JOYCE LYON
I spent much of last year in Otricoli, a small medieval walled town at the southern tip of Umbria. The window of my apartment looks down on a garden, which belongs to the Contessa and her sister, who played there as children and now divide it through inheritance. The garden, a formal Italian garden with symmetrically planted trees and hedges, is the Contessa’s passion. It had grown somewhat wild, but now, gently but firmly, she is working to bring it back to order, to beauty.
Just outside the town wall there is another garden. It is both a giardino with flowers and a working orto with vegetables, grapes and olives. Signora Germani has cultivated this piece of land, which belonged to her late husband’s family, for more than forty years. When she describes in November the long row of spring irises, her expression is radiant.
As I begin to know these gardens and these women --and myself in this new environment, as I explore the narrow streets and sometimes bravely and sometimes tentatively thrust myself into speaking Italian, I attempt to translate my experiences into languages I know better, those of images and journal writing.
