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giovedì 30 ottobre 2014

rhodologue Jules graveraux and Lolita

i m deeply touched  by your comments, at my attempt to write again, and as promised I will speak of two of my greatest loves: ,Roses and Nonna Lolita, my paternal grannie.I will honor her with a fantastic old tea rose: Rhodologue Jules Graveraux, for two reasons ( the second reason you will find it at the end of the post)first because Graveraux  was the person who tried to save the collection of  roses of the Malmaison, the enormous collection of Josephine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoléon.Firstboth the empress and the empress of my heart, were obsessive gardeners, my grannie made gardens in every country my grandad  worked as a diplomat, and she was the one who distilled me the love of gardening and roses.. Plus both of them had this old Europe allure and elegance but both of them where born in the New Continent. Josephine, née Tascher de La Pagerie was born in Martinique, while Lolita  was born in Rua Voluntarios da patria , Rio de Janeiro from a Piemontese father and an Anglo nicaraguense mother. I will disgress a little and talk about her mother s families, first with  the maternal side: the Furtado de la Cruz, a pure blood Spanish family, who has gold mines in Nicaragua. I imagine that my karma is full of crimes towards my beloved Amerindians. I was always very surprised when Lolita talked about her grandad Chambers, who scolded her daughter because  Lolita had made some imperceptible noise while gulping some water.  the Chambers have been in the navy ( now in the navy song from the village people in ringing in my head, maybe my genes shaped me as a gay man?) for generations and there is even a maritime painter , and his works are in the Greenwich maritime museum,He was very high church,considered his grand daughters as savages, and then I understood why she was so obsessed with manners while eating, and her obsession with drinking tea everyday. on the other hand she was a very free spirited woman, and nobody could stop her in any way, larger than life. I adored her contradictions, her mix of new and old world, she was obsessed with English manners and rituals, but she was highly opinionated and blatantly honest, and sometimes cruel in her dealings with others. She was miles away from being the sweet old grannie , but adored her because she was just allergic to diplomacy and hypocrisy!She constantly threatened Ettore, my grandad, she would be totally pissed the day when we will retire from that job that has hunting  this branch people for 2 generations and a half. the Baistrocchi has
always being in a kind of military career or in the institutions, they have lived in Parma from the year 1000 on their arrival from Poland, as nercenaires.These Baistrovky, with the centuries , will become Baistrocchi, will
become earls, and will be famous in boring yet beautiful Parma for their
dedication to the city and nowadays for a car salon. oh my god how I hate cars, I ve no bloody car licence. Lolita hated this obedience of these Baistrocchi, she was " fogo" she was fire. she hated all these rigidities, but she was very rigid herself, a revolutionary lady who looked like a Hollywood star , and in every embassy she had a big group of admirers, but did not have problems to dig herself in the garden. Dhe had a very masculine attitude, or what it was considered then masculine. She could do heavy work and then dress up like a princess, always elegant even with mud. very energetic she had million of interests, very much of a vulcano, she did everything in good faith, so I was the only one who was not affraid by her eruptions, ( her nicest way of calling me was sem jeito mandou lembranças:clumsy boy said hello , and her naughtiest where : tu est une quantité négligeable:you are négligeable kind of thing, you are nothing) I could see beyond her violence and was not impressed by her" barking" because she was extremely generous.In Italy we say cane Che abbaia non dorme( dog
who barks don t bite).She had no problems in doing what was inappropriate as going to oppium smokeries, on her shopping trips to hong kong while they were in Japan, she had the most extreme curiosity and an unsatiable    hunger for knowledge and novelties. Her will was like iron for  six months
she trained every day relentlessly because she wanted to become a tennis champion , but she had  to

stop  due to a illness.She made me love ballet, tennis, opera, even though my only true love were plants and nature. What I loved more was the fragility hidden behind this mask :I still imagine this naïve, optimistic young Brazilian woman of 24, entering in a concentration camp in japan because my grandad did not want to be in Mussolini s side. My father was 2 years old, my uncle 1 and my auntie 7. my grandad was a bit of a delicate guy, so she had to be the man of the family, with her 3 and a half children. she was the one who had to fight with the Japanese for having the best food as possible. The guards were eating the prisoner s food and giving them rotten food. Dhe played for her kids a kind of la vita é bella, hence the kids loved the camp, they did not have to go to school and they could
play all day long , with Dacia Maraini and other kids.I think utter desperation  forced  her to change for love of their kids in a military lady. she had not time nor the luxury of my grandad to interiorise the feelings of the camp. feelings and emotions  and time,where a luxury she could not have. this Mask which saved her in the camp , became her prison for the rest of her life. And my impression is that none of them, ever left
the camp. I saw this clearly when my father was dying of cancer, when was 18, I saw him clearly as a samourai, and
that his unsolved issues where the main cause of his disease. I loved Lolita because she was the only

one who was honest on the fact of being broken objects , broken souls from the camp. She was allergic to this world of lies, she could not break free, but in the same time as a don quijote, never accepting it , and breaking her face against the wall. I ve been drawn to this emotional concentration camp myself, and she was the only who was honest, and a continual reminder that something was wrong among all these lies. I would have been more of a silent  and reserved type of guy, liking to spend time alone with my plsants, but realised that expression is the only way to live, and lack of communication is the beginning of disease. So in order to comunicate I had to do some violence on myself, I ma bit
clumsy like her,( she had outward violence whereas mine is more inward) and in the same, as a diplomat son I was trained as very young boy, to behave as a diplomat in social events. To be a diplomat s son is a work and I have been working since a child. I m clumsy in many aspects, because I guess I m a bit of a Lolita fighting the diplomats. I  never been allowed to be a child, I m allowing myself to be so after a lot of work on myself, and had to force me myself a lot, because we all love our prisons.
I honor my grannie , with this beauty of a bygone time, the rose rhodologue Jules graveraux has all the charms of a tea rose, a musical changing chromatism,
from the nankin , chaumois( buff) blush  to pink, slightly ruffled petals, in a semi old fashioned manner.The shrub is medium sized, airy like most of the teas, scented, and always in bloom. the canes tends to turn blackish with age. The link is not only due the fact , I learnt English reading her books about plants and rose, and she gave millions of plants, but this rose was bred in Brasil by A
Brasilian Dr Joquim Fontes, an eminent brasilian poet, magistrate, and rose grower, showing that Brasil is not mere samba , but was a very interesting from a cultural point of view

martedì 28 ottobre 2014

Carmen Lola aka Nonna Lolita, and blog ladies I met thanks to seeds of love

This is the most useless, of a useless kind of thing: blogs.There are trillions of them, everybody has one. My is just a waste of time and space. I m temperamental, highly opinionated, and this violent way of expressing myself comes from a fiery lady I still love with all the passion of the world Nonna Lolita, my cruel yet adorable grannie. I obviously playing the drama queen, most of my friends on the hideous thing, I m totally addicted which is Facebook, are bloggers. They are the most fantastic people ever. I first stumbled on Tiziana Sanna, the most sweet, person on earth, always a nice word for everybody, and an incredible stamina, and an infatigable researcher, there is not a second where she is perusing something for her new post and extremely generous always posting the beautiful things she sees in other gardens and gardeners with her great Furighedda gardening where she talks about her paradise in the paradise island of Sardinia. Then a walking rose plant, a great lady in pink, with an obsession I truly share: The obsession for roses.She found an incredible rose breeder in Australia, Warren Millington, using vintage old hybrid teas in the likes of  Mme Caroline Testout and other stalwarts of beauty and perfection with rose species, in order to create, extremely healthy and  incredibly vigorous roses, all cold hardy.I m particularly attracted by his Virginiana hybrids. Virginiana s are northern American fern leaved roses, ridiculously cold hardy, almost subzero roses, which turn orangy/ yellow/ reddish leaves of the most enchanting combinations ever. This short yet pollinating wild beauty can grow in very swampy environments, almost soaked. Which makes it a very interesting parent, since most roses loathe soaked soils, which is alas a characteristic of a lot of gardens.The neverending energy of The lady in Pink aka Isabelle Olikier-Luyken
n is extraordinary, and she really knows how Masonna sees Music: Makes the people come Together:) . She was so convinced of Warren s masterpieces, she made them available in Belgium at the great roses de Daniel ! Daniel Schmitz in Malmédy. Daniel has been know for his choice of old roses and for innovative rose breeders as Scarman, a contemporary Gallica rose breeder. Isabelle with her blog a Little bit of Pardise, as Tiziana shows her ability with her gardening skills on little Belgian paradise .Not only Isabelle is conving everybody to have Warren roses, but she really is like Music. Through her seeds of love she makes people from 300 countries all over Europe but been even Northern America and Australia to share seeds thanks to a lottery. I m a shy and hermit person but she forced me to open up to what is more of a family than a gang of plant lovers.It was an extremely hard moment of my life. After I had to leave my ex boyfriend after a world trip of six months, where I had to nurse him and he had here 3 other boyfriends, this seeds of love brought me back to life.That s why I wanted to meet them in sangerhausen the most incredible rose garden in the world along with cavriglia in Tuscany . I was in Berlin to see for a show , because I m a painter, took a train made 3 hours train and  met fab people Bruno, with the super Marie ( she has a fab blog too, and incredible photos)Daniel , Yannick, Monique( an expert of my greatest passion Moss Roses) Mirek , and for sure Andreas who showed us with competence the extraordinary gardens, and surprise Warren itself.Was supposed to stay just one day, but stayed two, the ladies where like sirens and had nonetheless to succumb.I love ladies too much, maybe that s why I m a faggot, too much luv.Monique is special and she drove me to the station, but thanks to my dyspraxia we got lost and was glad so had the opportunity to get to know her better, in her dreamy yet strong attitude, so had the opportunity to go back and fetch the list of Ross in sangerhausen . Arrived in time for the meeting in Berlin to talk about my show, then " straight" to cristopher street gay pride, met there an ex , I danced being part brasilian started to rain and my ex said we should eat , so he brought me far away to a Vietnamese restaurant( my fav cuisine).But it was a trap: he wanted me to see Germany, Ghana , I was livid , but stayed silent, and made a macumba, and Ghana  scored 2 goals and almost won but at the end they were even. At a certain point I said Ghana is about to score and she did ...Now it's the turn of Simonetta Chiarugi, a brilliant botanic acquarellist, and blogger of About a garden, the more loved in Italy. she is like a missionary, she knows how to bring people to plants. She has this very English fashion of making things simple yet accurate, a bit of fresh air in the pompous Italian plant world. She helped me a lot too, we stumbled in gorizia , in maestri di  giardino, a convention made to spread gardening ideas.I ve got a slight spicomotoroan disfunction I m about to solved,a bd she thought me to do it , a very simple task yet hard for a dyspraxic/lexic/calculus . We chatted intensively, she made me write about old rose gossip: what is behind of these names of historic people and aristocrats since I made the English version of the Vivaio la campanella(the English version has more historic reserach) and she made posts with my paintings, and convinced me to write my biography, tried but got a very severe flu when had to talk about a terrible thing which has happened when was four. I did not have really a childhood and the dys