Friendly Friday gardens

Yesterday I showed you some doors from one of them, today a brief tour of all three gardens in Tuscany as visited last May on an open-door day.

Since Friendly Friday guest host Sofia wishes to see our gardens and since I don’t have one, here are three that I visited just in time, last May after the quarantine. In my blogging memories at the end of this post there is a letter that I wrote from my quarantine. Funny how some things never change.

This was the annual open garden and courtyard day organised by ADSI, the Italian association that cares about places of historical importance. I can imagine they are pretty busy. I had a good selection of places to choose from but the most popular ones were sold out. Looking at you, Sammezzano castle with your 365 rooms!

I chose three gardens south of Siena that were relatively close together since I had to book the timeslots online in advance. Once there, I had to hurry more than I would have wanted to catch the next one. All three properties are available for rent. Be my guest!

I had a wonderful day and this is what I saw.

1. Villa Cetinale in Sovicille is a magnificent villa with huge gardens and even a penitential staircase. I posted doors from here twice. I could spend the whole day only here.

2. Castello Poggiarello near Sovicille is a beautiful property with a former chapel, a vegetable garden and a pond. The owners live on the estate and rent out a few rooms. I posted the first half of its doors yesterday.

3. Villa di Radi is in Radi. They just finished a major interior refurbishment during the pandemic. Their garden is more like a viewing plateau, but what a view! I’m grateful for this day and these visits since all of these places are rather beyond my spending limit.

For Friendly Friday Challenge guest-hosted by Sofia at Photographias: In the garden

This day in my blogging history

• 2015: Where are the limits? My translation of my favourite song by Slovenian band Siddharta

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  2016: The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels. —John Bowles

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  2017: Views from the top

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  2019: I thank you all for gentle pushes, ripples, eye-openers.

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  2020: A letter from the quarantine:

  I live in Tuscan countryside with a donkey and geese for neighbours. Our apartment is in the condominium with about 95 units and maybe five of them are occupied, including ours. I walk the dog twice a day. I talk to nobody but amore for weeks. All my connections with the world are online. We go to buy groceries twice a month. We never walk the dog together.

  This goes on for seven years.

  And then the quarantine starts. (Read on.)

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  2021: Thursday Doors and more from Torre Alfina