Summer’s riches

I have not been into the Jardin de Luxembourg since my arrival last October, despite the fact that it is less than 10 minutes from l’Alliance Francais. Upon my exit from class today, I turned left and headed for Bread & Roses, a café with rare creativity in its breads, with loads of bio (organic) flour, nuts and whole grains, and a showcase of delicatessen wonders to make the mouth water. Their coffee is exceptional (one cannot say that about every cup of coffee in France), as are their chaussons aux pommes (a buttery croissant filled with apple compote, mmmm). After hungrily consuming my café and chausson, I walked the extra block to the Jardin de Luxembourg, one of the huge and meticulously manicured gardens in Paris.

I was drawn in by the grillwork of the immense gates, and the cool green of the trees. The trees in Paris are in full leaf finally, and many are blooming, including the horse-chestnuts, with their inverted cones of white flowers resembling candles on a Christmas tree.

After stepping onto one of its grand straight paths of crushed stone, and passing by the park guard, I took a curved path to the left, exiting the shady avenue of precisely trimmed horse-chestnuts, and entered a sun-drenched lawn speckled with statues and beds of carefully planted annuals; pansies, tulips drinking up the sun and warmth. In front of me stood a most magnificent copper beech tree. These must be my favorite trees. They grow to such vast dimensions, pushing forth with their skin-like smooth grey bark, sensuous shape and then those deep rich red-brown leaves – they are glamorous and majestic.

In the middle of the grass lay a pigeon that was clearly in distress, shaking, looking as though it was trying to keep itself awake, maybe warding off death. The park guard approached me as I stood to observe the bird. He didn’t talk to me, and stood quite a ways away, but I felt he was looking after the bird, witnessing its efforts to survive.

The park was fairly quiet today, a Friday morning. But the warmth of the day had drawn out a few runners, some artists who were sketching various vistas, and businessmen and students who were spread out working on computers or tomes of reading. The air was warm and humid, like a summer’s day, willing you to take off a layer of unnecessary clothing.

The Jardin is replete with a sea of pale grey-green chairs to welcome visitors. The chairs mass together, around the edges of the lawns, around the central pond, under the avenues of trees. They meet in clusters, as if magnetized, some in large groups, others in small groupings of four or six, and still others in twos facing each other – you can see that someone recently sat down here or there and put their legs up on the other chair to relax, to read, or to close their eyes and absorb the light, the atmosphere.

Those chairs are waiting for Parisians and visitors to sit to absorb fresh air, sunshine, fragrance and the sounds of a garden.