Where mimosas flower bloom. Womens Day
The yellow, looking for signs of spring. First track, almost a must, given the occasion of 8 March, with the flower symbol of Women’s Day. In reality, the mimosa is a plant very early and those who have the opportunity to attend the coast between Italy and France knows that the first spots of bright color can be glimpsed as early as January. The apotheosis in yellow has, however at this time on the Route du Mimosas, 130 km to go unhurriedly between Grasse and Bormes.
It is also a way to appreciate the beauty of the plant (family acacias) in its natural habitat and not just when the flower is cut and packaged into bundles that are sold everywhere on March 8. A Bormes, Provençal town at the foot of the Massif des Mauri, who took – not coincidentally – the name “les mimosas” since 1968, there is a great tradition nursery.
Gérard Cavatore and Julien, whose company is located in the Quartier de Manjastre, are the most famous exponents, with a collection of about 180 varieties. The place is not bad: we are not into the Cap de Brégançon, where the summer estate of the President of the French Republic and Cap Nègre, the private residence of Carla Bruni, much appreciated by Nicolas Sarkozy.
La Route du Mimosas then touches the towns of Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer, Sainte-Maxime, Saint-Raphaël and from there through a panoramic corniche around the Esterel mountains. It is one of the most beautiful and wild on the French Riviera, where the yellow mimosa and blue clear sky winter is combined in many places, the red of the rocks overlooking the sea.
For those who want to walk there is the climb to the Pic d’Ours or Mont Vinaigre, just over 600 meters above sea level, with breathtaking views across the bay of Cannes and the Esterel. Between Mandelieu-la-Napoule and Tanneron you through what is considered the largest forest of mimosa in Europe, for ending the journey to Grasse.
It could not be otherwise, since the city is one of the international capitals of perfumery and here houses the Musée international de la parfumerie. The intoxicating scent of mimosa, overlaps that of orange blossom, jasmine, rose and lavender which created the precious essences such as Fragonard perfume created by historical and Gallimard. By Molinard, another noble house, you can also follow short courses to discover the secrets of the great “noses”, the inventors of perfumes, and create your own parfum.
Not for nothing around here was born the legendary Chanel No. 5 and Patrick Süskind has chosen this place part of his bestseller The scent.
Different tone of yellow, more like late flowering compared to mimosa, is that of the many varieties of broom, ‘s’ humble desert flower, “in the words of the poet. If Leopardi took the cue from the slopes of Vesuvius, festivals dedicated to this shrub there are scattered ‘throughout the peninsula, from Montevarchi, Province of Arezzo, Vulcano in the Aeolian islands, to the island of Ischia. But it is perhaps the Pontine Islands, where, from April to June, you can admire some of the most spectacular blooms.
On the other hand, the broom is a pioneer plant that loves the arid volcanic soil of the whole range of fire Tyrrhenian. Indeed, the areas abandoned by men, the spaces of the “third landscape” theorized by Gilles Clément, are among its places of choice.
Another poet is the key to interpreting a different shade of yellow spring that creates beautiful spots of color in the fields or in the undergrowth, yet when the tall trees are immersed in the greyness of winter. The poet William Wordsworth, poetry is The Daffodils (Narcissus I) and the scenery is the much more northern of the above, the Lake District, England.
The beginning is famous: “I wandered lonely as a cloud …” (I wandered alone as a cloud): Wordsworth was walking by the lake Ullswater when he discovered that field of golden daffodils that inspired the verses became a kind of manifesto and romantic also reflected in one piece, The Arrival, from Genesis.
Wordsworth was, for its time, a great traveler: he visited Italy and the Alps, the Rhine Valley, Belgium, the Netherlands, lived for many years in revolutionary France, but especially loved this part of Cumbria which includes some of the most sublime landscapes English.
Today to protect these scenarios made of valleys, mountains and lakes is the Lake District National Park and walk between Rydal Mount, Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth lived, and Grasmere, where he is buried, thousands flock to each year.
