Some beautiful warm, sunny days around Easter and into April have enabled us to enjoy lunching and dining a fuori with friends on our Riverside Terrace, under the blue Italian weather, as the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley would have it. We are looking forward to the arrival of our first creative course guests in a week or so’s time to share the delights of the Watermill with us,

Meanwhile, inspired by Shelley, here is a piece of springtime poetry to celebrate the season:

The Spring is sprung,
The grass is ris,
I wonder where dem boidies is?
The litte boids is on the wing.
Aint that absoid?

The little wings is on the boid!

Sometimes known as the Brooklyn National Anthem, this poem (doggerel, really) should be recited in the appropriate New York accent. (If Shelley were alive today, he would probably be turning in his grave.)

And talking of boids, um, birds, this week we saw the first of the swifts, arriving after their long journey from southern Africa, swooping and diving over couryard and garden,which reminded us of a couplet, this time from Rome:

San Benedetto, San Benedetto, La rondine sotto il tetto

San Benedetto, St Benedict’s Day, was celebrated 21 March, traditionally the day ywhen the swifts arrived in Rome, searching for nesting places the eaves. They arrive a little later here in the north of Tuscany

The swift under the roof

We feel Spring is a little later this year anyway, and our irises are only just coming out. The iris is of particular significance here: a red iris on a white background is also the symbol of Florence.  The Florentines call it a lily (giglio), but it actually a stylized version of the Iris Florentina (a purple/white iris) that grows profusely around here.

No thoughts on irises and Spring would be complete without mentioning Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, painted in 1889.

Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1889, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As a fascinating recent article in the online magazine DailyArt says, this was one of the first canvases he painted during his year-long stay at the Saint Rémy hospital. “Amid severe mental health struggles, van Gogh drew inspiration from the bearded irises wildly flourishing in the asylum’s enclosed garden that spring. He painted each iris with lively, rhythmic brushstrokes, composing the scene without a horizon and bringing the flowers close, filling nearly the entire picture plane.

“As beautiful as they are today, scientific analysis has revealed that the irises no longer appear as the artist intended. Van Gogh mixed red and blue to produce bright tones of violet, but the pigment has faded with light exposure, and now we see the irises as predominantly blue.”

You can read more about Van Gogh’s springtime paintings by clicking here.

As Spring continues to be sprung, come and join us for inspired tuition, warm hospitality, beautiful accommodation, delicious home-cooked food and stunning locations.

You can read all about our creative holidays – painting, knitting and Italian language – by clicking here.

Come and see (and taste) for yourself. You can read all about our creative holidays – painting, knitting and Italian language – by clicking here.

Picture: Lois Breckon