roses – Page 2 – gaias-gift.com

Rosarie du Val-de-Marne, l’Hay les Roses

[oqeygallery id=5]The archetypical rose garden, designed in the late 1800s by a Parisian businessman, Jules Gravereaux, who loved roses and Edouard Andre, a garden architect; this garden is a return to the structured, symetrical forms of the classical french garden, but on a smaller and more intimate scale. Although it’s large for its purpose. It was designed to display a single type of plant, the rose. The genius of both the rosier and the garden architect are exhibited in the breathtaking use of roses to provde structure to the garden. Roses form pillars of color fifteen feet in diameter and as tall as a house. Roses cling to trellises and fences and swags of chan between the taller features. Roses provide the colors of the rainbow on walls and are shaped over domes and arbors to provide delightfully scented shady places on hot June days. Both the history and the beauty of the rose are celebrated here.

I discovered two of my favorite climbers there. Veichenblau is an unusually shaped, small, purple/blue once-bloomer that shows off its colors in large clusters. City of York is a simple, classic white rose but I can find it in any rose garden by its wonderful scent.

Although it’s in a nearby suburb, not Paris itself, you can take public transportation from central Paris. You can use the RATP trip planner to plan your trip to the nearby suburb of l’Hay les Roses, Bus Stop: Sous-Prefecture-Eglise. The bus stops right across from the entrance to the park.

A word about venturing out of central Paris; there will be fewer people who speak any English. Go armed with maps and visuals if you don’t speak any French. You can print out the informaton for the buses at the RATP site, for example. And I found it took me longer than the trip information said. On transfers, just about the time that I figured out which bus I should take it was pulling out and I had to wait for the next one. But it’s really fun to watch the bus drivers navigate those huge city buses through the tiny streets.

Bagatelle (and Bolivian bimbos in the Bois de Boulogne)

[wpvideo mUbud6D0]More Paris gardens for my one follower <smile> It was very hard to choose from all of my Bagatelle photos on a trip in June of ’03 but not hard to pick what to pull from my trip journal. It still makes me laugh.

Also found the way not to go to Bagatelle. I can read a map and I picked out the way to Bagatelle from La Muette, walking over the peripheric and through the Bois de Boulonge, a larger green space in which Bagatelle is located. I had read that in the evenings the Bois can turn into a red light zone but it was 2:30 in the afternoon when I started out, map and notes in hand.

First I was not sure if the road I was on would actually take me over the peripheric, but after having made my way over both entrance and exits, I felt more confident that I could find my way. I walked, and I walked. The usual French consistency about road signs was consistently non-existent. I saw sign after sign for the most expensive restaurant in Paris, located in the Bois de Boulougne but none for Bagatelle.

When I turned onto the wide but heavily wooded Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I began to wonder just what a bad girl she had been. There were women, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, and many, many men. Cars were cruising and, unbelievably, slowing down to check me out.

I am not young; I am no longer what one would call pretty. On a good day I may aspire to distinguished or attractive. But frankly, when I am traveling I often do not give a damn (I am in the purple dress with a red hat time of life) and this day was one of those. There I was in my baggy black knit pants (really baggy as I’d worn them on the airplane and then for two days of sightseeing); a beat up straw hat; and a man’s big blue work shirt that I got from my computer job and love for the pockets. And they were slowing down to check me out! There were too many sleazy men and it did make me uncomfortable but at some point I was beyond that and started to have the impulse to laugh hysterically. Trying to keep from giggling or laughing in someone’s face, I continued on. No eye contact. Absolutely no eye contact and no smiling!

And since I am really more worried about my backpack with camera and money inside than someone seriously testing my virtue, I also tried to be sure that anyone who passed me kept going and anyone who was faster than me was able to pass me easily. But no eye contact. Try that!

I failed with one poor man as I avoided his eyes when he approached and then made eye contact as I looked back to make sure that he wasn’t turning around. Quick about face, pick up pace, try not to giggle. So, finally, after 50 minutes of walking I found a sign, that directed me back the way I’d come but deeper into the woods. In spite of my uncertainty, I saw families and couples, so I took the path. And crossed a side path just as the same poor man was coming out of the woods on the path he had taken minutes ago. He mumbled an uncertain bon jour and I once again moved my eyes quickly away. What’s an honest woman to do?

One of my research sources said that Bois de Boulogne was a favorite place for working Bolivian transvestites. I can attest to seeing and hearing things that made me think that source might be right but why Bolivians in the Bois de Boulogne, (other than it makes for lovely alliteration, especially if you throw in a bimbo. Bolivian bimbos in the Bois de Boulogne)? I think that it’s probably something that the tourist office would rather not discuss. The source also implied that it was authentically French because the original owners of Bagatelle threw their lust around in the French Royal court. That’s what he said, really.

So I walked some more and finally found a gate for Bagatelle. An hour of walking, history and current events thrown in for free. And Bagatelle was everything the tourist books said it would be. I took some pictures of roses but there are still other things that I want to see. I will go again tomorrow but I think I will take a bus.

Be sure to allow plenty of time to visit the rest of the garden, beyond the roses that make it famous. The “folies” and perspectives still show the influence of Thomas Blaikie, called the Capability Brown of France. His fascinating life as a gardener to kings and princes spanned the period before and through the French Revolution. You will see much more if you research the many stories about the garden before your visit.

Whenever I’m in Paris

[cincopa AkGAzZ6VsywK]

I heard myself saying that one day and it stopped me cold. Born and raised to a barely middle class family in rural Michigan, I grew up thinking that one trip to Europe in my lifetime would be a lucky event, involving huge expense and sacrifices beyond my grasp. In this lifetime, anyway. The complete story of how I got to the day where I could offer travel advice with authority is too long for this post. But it was culture, not gardens that I wanted to understand in my first visits to France. Visits to public gardens were the means, not the end. That didn’t last long. There are people in the world who value the contributions of long dead gardeners so much that they preserve their work through history. Lots and lots of them at great expense and, no doubt, the occasional sacrifice, maybe even sacrifice beyond my grasp. Who knew?

So, of course, I did learn about the culture, and history became more than dates and times that I had to memorize to pass a test in school, and then those became the means to help me more deeply appreciate the hundreds of public gardens that preserve culture and history in color and transformed light.

When I started this blog in winter, I promised myself that I’d spend the dark days of January and February sharing some of these treasures, both in Europe and in the US, with you.

More soon…

Christmas and the rose

The rose, and I did mention they are my passion, keeps coming up in the context of Christmas. Although I’m closer to an agnostic than the typical Christian, believing there is more than one way that our complex relationshp with god is experienced, more than one history that describes it, I thought I would write something about the symbolism of the rose in Christmas stories, in honor of the day. In my research I found three stories of the rose.

The popularism of the Da Vinci Code lead to the opportunity for many authors to write, and sell!, more in-depth books about Mary Magdalene, symbolized by the rose. There’s also the story of a small girl who visited the baby Jesus and had no gift for him. Her tears turned into the the Christmas rose (which scholars say is really not a rose at all). The third is my favorite because of the hauntingly beautiful hymn that describes Jesus’ mother Mary as the rose.

There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu
Allelulia

(There are more verses.) The thread that I see consistently running through these stories is the strong correlation of the rose with the mystery of womanhood. The silky petals, the bawdy pinks and reds, and the many layers reaveled in the unfolding of a hybrid tea rose from bud to blossom, borders on the erotic. Passion is earned. But this devine transformation happens with such an innocence of purpose. We think of the child, the mother, the sister, partner and friend.

Allelulia

New England Rose Society

Roses are one of my passions and when I moved to New England, I was in awe of many of the famous gardening institutions, including the New England Rose Society. Members had been people that I read about in books! I volunteered when I could at the demo garden in Waltham, MA, and even did a stint on the Board. I was deeply saddened when the organization lost its demo gardens to cost cutbacks at the hosting organization and dropped out of sight. Recently, I was happy to find a web site with signs of life and wish them a long and rejuvenated life.

When I win the lottery, I’ll fund the rose garden at Tower Hill and we can all live happily ever after. A woman has to have her fantasies.