Courtyard Garden Quotes

Be it on the garden side or on the courtyard side of life, we have the potential to rise up against the dictatorship of destiny, to become rebels with a cause, at any time, and turn the course of our existence since life deliberately means 'choice’ and offers a range of challenges that can empower us to transcend matters and settings. (‘"Côté cour…Côté jardin" )

The sound is gone. There's nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little, a wall that will keep out the thing that lies waiting for the tiniest crack of silence to steal through. The thing that is feared by all those who are sleepless, those who walk through the night, those who are lonely, children. That thing. The voice of the dead.

Why couldn't I accept what was happening without trying to explain it, without bringing up ideas of order and disorder, of freedom, as one sets out geranium pots in a courtyard on the Calle Cochabamba? Maybe on had to fall into the depths of stupidity in order to make the key fit the lock to the latrine or to the Garden of Olives.

My family sat in their pool courtyard," Harah said, "in air bathed by the moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and baklawa and mugs of liban—all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens and, in our flocks, there was peace . . . peace in all the land." "Life was full with happiness until the raiders came," Alia said. "Blood ran cold at the scream of friends," Jessica said. And she felt the memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared. "La, la, la, the women cried," said Harah.

She wonders sometimes if it's a sort of flaw or lack in her - the inability to lose herself in someone else. . . . she's never quite understood how people could trade in quiet spaces and solitary gardens and courtyards, thoughtful walks and the delicious rhythms of work, for the fearful tumult of falling in love.

What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an established physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other consumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third spaces," places (like cafes, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they've purchased.

The streets were empty, the courtyards and gardens as if dead. In the Turkish houses depression and confusion reigned, in the Christian houses caution and distrust. But everywhere and for everyone there was fear. The entering Austrians feared an ambush. The Turks feared the Austrians. The Serbs feared both Austrians and Turks. The Jews feared everything and everyone since, especially in times of war, everyone was stronger than they.

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling

Things that seem too common: too many furnishings where one is sitting; too many brushes around an inkstone; too many Buddhas in a home chapel; too many stones and trees and bushes in a garden courtyard; too many children and grandchildren in a house; too many words used when talking to people; too much praise for oneself in a written petition. Things that don't offend good taste even if numerous: books...

As the carriage proceeded past the main gate, the estate mansion came into view. Contrary to Pandora's expectations, it wasn't at all cold and imposing. It was a gracious, low-slung residence of two stories, inhabiting its surroundings with comfortable ease. Its classic lines were softened by an abundance of glossy green ivy that mantled the cream stucco façade, and arbors of pink roses that arched cheerfully over the courtyard entrance. Two extended wings curved around the front gardens, as if the house had decided to fill its arms with bouquets. Nearby, a slope of dark, dreaming forest rested beneath a blanket of sunlight.

behind these closed doors, Which occasionally open to reveal a garden oasis Hidden inside, With private courtyards Of such intricate and tiled beauty, The sight startles a breathless gasp from the casual passerby

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it. Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem. It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face. I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now. I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince

Mexico, the land of pyramids and palaces, deserts and jungles, mountains and beaches, markets and gardens, boulevards and cobblestoned streets, broad plazas and hidden courtyards, is now known as a slaughter ground. And for what? So North Americans can get high.

It infuriates him, this killing, this death. Infuriating that this is what we’re known for now, drug cartels and slaughter. This my city of Avenida 16 Septembre, the Victoria Theater, cobblestone streets, the bullring, La Central, La Fogata, more bookstores than El Paso, the university, the ballet, garapiñados, pan dulce, the mission, the plaza, the Kentucky Bar, Fred’s—now it’s known for these idiotic thugs. And my country, Mexico—the land of writers and poets—of Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, Jorge Volpi, Rosario Castellanos, Luis Urrea, Elmer Mendoza, Alfonso Reyes—the land of painters and sculptors—Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Gabriel Orozco, Pablo O’Higgins, Juan Soriano, Francisco Goitia—of dancers like Guillermina Bravo, Gloria and Nellie Campobello, Josefina Lavalle, Ana Mérida, and composers—Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, Agustín Lara, Blas Galindo—architects—Luis Barragán, Juan O’Gorman, Tatiana Bilbao, Michel Rojkind, Pedro Vásquez—wonderful filmmakers—Fernando de Fuentes, Alejandro Iñárritu, Luis Buñuel, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro—actors like Dolores del Río, “La Doña” María Félix, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Salma Hayek—now the names are “famous” narcos—no more than sociopathic murderers whose sole contribution to the culture has been the narcocorridas sung by no-talent sycophants. Mexico, the land of pyramids and palaces, deserts and jungles, mountains and beaches, markets and gardens, boulevards and cobblestoned streets, broad plazas and hidden courtyards, is now known as a slaughter ground. And for what? So North Americans can get high.

principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

One of the problems is that Dublin is, and I mean literally and topographically, flat - so that everything has to take place on a single plane. Other cities have metro systems, which add depth, and steep hills or skyscrapers for height, but Dublin has only short squat grey buildings and trams that run along the street. And it has no courtyards or roof gardens like continental cities, which at least break up the surface - if not vertically, then conceptually. (...) It’s hard to go very far up in Dublin or very low down, hard to lose yourself or other people, or to gain a sense of perspective. You might think it’s a democratic way to organise a city - so that everything happens face to face, I mean, on equal footing. True, no one is looking down on you all from a height. But it gives the sky a position of total dominance.

The bearers had stopped and the litter was being lowered. When the curtains had been drawn Aravis found that she was in a courtyard-garden very like the one that Shasta had been taken to a few minutes earlier in another part of the city. Lasaraleen would have gone indoors at once but Aravis reminded her in a frantic whisper to say something to the slaves about not telling anyone of their mistress’s strange visitor.

Annie, today I went outside and in the snow in the courtyard outside my dorm I built a replica of my childhood monster and wished you were with me. My snow monster was pure and white and guiltless, and I looked at it, Annie, and it struck me that it can never turn black and ugly like the monster of my childhood, because what is guiltless about it is what it is, not necessarily what it does. Even if sometimes what it does it bad, or cowardly, or foolish, it itself is okay, not evil.

Mexico, the land of pyramids and palaces, deserts and jungles, mountains and beaches, markets and gardens, boulevards and cobblestoned streets, broad plazas and hidden courtyards, is now known as a slaughter ground. And for what? So North Americans can get high. Just across the bridge is the gigantic marketplace, the insatiable consumer machine that drives the violence here. North Americans smoke the dope, snort the coke, shoot the heroin, do the meth, and then have the nerve to point south (down, of course, on the map), and wag their fingers at the “Mexican drug problem” and Mexican corruption. It’s not the “Mexican drug problem,” Pablo thinks now, it’s the North American drug problem. As for corruption, who’s more corrupt—the seller or the buyer? And how corrupt does a society have to be when its citizens need to get high to escape their reality, at the cost of bloodshed and suffering of their neighbors? Corrupt to the soul. That’s the big story, he thinks. That’s the story someone should write. Well, maybe I will. And no one will read it.

My mouth went paper-dry as Alis fluffed out the sparkling train of my gown in the shadow of the garden doors. Silk and gossamer rustled and sighed, and I gripped the pale bouquet in my gloved hands, nearly snapping the stems. Elbow-length silk gloves- to hide the marking. Ianthe had delivered them herself this morning in a velvet-lined box. 'Don't be nervous,' Alis chuckled, her tree-bark skin rich and flushed in the honey gold evening light. 'I'm not,' I rasped. 'You're fidgeting like my youngest nephew during a haircut.' She finished fussing over my dress, shooing away some servants who'd come to spy on me before the ceremony. I pretended I didn't see them or the glittering, sunset-gilded crowd seated in the courtyard ahead, and toyed with some invisible fleck on my skirts. 'You look beautiful,' Alis said quietly. I was fairly certain her thoughts on the dress were the same as my own, but I believed her. 'Thank you.' 'And you sound like you're going to your funeral.' I plastered a grin on my face. Alis rolled her eyes. But she nudged me toward the doors as they opened on some immortal wind, lilting music streaming in. 'It's be over faster than you can blink,' she promised, and gently nudged me into the last of the sunlight.

He said that death marks places like a dog marking its territory. Some people can sense it right away, while others simply start to feel uncomfortable after a time. Every stay in any place betrays the quiet ubiquitousness of the dead. As he said: ‘At first you always see what’s alive and vibrant. You’re delighted by nature, by the local church painted in different colours, by the smells and all that. But the longer you’re in a place, the more the charm of those things fades. You wonder who lived here before you came to this home and this room, whose things these are, who scratched the wall above the bed and what tree the sills were cut from. Whose hands built the elaborately decorated fireplace, paved the courtyard? And where are they now? In what form? Whose idea led to these paths around the pond and who had the idea of planting a willow out the window? All the houses, avenues, parks, gardens and streets are permeated with the deaths of others. Once you start feeling this, something starts to pull you elsewhere, you start to think it’s time to move on.’ He added that when we are in motion, there’s no time for such idle meditations. Which is why to people on trips everything seems new and clean, virginal, and, in some sense, immortal.

The construction of castle arbours, monastic cloister gardens and Byzantine courtyards with trees and flowers attested to Western interest in the natural world. Paradise remained synonymous with perfect environments. In Anglo-Saxon, 'paradise' translated as 'meadow' or 'pasture'. Notions of a classical Golden Age, local legends, religion and romantic poetry all perpetuated the concept of nature as a refuge from society. For the nobility, nature signified a retreat for aesthetic pleasure and a venue for spiritual uplift. However, for the average medieval peasant, the organic world meant livestock rearing and crop production.

As I walked, I became aware of the strong odor of peonies and jasmine. I inhaled deeply to draw in the lovely bouquet. The scent was from the fresh flowers of a lush garden. The path opened into a courtyard, a tangle of peonies and jasmine framing the entrance, blooming in spectacular fashion. Silky petals brushed against my skin. The tension building in my neck and shoulders melted away as I entered a fairyland. The rustle of the night breeze joined the familiar voice of Teresa Teng echoing from invisible speakers. Beneath my feet, a path of moss-covered stones led to a circular platform surrounded by a large, shallow pond. The night garden was bursting with a palette of muted greens, starlit ivories, and sparkling golds: the verdant lichen and waxy lily pads in the pond, the snowy white peonies and jasmine flowers, and the metallic tones of the fireflies suspended in the air, the square-holed coins lining the floor of the pond, and the special golden three-legged creatures resting on the floating fronds. I knew these creatures from my childhood. The feng shui symbol of prosperity, Jin Chan was transformed into a golden toad for stealing the peaches of immortality. Jin Chan's three legs represented heave, earth, and humanity. Statues of him graced every Chinese home I had ever been in, for fortune was a visitor always in demand. Ma-ma had placed one near the stairs leading to the front door. The pond before me held eight fabled toads, each biting on a coin. If not for the subtle rise and fall of their vocal sacs, I would have thought them statues.

The road climbed higher into the mountains of Nikko National Park, the terraced farm fields giving way grudgingly to forests of tiny trees that seemed to be trimmed, the growth around them carefully cultivated. From a narrow defile the car was passed through a massive wooden gate that swung on a huge arch ornately carved with the figures of fierce dragons. From there a perfectly maintained road of crushed white gravel led up the valley to a broad forested ledge through which a narrow stream bubbled and plunged over the sheer edge. The view from the top was breathtaking. Perched on the far edge was a traditionally styled Japanese house, low to the ground and rambling in every direction. Tiled roofs, rice-paper screens and walls, carved beams, courtyards, broad verandas, gardens, ponds, and ancient statues and figures gave the spot an unreal air, as if it were a setting in a fairy tale

I walk with purpose through the halls and see a well-dressed, intimidating man in his sixties, alone. I’m nervous about talking to him, so I hover near him and he keeps walking past me. Finally, I decide to bite the bullet. I jump out of the corner at him like a nightmare. ‘Hi, I’m Jess,’ I say. ‘Where do you live?’ Suddenly, hearing my voice aloud, I’m aware this is both a basic thing to say and also – depending on how you hear it – a terrifying thing to say. It turns out that Malcolm lives in a beautiful quiet square that I run by most days. Disclose something about yourself, I hear Nick’s voice in my ear. Ask him what you really want to know. ‘I peek into the windows of those houses nearly every day,’ I say. ‘With the massive kitchens that extend into courtyards and the amazing gardens at the back. I pretend to live these sometimes. I’ve always wanted to know, is that the best place to live in the entire world?’ ‘It is,’ he says. He walks away. No one said this would be easy.

The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.

One of the problems is that Dublin is, and I mean literally and topographically, flat - so that everything has to take place on a single plane. Other cities have metro systems, which add depth, and steep hills or skyscrapers for height, but Dublin has only short squat grey buildings and trams that run along the street. And it has no courtyards or roof gardens like continental cities, which at least break up the surface, if not vertically, then conceptually. Have you thought about this before? Maybe even if you haven't, you've noticed it at some subconscious level. It's hard to go very far up in Dublin or very low down, hard to lose yourself or other people, or to gain a sense of perspective. You might think it's a democratic way to organise a city - so that everything happens face to face, I mean, on equal footing. True, no one is looking down on you all from a height. But it gives the sky a position of total dominance. Nowhere is the sky meaningfully punctuated or broken up by anything at all. The Spire, you might point out, and I will concede the Spire, which is anyway the narrowest possible of interruptions, and dangles like a measuring tape to demonstrate the diminutive size of every other edifice around. The totalising effect of the sky is bad for people there. Nothing ever intervenes to block the thing from view. It0s like a memento more. I wish someone would cut a hole in it for you.

Inside the oleander square there was nothing, no house, no building, nothing but the straight road going across and ending at the stream. Now what was here, she wondered, what was here and is gone, or what was going to be here and never came? Was it going to be a house or a garden or an orchard; were they driven away for ever or are they coming back? Oleanders are poisonous, she remembered; could they be here guarding something? Will I, she thought, will I get out of my car and go between the ruined gates and then, once I am in the magic oleander square, find that I have wandered into a fairyland, protected poisonously from the eyes of people passing? Once I have stepped between the magic gateposts, will I find myself through the protective barrier, the spell broken? I will go into a sweet garden, with fountains and low benches and roses trained over arbours, and find one path—jewelled, perhaps, with rubies and emeralds, soft enough for a king’s daughter to walk upon with her little sandalled feet—and it will lead me directly to the palace which lies under a spell. I will walk up low stone steps past stone lions guarding and into a courtyard where a fountain plays and the queen waits, weeping, for the princess to return. She will drop her embroidery when she sees me, and cry out to the palace servants—stirring at last after their long sleep—to prepare a great feast, because the enchantment is ended and the palace is itself again. And we shall live happily ever after.

While they fought for the privilege of carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man. They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss. They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban's memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down from the bridge in his dress uniform, with his astrolabe, his pole star, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's Esteban's village.

In 1853, Haussmann began the incredible transformation of Paris, reconfiguring the city into 20 manageable arrondissements, all linked with grand, gas-lit boulevards and new arteries of running water to feed large public parks and beautiful gardens influenced greatly by London’s Kew Gardens. In every quarter, the indefatigable prefect, in concert with engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, refurbished neglected estates such as Parc Monceau and the Jardin du Luxembourg, and transformed royal hunting enclaves into new parks such as enormous Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. They added romantic Parc des Buttes Chaumont and Parc Montsouris in areas that were formerly inhospitable quarries, as well as dozens of smaller neighborhood gardens that Alphand described as "green and flowering salons." Thanks to hothouses that sprang up in Paris, inspired by England’s prefabricated cast iron and glass factory buildings and huge exhibition halls such as the Crystal Palace, exotic blooms became readily available for small Parisian gardens. For example, nineteenth-century metal and glass conservatories added by Charles Rohault de Fleury to the Jardin des Plantes, Louis XIII’s 1626 royal botanical garden for medicinal plants, provided ideal conditions for orchids, tulips, and other plant species from around the globe. Other steel structures, such as Victor Baltard’s 12 metal and glass market stalls at Les Halles in the 1850s, also heralded the coming of Paris’s most enduring symbol, Gustave Eiffel’s 1889 Universal Exposition tower, and the installation of steel viaducts for trains to all parts of France. Word of this new Paris brought about emulative City Beautiful movements in most European capitals, and in the United States, Bois de Boulogne and Parc des Buttes Chaumont became models for Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park in New York. Meanwhile, for Parisians fascinated by the lakes, cascades, grottoes, lawns, flowerbeds, and trees that transformed their city from just another ancient capital into a lyrical, magical garden city, the new Paris became a textbook for cross-pollinating garden ideas at any scale. Royal gardens and exotic public pleasure grounds of the Second Empire became springboards for gardens such as Bernard Tschumi’s vast, conceptual Parc de La Villette, with its modern follies, and “wild” jardins en mouvement at the Fondation Cartier and the Musée du Quai Branly. In turn, allées of trees in some classic formal gardens were allowed to grow freely or were interleaved with wildflower meadows and wild grasses for their unsung beauty. Private gardens hidden behind hôtel particulier walls, gardens in spacious suburbs, city courtyards, and minuscule rooftop terraces, became expressions of old and very new gardens that synthesized nature, art, and outdoors living.

Tell me," he said, smiling, "Would you really have danced with the duke?" She relaxed, the danger past. "Yes. But he was my second choice. You, sir, didn't seem to have much interest in me." "Ah. There you are very wrong." His smile faltered, and then he began to lean forward, as if he would kiss her again. But the door opened, and a loud group of young men pushed into the courtyard, filling the garden with glimmering light and sound as they laughed amongst themselves.

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house.

The approach to the city was not the finest. For that we ought to have come from Baghdad, crossing the desert to find Damascus shimmering in its oasis with the snowy bulk of Mount Hermon looming up behind. But rolling through the orchards of olive and lemon, pomegranate and orange, we saw Damascus standing on the plain, a gleaming, jewelled city of white in a lush green setting. It smelled, as all ancient cities do, of stone and smoke and donkey and spices, but over it all hung the perfume of the flowers that spilled from private courtyards and public gardens. Sewage ran in the streets, yet to me it would always be the city of jasmine, the air thick with the fragrance of crushed blossoms.

What I am?’ he said. He laughed. ‘Don’t wait. Ask anyone in London, or Malta, or Russia.’ He made his way to the casement and flung it open. The rumour of a crowd, muffled hitherto by the windowpanes, burst fresh upon them. The courtyard and the road beyond the gardens were jostling with people, and the name they were calling was audible: Sevigny. Sevigny. Sevigny.

Jesus, I am from a wealthy family I can help You support Your ministry we should marry, it would be a good match.” Yeshua stopped and put His hand up to her cheek. “My Pretty Rose, I have told you before I am not for you.” “But I know You have feelings for me; I can see it in Your eyes.” “Ken (Yes), I love you truly, but as I have said before, you are meant for another.” Mary lowered her head dejectedly as tears welled up in her eyes, I felt sick for her; it would be a good match why would Yeshua be so steadfast against such a marriage? She would make an excellent queen. “Be of good cheer,” He smiled, “for your future husband is in that vary courtyard even now.” Mary brightened and ran into the officer’s courtyard; it was a beautifully manicured garden of trees, flowers, and topiary sculptures but was devoid of people. Mary looked to and fro; only to see two Roman guards standing watch over of the entrance to the quarters, as a Centurion was inspecting them. Disappointed once more Mary left, she returned to where we were but we had continued down the lane. After a moment she saw us and ran to catch up.

The first mile was torture. I passed beneath the massive stone arch at the entrance to the school, pulled off the road and threw up. I felt better and ran down the long palm-lined drive to the Old Quad. Lost somewhere in the thicket to my left was the mausoleum containing the remains of the family by whom the university had been founded. Directly ahead of me loomed a cluster of stone buildings, the Old Quad. I stumbled up the steps and beneath an archway into a dusty courtyard which, with its clumps of spindly bushes and cacti, resembled the garden of a desert monastery. All around me the turrets and dingy stone walls radiated an ominous silence, as if behind each window there stood a soldier with a musket waiting to repel any invader. I looked up at the glittering facade of the chapel across which there was a mosaic depicting a blond Jesus and four angels representing Hope, Faith, Charity, and, for architectural rather than scriptural symmetry, Love. In its gloomy magnificence, the Old Quad never failed to remind me of the presidential palace of a banana republic. Passing out of the quad I cut in front of the engineering school and headed for a back road that led up to the foothills. There was a radar installation at the summit of one of the hills called by the students the Dish. It sat among herds of cattle and the ruins of stables. It, too, was a ruin, shut down for many years, but when the wind whistled through it, the radar produced a strange trilling that could well be music from another planet. The radar was silent as I slowed to a stop at the top of the Dish and caught my breath from the upward climb. I was soaked with sweat, and my headache was gone, replaced by giddy disorientation. It was a clear, hot morning. Looking north and west I saw the white buildings, bridges and spires of the city of San Francisco beneath a crayoned blue sky. The city from this aspect appeared guileless and serene. Yet, when I walked in its streets what I noticed most was how the light seldom fell directly, but from angles, darkening the corners of things. You would look up at the eaves of a house expecting to see a gargoyle rather than the intricate but innocent woodwork. The city had this shadowy presence as if it was a living thing with secrets and memories. Its temperament was too much like my own for me to feel safe or comfortable there. I looked briefly to the south where San Jose sprawled beneath a polluted sky, ugly and raw but without secrets or deceit. Then I stretched and began the slow descent back into town.

In the meantime, Pat was enjoying his first solo conversation with Diana. Previously, he’d seen her only twice at our flat in London in 1980 and again at the prewedding ball in 1981. Pat had been waiting on the palace driveway by our car. Diana’s butler had come out and asked, “Are you Mr. Robertson?” Then he graciously said, “Please come inside.” Pat expected to be shown into the entrance hall to wait more comfortably. He was pleasantly surprised to be led upstairs into Diana’s elegant drawing room. There, Diana’s butler gave him coffee and the newspaper to read while Diana and I finished our tete-a-tete. Pat was caught unawares when Diana breezed in to see him. Pat is six feet three inches tall, but he was struck by Diana’s height and by her natural good looks and vitality. He stood up, saying “Gosh, I don’t know what to call you.” Diana, unassuming and direct as always, replied, “Diana’s just fine.” They sat down together and had a short visit. Pat recalls that they talked about children, hers and ours, and our travel plans for Wales and Scotland. He couldn’t get over how unaffected and natural she was. He was thrilled finally to visit with the wonderful Diana I’d been talking about for years. Pat asked if we’d taken any photographs yet. Diana said, “Yes, but would you like to take another one outside in the garden?” I had finished my coffee and the children had returned from their tour, so we all walked downstairs and out onto the front courtyard and lawn. With my camera, Pat took a picture of Diana standing with the children and me. Then Diana asked one of her staff, who was standing nearby, to use my camera so that Pat could be in a photograph. Then with hugs and good wishes all around, we returned to our car and drove slowly from Kensington Palace. I hated to leave Diana, not knowing when, or even if, we’d see her again.

The Palace of Erhenrang is an inner city, a walled wilderness of palaces, towers, gardens, courtyards, cloisters, roofed bridgeways, roofless tunnel-walks, small forests and dungeon-keeps, the product of centuries of paranoia on a grand scale.

, behind these closed doors, Which occasionally open to reveal a garden oasis Hidden inside, With private courtyards Of such intricate and tiled beauty, The sight startles a breathless gasp from the casual passerby

Aubry Park was a glorious Elizabethan manor, lovingly restored in the last century and equipped with numerous gothic undertones- enough to send Charlotte's mother into a ghost-seeking frenzy. The massive, cream-colored stone house sat hidden in a forest like some romantic woodland folly. Upon first approach, it seemed rather modest, enclosed in a small courtyard, the upper floors timbered and gabled, but after one ventured a look past the facade, the manor sprawled onward, connecting to a myriad of wings, towers hidden by tall trees and climbing vines and private walled gardens. "Enchanting," Charlotte murmured, running her fingertips along the soft bristles of an ivory-handled brush.

One small 15 by 15 foot garden in a courtyard in the center of Dover, Delaware, produced 150 monarch adults in a single season by including several Asclepias syriaca plants as one of its species.

A jewelled garden the envy of Aladdin's cave spilled across the courtyard.

Instead of canals, a magical four-story central courtyard faces the interior walls. A greenhouse of sorts. The roof is glass and the floor is a sensuous garden filled with freestanding columns, whimsical twelfth-century lion stylobates, and all manner of statuary. A Roman mosaic sits at the center, surrounded by an ever-changing installation of flowers and shrubs. A pair of towering palm trees reach up to the sunlight, climbing beyond the third floor.

For lunch, Tsipis led them to Hassadar’s most exclusive locale—the official dining room of the Count’s Residence, overlooking the Square. The remarkable spread which the staff laid on hinted that Miles had sent down a few urgent behind-the-scenes instructions for the care and feeding of his . . . gardener. Mark confirmed this after dessert when Kareen led Enrique and the widow off to see the garden and fountain in the Residence’s inner courtyard, and he and Tsipis lingered over the exquisite vintage of Vorkosigan estate-bottled wine usually reserved for visits from Emperor Gregor.

The old capital is solitary and deserted. No sound of man breaks the silence of its streets. Only memory broods in the garden where the Pashas used to walk, and the courtyard where the Imperial envoy fell.

The garden felt even darker than the rest of the courtyard, but I followed the sound of Lin’s footsteps, nearly tripping at each step down the path I couldn’t see. The path opened into a circular clearing, a tree and a boulder in the middle. Something fluttered up and into the night sky. “Shit!” Lin said. I wasn’t sure why—after four locked doors, a cavern beneath the palace and a giant construct—this would be the thing that surprised me. An emperor swearing like a smuggler.

On our final night in Seoul, Nami and Emo Boo took us to Samwon Garden, a fancy barbecue spot in Apgujeong, a neighborhood my mom once described as the Beverly Hills of Seoul. We entered through the beautiful courtyard garden, its two man-made waterfalls flowing under rustic stone bridges and feeding the koi pond. Inside the dining room were heavy stone-top tables, each equipped with a hardwood charcoal grill. Nami slipped the waitress twenty thousand won, and our table quickly filled with the most exquisite banchan. Sweet pumpkin salad, gelatinous mung-bean jelly topped with sesame seeds and scallions, steamed egg custard, delicate bowls of nabak kimchi, wilted cabbage and radish in salty, rose-colored water. We finished the meal with naengmyeon, cold noodles you could order bibim, mixed with gochujang, or mul, served in a cold beef broth.

Down in the courtyard our gunmen and drivers were chewing qat. The plant looks like watercress and tastes like a handful of something pulled at random from the flower garden. You have to chew a lot of it, a bundle the size of a whisk broom, and you have to chew it for a long time. It made my mouth numb and gave me a little bit of a stomachache, that’s all. Maybe qat is very subtle. I remember thinking cocaine was subtle, too, until I noticed I’d been awake for three weeks and didn’t know any of the naked people passed out around me. The Somalis seemed to get off. They start chewing before lunch but the high doesn’t kick in until about three in the afternoon. Suddenly our drivers would start to drive straight into potholes at full speed. Straight into pedestrians and livestock, too. We called it “the qat hour.” The gunmen would all begin talking at once, and the chatter would increase in speed, volume, and intensity until, by dusk, frantic arguments and violent gesticulations had broken out all over the compound.

did attend church more regularly. Or I tried. One Sunday when the dreadful bell choir was scheduled, I made it only as far as a courtyard in the gardens where I sat in the moist, cool, gray-May air and watched the mist burn off the mountains while mourning doves hoo-hooed and wild parrots squawked in the deodars. The AUUCC’s historic, once elegant three-acre park was overgrown and shaggy, its hardscape crumbling in places and all the lovelier for it. My soul was fed as richly on that bench as in any hour in the sanctuary. Nor was I the first Sunday garden truant.

By the time Michelangelo arrived in Rome, the Belvedere hill was inclined in a massive building site that would eventually yield gardens, courtyards, porticos, and an open-air sculpture loggia fit for a Christian emperor.

There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me." That was at midsummer, after the garden party and my humiliation at the garden party. Wind and storm coloured July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when, holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather, I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.

The central garden courtyard rang with conversation and tinkling bells, sphere vines in every shade of green and blue bobbing from ropes across the yard. There were streamers and bouquets of everbue branches, and white incense smoke curled up from the four corners. Marda saw Ferize and her partners cushioned on blankets and holding their new babies for everyone to greet. On the long table were bowls of cider and small towers of honey candy, a few bottles of gnostra berry wine probably from town and candied fruit and boxes of pastries certainly from town. Most people wore the simple tunics of the Path, but there were others, newcomers, and visitors. Two small droids near the road to town projected competing music, and Marda nearly laughed as they fought with percussion.

Of course, it would be a relief to step out of the nightmarish streets of Sarajevo and into the calm of her daughter’s Wiltshire village, but every instinct tells her to stay put. And it isn’t just the risk of redundancy and of their homes being taken that makes her want to remain. She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its scents and sounds - the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafes, the mahalas - the old neighbourhoods - that radiate out from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell. In her twenties, when she returned home from her six years in Paris and Belgrade, she realised she couldn’t live anywhere else. And now, she wants to stay in the city she loves as it’s shaken, to see things through.

She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its scents and sounds – the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafés, the mahalas – the old neighbourhoods – that radiate out from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell.

We came next to a side door that led us back to the courtyard, where the ice now ran red with blood, then he made us all leap through a window that brought us to a winter garden, filled with flowers the color of twilight punctuated with violent hedges, their leaves black and spiky and their berries bright with poison.

Pariva was a small village, unimportant enough that it rarely appeared on any maps of Esperia. Bordered by mountains and sea, it seemed untouched by time. The school looked the same as she remembered; so did the market and Mangia Road---a block of eating establishments that included the locally famous Belmagio bakery---and cypress and laurel and pine trees still surrounded the local square, where the villagers came out to gossip or play chess or even sing together. Had it really been forty years since she had returned? It seemed like only yesterday that she'd strolled down Pariva's narrow streets, carrying a sack of pine nuts to her parents' bakery or stopping by the docks to watch the fishing boats sail across the glittering sea. Back then, she'd been a daughter, a sister, a friend. A mere slip of a young woman. Home had been a humble two-storied house on Constanza Street, with a door as yellow as daffodils and cobblestoned stairs that led into a small courtyard in the back. Her father had kept a garden of herbs; he was always frustrated by how the mint grew wild when what he truly wanted to grow was basil. The herbs went into the bread that her parents sold at their bakery. Papa crafted the savory loaves and Mamma the sweet ones, along with almond cakes drizzled with lemon glaze, chocolate biscuits with hazelnut pralines, and her famous cinnamon cookies. The magic the Blue Fairy had grown up with was sugar shimmering on her fingertips and flour dusting her hair like snow. It was her older brother, Niccolo, coaxing their finicky oven into working again, and Mamma listening for the crackle of a golden-brown crust just before her bread sang. It was her little sister Ilaria's tongue turning green after she ate too many pistachio cakes. Most of all, magic was the smile on Mamma's, Papa's, Niccolo's, and Ilaria's faces when they brought home the bakery's leftover chocolate cake and sank their forks into a sumptuous, moist slice. After dinner, the Blue Fairy and her siblings made music together in the Blue Room. Its walls were bluer than the midsummer sky, and the windows arched like rainbows. It'd been her favorite room in the house.

I'm certain that our friends from around the world find it hilarious that as soon as the sun makes an appearance we rush to sit out on our patios and balconies clutching hot drinks, "Isn't it lovely?" we tell each other, our voices barely audible through the chatter of our teeth. Even in summer the Scottish weather can be so changeable that we have learned to adapt our gardens, putting up seagrass walls to shield lawns and installing barbeques in sunken courtyards in an attempt to prevent being driven inside by the wind.

To return home, to see into one's own nature, is the end aimed at by the practitioner, But how is one to see into one's own nature? It is necessary to bring light to one's existence, to live life, to render present and permanent the awareness of being. Put in another way, it is necessary that one sees the cyprus in the courtyard. If one does not see the presence of the cyprus in his own garden, how can one see into his own nature?

Within it grew such a variety of plants as Elizabeth had ever seen: white roses, carnations, lobelias, mimosas, even sweet peas tumbling over each other in vigorous abandon. At one end was an herb garden, and Elizabeth recognized rue, fennel, caraway, sage, thyme and mint. Through a doorway at the rear of the courtyard she could see a grove of olive and lemon trees and on the short walk from the harbor to the house she had spotted tall, spiky thistle-like plants, palms and trees covered in white flowers. She was seized with an immediate desire to open her sketchbook and take out the magnifying glass from the pocket of her cloak, to capture the intricate detail of an almond blossom, its calyx and corolla, stamens and carpel, or perhaps to draw the curl of a vine tendril or a spiky aloe leaf

Once outside the courtyard gate, the Garden stretched out on every hand in uniform whiteness, uninterrupted except for the dark green of a pine tree or the lighter green of some bamboos here and there in the distance. He felt as if he was standing in the middle of a great glittering crystal bowl.

A number of the wrought-iron fences that encircled the courtyards and gardens of the homes were painted the color of gold on their European-inspired spikes and finials.

Behind its outer walls, the Temple of Inanna was another world. When they entered the bronze gates from the dusty barren city streets, patrons became submerged in a world of sensuality, a garden of earthly delights. Lush flora filled the open courtyard: exotic fruit trees with dates, figs, and pomegranates. Tamarisk and palm trees rose above the floor in a canopy of leaves. The complex artificial irrigation channels of the city watered this botanical paradise of flowers and vegetation. A wisp of incense mixed with perfume wafted through the air, teasing the nostrils. The temple and palace gardens replicated a memory of Eden. It was as if gods and kings sought to retain their ancestral past even as they perverted it into its mirror opposite.

From under the portal of the Holy of Holies in the Third Temple, a trickle of sweet water will flow through the Temple Courtyard and out to the countryside. The trickle will become a stream, and the stream will become a great river on whose banks trees will grow that produce new fruit every month. The leaves of these trees will heal every wound and sickness.17 The river will transform the Land of Israel into the Garden of Eden.

how many ghosts I was going to encounter. That Serra guy had to have a bunch of Native Americans mad at him—particularly considering that corporal punishment thing—and I hadn’t any doubt I was going to encounter all of them. And yet, when my mom and I walked through the school’s wide front archway into the courtyard around which the Mission had been constructed, I didn’t see a single person who looked as if he or she didn’t belong there. There were a few tourists snapping pictures of the impressive fountain, a gardener working diligently at the base of a palm tree—even at my new school there were palm trees—a priest walking in silent contemplation down the airy breezeway. It was a beautiful, restful place—especially for a building that was so old and had to have seen so much death. I couldn’t understand it. Where were all the ghosts? Maybe they were afraid to hang around the place. I was a little afraid, looking up at that crucifix.

Genevieve was familiar with one of the duke's properties- Rosemont- as she'd gone to tour it once when he was away at one of his other vast tracts of lands. It was surprisingly modest by duke terms, a redbrick manor in West Sussex presiding over a collection of softly swelling hills, which surrounded a lake populated by enormous, irritable swans and overhung with willows. The garden had been brilliant with its namesake blooms and the fountain in the courtyard featured a lasciviously grinning stone satyr performing an arabesque and spitting water high into the air. She'd found it delightful. Its pocket-sized, whimsical beauty hardly seemed to suit him, but then he normally spent his time in London and likely had all but forgotten he owned it.

They sleep late and make a breakfast from the fruit trees and garden in the building's courtyard: sweet oranges, tangerines, tomatoes, grapefruit, avocado. They sit on a fold-out aluminum love seat on his balcony with plates and knives and a bowl of salt. A trail of juice runs along her fingers and Han kisses her palms.

After finishing their main course and dessert, she and Cady prepared her extra dish. Sophia had decided to make the girls' favorite dinner- beef tenderloin with peppercorn sauce. Soon enough they were plating and rushing back and forth to the huge banquet table set up in the courtyard. Pouring wine and adjusting garnishes and offering smiles to the judges. The ambience of this meal was Sophia's idea of romance. The table was draped with ivory linen and topped with glass jars of flowers. Bouquets of Rosa rugosa and Queen Anne's lace were nestled among votives and bottles of wine. The local glassblower had provided an assortment of pottery dishes and hand-blown goblets. Strands of white lights dangled from the surrounding trees. She and Elliott and the girls plated together, having reached some sort of exhausted Zen state. Emilia scooped the risotto, Elliott placed the salmon on top, Sophia added the three tiny sides shaped with a round cookie cutter. Elliott drizzled his sauce onto the final product. He brushed his shoulder against Sophia each time, needing that physical connection. The plates looked exquisite, artistic. Perfect. She tried to ignore the overwhelming stress of the moment and focus on the food. Cady and Emilia added garnishes- fresh herbs and flowers. And Cady had a whole sheet of candied violets ready to sprinkle on their dessert. It made Elliott laugh and tease them all about being a family of garden sprites. When they finally got to the head of the table and faced a sea of critics, Sophia felt confident about their choices. They'd prepared a beautiful meal that successfully showcased Elliott's love for Scottish tradition, local Vermont products, and the Brown family's love of fresh vegetables and herbs. All the components meshed together into one cohesive meal.

I present... the courtyard!" The curtain slid away to reveal a wall of glass. Several production workers slid the transparent panels along the tracks until the entire room opened up onto a massive outdoor kitchen. The contestants filed outside, stunned by the extravagance. It doubled the size of their workspace. Stovetops and grills were set into brick counters. Refrigerators were tucked safely under a canvas canopy. And best of all- most thrilling of all- was a lush, vibrant perennial border that surrounded the entire kitchen, filled with edible plants, herbs, and flowers. Bright orange nasturtiums nodded in the afternoon sunshine, tender peas twined about a chicken wire fence. Bees hovered over patches of fuzzy thyme. Sophia laughed out loud. This was utterly delightful. "Your dream come true, Miss Garden Fairy?" The Scot's thick arms crossed his chest. He looked utterly disinterested. "There are fully-stocked pantries inside, as well. But the outdoor facility takes advantage of our beautiful Vermont landscape. Edibles in the garden." Mr. Smith pointed to glass-fronted coolers. "Local cheeses and other dairy products." He sauntered over to the canopied area and the cameras followed him. Baskets of fresh produce lined the tables. "We locally farmed proteins, fruits, and vegetables. Honey. Maple syrup. Anything and everything you can imagine." He took a perfectly ripe strawberry from one of the boxes and popped it into his mouth.

The place where we’ll be staying is just off the piazza. I knew the square was always full of people, but I hope we won’t have to suffer their constant noise.” “Here?” Mada squealed, wrinkling her nose. “This isn’t how I remember Palazzo Alioni at all. This whole neighborhood looks so run-down. So old.” Marco nodded grimly as the driver slowed the horses to a stop. “Your father sent word to warn me that your aunt’s living conditions had deteriorated, but I had hoped for better than this.” They had pulled over in front of a three-story palazzo made of red stucco and trimmed with marble. The chipped roof tiles and peeling paint made Cass think of Agnese’s villa. “It’s not so bad,” she said, with forced cheerfulness. “It looks lived-in.” The carriage driver opened the wooden double doors that led into the palazzo’s courtyard. Mada’s face fell even further. Up close, the house looked even older than Agnese’s villa, and the only thing growing in the garden was weeds. A rusty bucket sat on the edge of a well. Mada turned to Cass incredulously. “It looks like no one’s lived here for a hundred years,” she insisted.

Did I tell you about what happened last week with Marco?” Cass shook her head. “Well,” Mada began coyly, leaning in close to Cass and speaking quietly, “Father was out of town, you know, on business. But still, I can’t just have Marco over to the house, because one of the servants will tattle on me, guaranteed.” “So what did you do?” Cass played with a strand of hair that had escaped from her bonnet. Madalena lowered her voice even more. “I didn’t do anything. It was all Marco. He climbed the ivy vines from the canal to my window. I’m lucky he didn’t fall and drown.” She smiled dreamily. “I woke up in the middle of the night. I don’t know why. I just did. And Marco was sitting next to my bed, watching me sleep.” Madalena giggled. “At first I was mad at him for scaring me.” Cass couldn’t keep her jaw from dropping a little. She tried to imagine a boy sneaking into her own room to watch her sleep. Immediately, it was the face of the artist Falco she saw. Bright blue eyes. Crooked smile. She struggled to push his image from her mind. “And then?” Mada paused just long enough to allow the suspense to build. “And then he sat down next to me and took me in his arms. And we kissed until sunrise.” “Madalena Rambaldo! In your father’s house?” Cass made a pretend-scandalized face. Madalena giggled again. “Marco snuck back out--through the house, thankfully--just before first light, when the servants begin to go about their chores. A few minutes later and he might have gotten caught.” At that moment, the gardener, a stern-faced old man, appeared around a column in the courtyard with a large pot of water in his arms. Ignoring the girls, he began to water the rosebushes, which were still awaiting their first buds. Madalena and Cass bent their heads close together and laughed. “Let’s just say last week’s confession was interesting,” Madalena finished. “I think I made the priest blush.” Cass took a sip of her wine, savoring its sweetness. She wondered what it would feel like to kiss someone all night. Falco’s face materialized in her head again and she felt her cheeks redden.

Pots hung from the ceiling beams, between the festoons of braided garlic, the hams, the salsicce, bunches of mountain herbs for medicine, strings of dried porcini, necklaces of dried apple rings in winter, chains of dried figs. The smell of onions, of hot lard and smoldering oak wood, of cinnamon and pepper, always seemed to hang in the air. The larder was full of meat at all times, needless to say: not small pieces, but huge joints and sides of beef and lamb, which Mamma and Carenza could never hope to use just for our household, and which were quietly passed on to the monks of Santa Croce so that they could feed the poor. Carenza made salami with fennel seeds and garlic, prosciutto, pancetta. Sometimes the air in the larder was so salty that it stung your nostrils, and sometimes it reeked of spoiled blood from the garlands of hares, rabbits, quail, thrushes and countless other creatures that would arrive, bloody and limp, from Papa's personal game dealer. Next to the larder, a door led out to our courtyard, which Mamma had kept filled with herbs. An ancient rosemary bush took up most of one side, and the air in summer was always full of bees. Sage, thyme, various kinds of mint, oregano, rocket, hyssop, lovage and basil grew in Mamma's collection of old terra-cotta pots. A fig tree was slowly pulling down the wall, and a tenacious, knotted olive tree had been struggling for years in the sunniest corner.

The part of the City which contained the imperial government was enormous and old, shaped like a six-pointed star: sectors for East, West, North, and South, and two more: Sky, extending out between North and East, and Earth, pointing out from the middle of South and West. Each sector was composed of needle-sharp towers jammed full of archives and offices, tied together by multilevel bridges and archways. Stacked courtyards hung in midair between the more populated towers, their floors translucent or inset with sandstone and gold. At the center of each was a hydroponic garden, with photosynthesizing plant life floating in standing water. The unbelievable luxuries of a planet. The flowers in the hydroponic gardens seemed to be color-coded; as they moved closer to the Judiciary, their petals shaded redder and redder, until the center of each courtyard looked like a pool of iridescent blood,

So, good evening to you, fair lady of the garden. I bid you good night, and I shall remove my oafish self from your presence.” I was all the way to the arched entryway in the wall when she called out, “Wait!” But my stomach gave a quietly protesting grumble, and I pretended not to hear. She did not come after me, but I felt sure she watched me, and so I kept my head up and my stride even until I was out of the kitchen courtyard. I took myself down to the stables, where I vomited into the manure pile and ended up sleeping in a clean empty stall because the steps up to Burrich’s loft looked entirely too steep.

Manicured lawns and dozens of trees give it a peaceful, parklike atmosphere. The interior of the school is even more impressive. The main entrance has a huge fountain that is even LARGER than the one at the mall. There are tall columns, arched hallways, shiny marble floors, elegant chandeliers, and a courtyard with a fishpond and a rose garden! I feel like a traitor even thinking this, but NHH makes Westchester Country Day look like a basic, no-frills daycare center!

Madame Escoffier," he said. In his white apron, he was again the man she loved. The gentle man who only spoke in whispers. "I am sorry," she said. "I am not." He leaned over and kissed her. His lips tasted of tomatoes, sharp and floral. The moment, filled with the heat of a reckless summer, brought her back to the gardens they had grown together in Paris in a private courtyard behind Le Petit Moulin Rouge. Sweet Roma tomatoes, grassy licorice tarragon, thin purple eggplants and small crisp beans thrived in a series of old wine barrels that sat in the tiny square. There were also violets and roses that the 'confiseur' would make into jellies or sugar to grace the top of the 'petit-fours glacés,' which were baked every evening while the coal of the brick ovens cooled down for the night. "No one grows vegetables in the city of Paris," she said, laughing, when Escoffier first showed her his hidden garden, "except for Escoffier." He picked a ripe tomato, bit into it and then held it to her lips. "Pomme d'amour, perhaps this was fruit of Eden." The tomato was so ripe and lush, so filled with heat it brought tears to her eyes and he kissed her. "You are becoming very good at being a chef's wife." "I love you," she said and finally meant it. 'Pommes d'amour.' The kitchen was now overflowing with them.