row covers installed over the new seedlings in the kitchen garden this morning as the night time temperatures drop towards 45 degrees – but I like the way they look – as if you mean business, like mini radical 1970’s counter-cultural architecture.