Tag : landscape

…is but one of many gorgeous urban lakes circling the city of Minneapolis – it’s greatest gift and constituting part of it’s “green necklace” of parks and parkways – where robust Minneapolitans can be found jogging, and canoeing, and swimming, and strolling, and roller-blading, and dog-walking, and even fishing and skating in the winter – ..

Read more

…on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore is where I have come to visit an Italian designer friend (working with Michele de Lucchi on one of his many design projects for the foundation, whom we had the pleasure of sharing a dinner with tonight at a neighborhood trattoria in San Marco), exploring the ex-monastery ..

Read more

…this afternoon was with the amazing urban farmer Matteo Amati who presides over an enormous tract of city land where unemployed youth are put to work on the cultivation of the fruit tree orchard, the groves of olive trees, and the rotating fields of strawberries, fava beans, potatoes, tomatoes, etc….and this is giving me some sense of what ..

Read more

…that I am admiring on a hike this afternoon just west of Portland in the valley of the Willamette River is cool and moist and all colors mossy green and something I will be thinking about enviously when back in hot sunny Rome in few days where my rooftop moss garden is surely dried to ..

Read more

…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 ..

Read more

…(for strawberries?) are the cool shocking shiny surfaces wrapping parts of the rolling spring green surfaces of southern Tuscan landscapes as viewed from my very slow one car train gradually heading from Grosseto to Siena – making every little stop on the way – with each quiet sun-bathed stuccoed station seeming to feature a single ..

Read more

…where the equestrian events of the 1960 Roman Olympiad were held and where occasional equestrian events are still staged today within the public park and gardens of Villa Borghese – where I find myself this morning on my way to see a conversation / presentation /poetry reading on 86 year old Italian artist Carla Accardi ..

Read more

…is what I found in the pond at Villa Doria Pamphili this afternoon, installed by some thoughtful human, allowing the many duck residents to access the extensively wooded refuge of the island (sort of Animal Estatey) – but after spending some time duck-watching it seemed that one dominant territorial duck in particular was guarding the ..

Read more

…the Milanese architect, teacher, and magazine editor spoke tonight (being much more gracious than I would have been when the projector didn’t work and he wasn’t able to show his images) at the opening of the British School at Rome show BioMilano featuring six of his unbuilt projects, “Six ideas for a bio-diverse metropolis; six ..

Read more

…the fragrant yellow Mimosa tree native to Australia whose clouds of clustered of bright yellow pom-pom flowers are the first sign of spring in the Italian landscape, is already in full bloom out in the back garden – probably since it is protected in a warm little micro-climate by the massive Aurelian Wall that surrounds ..

Read more