Tea at Trianon: Living With Wisteria

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Living With Wisteria

From Sharon Santoni:

We cut the branches back around our windows at least twice each summer, and in theory give the whole plant a hard prune late winter, around February. I have to tell you that due to severe weather, we missed the winter prune this year, but that doesn’t seem to have affected the flowering season. We generally get a second more timid flowering in the summer, but it is the foliage that is so pretty until the fall. So is it a difficult plant to live with? If you prefer a very structured and formal planting design to your garden then you can keep the wisteria tightly trained to a wall, but if like me, you have a penchant for a romantic tumbling garden then wisteria is ideal. (Read more.)