The rebellious hedge was one thing, but here the plants are taking over. I’ve been watching this installation grow over the past few years, and while I applaud the owner’s commitment to the natural look (English- v. French-garden style), I think having what may turn out to be an actual tree growing in your windowbox is pretty audacious.I’m just glad to see that they all can manage to get along together.
The creeping shadow may be the only brake (along with water) that has any effect on this extraordinary assortment.
Windowboxes, I feel I ought to note, are a late bloomer in Venetian life. They certainly weren’t common in Lino’s childhood. “People didn’t even have food,” he states. “Who had flowers?” Little vegetable allotments were not unheard-of, but flowers? Only in their natural state, out in the fields and in the wild, on the barene and lagoon shoreline.
But now that windowboxes are flourishing — or running hogwild, as above — let me share a bit of their color and cheer as we stagger toward the end of a hideously hot summer.
The flowers are best of all. Second-best is the ingenuity of putting them in a bucket, seeing that there is no other place for them. But special mention goes to what the bucket is hanging from: The handle and its support of the long-ago doorbell. The small hole at the top of the metal strip was where the metal wire was attached (the wire that stretched upward to the relevant dwelling, where the other end was attached to the bell itself. Yes, you just pulled it and it rang like crazy up in your friend’s apartment.)As you see.
I love so many things about this arrangement, but it wouldn’t be so wonderful without the sticker still stuck to the pot.Somewhere on Sant’ Erasmo, somebody wanted to do this. I’m guessing it’s a pet’s grave, but I’ll never know. The place needed flowers, and flowers there are.Burano, obviously. I admire anyone who can think of putting flowers out to coexist with walls whose color is measured in decibels.Leaves that looks like petals, or vice versa. Nice.Enjoy your flowerbox before it dries up.
Returning to the topic of the Venetian tides, which scared everybody because it seemed as if they had lost their mind — or minds. Do they have more than one?
Anyway, let’s see what the Tide Center forecast is for today and the next few days:
As we can see, the tides are really smoothing out.
Let’s show why this is happening by consulting one of the most important meteorological influences: The moon. The greatest jumps between high and low tide occur when the moon is full or when it is new (or “dark,” as they say here).
The full moon on Feb. 6 got the ball rolling, so to speak.
There was a pause on the 14th, not to celebrate Saint Valentine but because twice a month, when the waning or waxing moon is at the half, the tides scarcely change at all for the space of about 24 hours. Venetians call this the “morto de aqua,” or death of the water. Fun fact: For that brief interval, there is often unsettled-to-bad weather. I always imagine that the moon, which spends most of the month keeping the weather on the rein, so to speak, takes a break and the weather just runs around and does whatever it likes. In fact, for the next few days a violent northeast wind is expected to blast through here.
The evidence is before us: After February 14, moving toward the new moon on the 20th, the tides went to exciting extremes. But now look at the moon from Feb. 27-28, and compare flattish tide forecast.
So arm yourself with a barometer (high atmospheric pressure = lower water), the Tide Center forecast, and the phases of the moon, and no canal will ever be able to sneak up on you ever again.
The moon has its own official fish.
This 100-pound moonfish (also Southern spotted opah, or Lampris australensis) washed up on an Oregon beach. There seems to have been no complicity with the tides, however. (livescience.com)
We expected to see the usual Sunday morning mix of taxis and vaporettos, but a mute swan (Cygnus olor) was a surprise.
May 1 was a national holiday, here and in many other countries, and it’s generally known as International Workers’ Day. So in honor of workers everywhere, we also did not work that day. We went out for an early morning row, and were amazed to be met in the Bacino of San Marco by a very fine, and very unexpected, feathered friend.
There are about 270 species of bird in the lagoon over the course of the year, either pausing in their migrations, stopping for the winter, or just moving in permanently. The Venetian lagoon is on a major north-south flyway, and apart from being enormous, is one of the few, ever-diminishing coastal wetlands in Europe.He was tranquilly crossing the Bacino without any noticeable destination in mind — more or less like any other tourist wandering the city, except much more beautiful.He didn’t seem to mind the waves as much as I do.Recent fossil records, according to the British Ornithological Union, show that Cygnus olor is among the oldest bird species still extant; some fossil and bog specimens date back to 13,000 B.C.E. The young bird is initially gray and gradually becomes white over four years.
We have often seen a pair of swans in the northern lagoon, beyond Torcello, and also on the Brenta river near Malcontenta; one time we counted nearly 50 floating in the distance near Sant’ Erasmo. Lino told me that when he was a lad, some birds that we now commonly see in the city, such as cormorants, egrets, and seagulls, never came to town. You’d see them only in the distance, he says, if you saw them at all. Now they’re everywhere.
But the swans weren’t to be seen anywhere. About 35 years ago, Giampaolo Rallo, now president of the Mestre Pro Loco, then a naturalist at the Natural History Museum, noticed that there wasn’t a swan to be found in the lagoon, “not even if you paid it,” as one account put it. So he got what he calls “this crazy idea” to bring back the swans. On April 13, 1984, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), together with the Gazzettino, launched a drive to find individuals willing to sponsor (fancy word for “pay for”) pairs of swans — not a small contribution, considering that a pair cost the equivalent of $315 today.
He strolled, so to speak, over to the riva Ca’ di Dio where someone was dropping a few crumbs into the water – or so it appeared. Photos ensued. It wasn’t long before he decided to investigate other sources of snacks, such as the seaweed.
Over a period of two years, up to one hundred couples were acquired in the Netherlands and placed in the “fish valleys” of the southern lagoon. “It was a great cultural work,” Rallo explained to a journalist from La Nuova Venezia in 2019, “because we had to teach the respect of all the great waterbirds — I’m thinking also of the flamingoes. But there was real enthusiasm in the city for this initiative and there were important signs, such as the participation of Federcaccia Venezia” (the hunters’ association) “which bought a pair and made their volunteers available to watch over the swans to prevent anyone from disturbing or wounding them.” Who would hurt a swan? Well, hungry people a few generations back had no problem with trying to get these spectacular creatures on the table.
Today there are a thousand swans in the lagoon, and are sometimes seen even in Mestre’s modest waterways. A breeding pair named Silvia and Peter live near the lagoon at Caorle, and are awaiting the hatching of their eleventh brood of cygnets.
Moving on toward some moored vaporettos.Hello, what’s this? A shiny little metal plate that looks crunchy. Or maybe not.Not. Definitely not.Well, let’s mosey along and see what else we can find.While I’m marveling at the wonder of his being in Venice, he is perhaps marveling at the notion that anybody could live in a place like this and not on a muddy tidal islet lined with reeds.
A tasty morsel hiding behind this taxi? He got there first. At this point we moved on, so I have no idea what else happened to him.This is your swan’s typical territory. You can understand why it was so strange to see one in downtown Venice.
My most powerful memory of swans was a moment that was not, and anyway could not have been, photographed. It all happened so quickly.
Years ago, we were out rowing near the island of Santo Spirito on a deep grey morning in winter. Suddenly a trio of large birds flew toward us — three swans — flying so low it seemed we could touch them.
I had never seen swans flying, much less so near. As they passed overhead, their long graceful necks undulated slightly, and a barely discernible murmuring sound came from their throats.
Swans may be beautiful when they’re doing nothing, but when they fly they are magic.
He would so love to be a swan. Let’s just let him have it.
