Renaissance Art & Architecture; Rothko; trails now online; visible agriculture
Good Morning
For the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to study the Florentine art and architecture of the 1400’s, studying with the most delightful lecturers from the British Institute of Florence, who each have compelling and amusing back stories on the religious art that bathes Florence. Each Friday and Saturday we went in search of the architecture and artworks studied that week. The incorporation of perspective into design for the first time in this period was a significant theme in our discussions. Giorgio Vasari’s ‘The lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects’, published in 1550, was our reference book. All in all a super experience highly recommended by me.
In these study weeks my rental car’s technology kept shouting at me to ‘stay in your lane’. This journey into historical art has taken me out of my habitual contemporary art focus, but not entirely. Renaissance art is joined by contemporary art in an installation at Museo di San Marco where the works of Russian born, American artist Rothko (1903-1970) have been paired with Fra Angelico frescoes in five of the forty four frescoed friar cells, spaces created for individual devotions, meditation and reflection.
Loreto Convent, Strand, was home to my four sisters and I in our formative South African boarding school years. I can say the Hail Mary more confidently than I can sing the national anthem. I have never been a strong singer and have vivid memories of daily evening chapel followed by playing netball with nuns with their abundant white habits billowing in the wind created by their speed. What I had not learnt before is that in artworks of Christ dividing humanity into sinners and believers, his left hand is always palm down pushing the sinners to hell while the right hand is palm up, lifting the believers to heaven.
En route to Italy, a few weeks back, I sat next to a Cardinal returning to the Vatican City from his leave in Tanzania. I naively asked him whether he had personally met Pope Leo. His face broke into an enormous grin while explaining that he works alongside of Pope Leo as the African representative at the Vatican. His own father had been a pastor and right from the get-go he knew his calling. Maybe one day it will come to light that I too would have met the Pope, back in 2026, nestled together in the back of Ethiopian Airlines.
Casa di Simonetta is just two kilometres from the village of Lecchi. After attending the village pizza night, I began to wonder whether one can cross a cultural divide in the second half of your life? I am not certain but the journey is nevertheless entertaining even though much is lost in translation. I diligently prepared my Italian notes for a meeting to request from our insurers that they please add to our policy the well point pump which seemingly needs replacing with each and every flash of lightning. My agenda was derailed with the advice that perhaps I should rather begin by adding insurance for the upstairs of the home, which space had both mysteriously and apparently, never been insured.
Back at my home desk, we’re a bit slow with technology preferring to head for the Kogelberg hills on foot. The Green Mountain Trails can now be booked online. That said we do love to engage with enquiring hikers on when they would like to walk, who they would like to walk with and what they love to eat! So online booked or not, we will care for your individual needs. Bookings can be made on greenmountain.co.za
Our garden is excited to wake up to Spring as we have been hard at work with tweaks, adds and removes. Diarise to visit our gardens on the weekends of the 31st of October and 7th of November, Elgin Open Gardens charity show.
Please share this mail with life loving friends and family far and wide, we would love to host more country lovers. Our letters over the years mark the seasons and are archived on greenmountain.co.za.
Room + Wild is a super platform for off the beaten track destinations world wide. I love their writing on farm stays: ‘Agricultural hotels sit at the intersection of landscape, cultivation, and daily life. They are places where working land is not separated from hospitality, but folded into it, so that food, place, and rhythm are experienced as part of the same system. Across vineyards, orchards, dairy farms, and regenerative fields, these stays reveal the quiet infrastructure behind what we eat and how we live, turning agriculture into something visible, seasonal, and deeply present.
At their core, these places reconnect people to cycles that usually remain out of view. Soil health, planting, harvesting, and animal care become part of the guest experience, shaping not only what is served at the table but how it is understood. The hotel or farmhouse becomes both shelter and working participant, holding space for production, experimentation, and stewardship while allowing guests to move through land that is actively being tended.’
For a South African getaway, Wildekrans Country House too offers this genre of stay. As does Casa di Simonetta.
We are not pretending that life is a beach. Enormous gratitude to the independent journalists keeping us aware of what the Daily Maverick refers to as the 2026 Hellscape. Linda Gregg’s THE LIGHT CONTINUES inspires light in this darkish time.
Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.
With love
PS: Sign up now to join groups on these dates: 🏞️
• 📅 24 August 2026 – Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 31 August 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
• 📅 07 September 2026 – Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 11 September 2026 – Weekend Walking
• 📅 21 September 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
• 📅 05 October 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
To walk with your own group, book these dates: 🏞️
• 📅 14 September 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 19 October 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 26 October 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 9 November 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
A 10% discount is offered on groups of ten and 7% on groups of six.
PPS – While flying via Doha or Dubai sometimes seems out of reach, connecting through Germany is an easy hop to Florence, an hour’s drive to Casa di Simonetta, Siena, Tuscany – three case of varying sizes to suit – book by reply email.
