the guided tour of Ninfa

…is what now occupies the small Roman village which was sacked and abandoned to malaria in the Middle Ages just off Via Appia Antica south of Rome – and here we are today for an Easter picnic surrounded by many extended Italian families with the same idea, shaded by the rustic rambling rickety timber picnic shelter where 1 Euro a head will buy you a seat at the provisional picnic table and a paper tablecloth from the hostess – and then finally descending into the gardens themselves, after waiting out the two hour midday Italian siesta/pausa/lunch closure, an elaborate series of colorful faerie pixie-dust English picturesque garden scenes piled on top of the stoic remains of a once robust and wealthy Roman village – and even though the lawns, the bananas, the maples, the roses, and much else in the precious manicured water-hungry landscape looks like it was plopped down from another planet we are told that a rare spring-fed micro-climate created between the coastal plain and abrupt adjacent hills allows those otherwise oddities in the Italian landscape to be quite happy here, plus inspiring other crazy horticulture events to occur, such as things growing to three times their normal size, which seemed true enough – and in the end everything does feel magically charged here, thanks to a series of willful 20th century Caetani family ladies having their Anglo way with place – now always to be preserved as Lelia Caetani, the last one left it. (link to 2009 book about Ninfa)