Ciao!
Spring has sprung here in Minnesota and it always gets me thinking about planting flowers. Flowers bring to mind my memories our recent visit to Umbria, Italy. It makes me wish I lived there or somehow could transform my fields to look as beautiful as Umbrian Hills. Everywhere we turned there were red poppies in fields next to ruins and in meadows.
While staying on our 15th century farm in Umbria, we spent lazy afternoon away from collecting flowers for making soap and weeding the gardens, to taking time to paint what we saw. I sat for hours painting the stone on the farm and others chose doors and poppies to paint. I was most impressed by the poppies Cris created. They looked as paper thin and fragile on her canvas as the poppies in the wild. The warm breeze moving the soft red flower as if it were a tiny silk flag. I can almost smell the air and see the white peacock perched on the fence or taste the fresh strawberries so smartly hidden in the flower boxes atop the roof of the shed. Travel memories are so amazing.
On the same Just Girls Adventure, on our way to Rome we stumbled on to a tiny hill town of Spello during the most amazing time of the year.
It happened to be the one weekend of the year where they were preparing for the
Le Infiorate di Spello Each year it's celebrated on for the Feast of Corpus Domini (Body of Christ). Last year it way in May and this year it will be Sunday June 18, 2017
The feast of
Corpus Domini (the Body of Christ) is one of the most spectacular events in Umbria and one I really want to see in its entirety.
The normally peaceful town of Spello is transformed into wonderland of flowers like none other. The streets are literally carpeted with flower petals of every imaginable color both found in nature and dyed. Teams of families as well as social and church groups - work for months planning the event that each year celebrates the feast.
We stopped in Spello the day before the celebration, the townspeople were laying out their designs (line drawings on large paper sheets) in the center of streets and, within their tarp-covered tunnels, work throughout the night creating the most elaborate designs. Some are purely geometrical and others are wonderful depictions of Biblical themes with Noah's Arc, doves, Popes, and Jesus and even NYC. All are amazingly detailed and the result of generations coming together on this very holy day to create works of art made from petals of flowers.
I loved watching the children sit in the streets with buckets of flowers separating by colors as the Grandparents worked along side the children as one community created astonishing works of art only to be displayed for one holy day. It is something everyone should see at least once in their lifetime. Something I will not ever forget.
Here is a lovely Video on the event.
I would love to return in the near future. Let me know if you are interested in joining me.
Thanks for listening to my travel memory.
I would love to hear from you with an amazing travel memory.
Happy Travels... Buon viaggio
Warm Wishes and Peace,
Sue Thompson Steenhoven
[email protected]
952-448-7716
