Autumnal reflections on a boat.

I wish I could turn back time and start again from September 1st. 

I would have stayed longer in Paris with my nieces.

I would have escaped for a long-long weekend in New York to visit the promising exhibition “Monet’s Garden” at the New York Botanical Garden.

I would not have bought a pair of expensive moccasins of the most beautiful suede but of an impossible yellow. 

I would have finished to read "Tolstoy, A Russian Life" by Rosamund Barlett.

I would have written tons of new POSTS for my blog AND tons of excellent ARTICLES that English editors of gardening magazines could not have rejected.

I would have completed the presentation of my graduation thesis to be held in Venice.

I would have changed my job so that I could have joined the small group that will leave from London for two weeks between Kyoto and Tokyo in the magical autumn season.

It is five o'clock in the afternoon, Sunday October 7th, and I'm sailing on the Lake Como towards Como and the train station. I spent my day at Orticolario, the flower show held in autumn at the elegant Villa Erba, in Cernobbio. The sun is still shining on the lake, and a long queue of people is waiting to be boarded at the pier, to reach the fourth edition of this event. 

The day has quickly passed, and, just to mention flowers, I noticed there were few hydrangeas and camelia sasanqua but a very good choice of asters, with beautiful combinations of violet-mauve-pink-white flowers, different heights and simple or double corollas. There were dianthus, gaura, anemone japonica and cheap violets for winter flower-beds. Roses and orchids were the stars of the show, but not my first interest. I preferred some small, specialized productions, with informed and passionate sellers and good plants, such as ferns and heuchera. Apples, pears and grapes, on display on tables, created more interest than usual for the old varieties of fruit trees. Peonies and iris rested in big boxes where beautiful pictures tempted shy buyers. 

I discovered the “cassetta di piante” (box of plants). This is a practical and elegant planter, to be anchored outside the window, where a young French company, based in Paris, Le vert à soi, creates a true small landscape, transforming austere facades in hanging gardens.

Young students from a Dutch school of floral decorations held an interesting demonstration with seasonal flowers. I missed that of the Italian school because I left to listened to two famous Italian writers, talking about their last books and about their love for nature and gardens.

Along a path, I was surprised by two big hearts pierced by an arrow. After a quick inspection, it resulted the most sober topiary of the stand. Alexander Pope would have been inspired with a few new lines to his "Catalogue of Greens," the well-known satire against topiary dated 1713, something like: 

   
     Two hearts in Privet; one very large, full of hope and love, and one smaller, crushed by 
     an arrow that has lost direction and move.

I stopped thinking about my list of impossible desires to write true rhymes in Pope's style.

Links:
Orticolario, Villa Erba Como, Italy (to be ready for next year)
www.orticolario.it/ 
Le vert à soit, Paris, France.
http://levertasoi.fr/index2.php?rub=20