Well I’m back from my Mercury Retrograde travel and the only mishap, screw up or crossed wire that I can see is that I’m back. Here I am, not in Paris. Happy to be home, sure, but…man. Not. In. Paris. Hard to wrap the head around. I mean, who will bring me my afternoon goûter? Where is my big bowl of café au lait? Where are the parks filled with naked cherub statues and palaces designed by the Medicis, and the péntaque courts and the pelouse that is always interdit and the people lounging and loving life like it was their birth right? Why am I here and not there? Qu’est que c’est passé?
Not whining, just confused. Like I’ve walked out of a mirage. I had it there in my hands, a sweet slice of cultural ambrosia where you could sit all day in a café next to human beings so polished it is possible they were super models, while French conversations swirled around like bird song and down the street someone, I swear to Dieu, played an accordion. Very discombobulating to have all that evaporate on a plane ride home in Bozo-class. Very Mercury retrograde.
But now that I am no longer jet lagged, I think I can find the will to look through my many, many, possibly too many, photos and share them with you. Just know that it is killing me to post them. Hope you can live with yourselves.
Okay, ugh. Here is a shot from the Tuilleries. So stinking gorgeous. These dahlias were ginormous and not only that, get this - the garden beds of the Tuilleries were specially designed this season to color coordinate with a Caravaggio painting. I mean, who even does that? The French, of course. The Tuilleries gardens featured dark brooding botanicals; deep burgundy, almost black, Canna leaves and electric pops of vermillion Castor Bean plants and those stunning deep orange Dahlias, all to remind us of the dark drama found in the tableau “La Mort de la Vierge.” Breathtaking is an understatement and that’s what they were going for. I guess if Parfums Christian Dior were going to fund my garden, I too would take pains to honor a master. Which one, tho? Van Gogh, perhaps? That might be too easy given his sunflower kick, and we’ll see more of Monsieur Van Gogh later. I’ll have to think on it. But in the meantime, look at the size of those Alstromeria, merrily growing like bushes. Not the basic grocery store item at all but something far more magnifique.
Then we made the mistake of going to Le Jardin des Plantes. My son, a little underwhelmed, asked, “does that just mean “Plant Garden?” And yes, that is the translation but French horticulturalists could never, ever, be so basic. Le Jardin des Plantes is like someone took the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the Zoo and plopped them into the National Arboretum and then made all of them better. And then because all that was simply not enough, they filled the beds with a breath taking array of Dahlias. I’d still be there if my husband had not hustled me out the gate with the promise of an afternoon patisserie. I wish I hadn’t fallen for that.
Finally there were the ordinary every day gardens that we passed, all with precise color palettes and zero weeds. At the marchés, there were buckets of locally grown flowers at very decent prices. Another reason not to come home. And yet I did. Quelle bêtise.
In between the jardins and the fleurs, there were patisseries, parks, museums and la vie bohème. Now there is laundry and weeding.
Hope you’re happy, Mercury.