The paulownia blooms exactly at the same time than the lavender wisterias gracing Monet’s Japanese footbridge.
Is it intended or not? What is a coincidence, and what is due to the choices of a clever gardener?
In Monet’s garden, I believe most of the meetings between plants aren’t accidental. Monet, as well as the present day head gardener, was very good at organising dates among the flowers.
Monet, who was an early bird, loved to get up before sunrise, in order not to miss a second of the dramatic show of light and water.
Their bright yellow enlightens not only Monet’s, but every gardens.
Today it is raining a little bit. The sky is overcast and grey, the Seine silvery, the landscape bathed in a mute grey light.
This is the weather forthysias like most for their very special magic. When all the colors have disappeared, their bunches burn like fires. Their straight twigs resemble rays of sunshine.
When the real sun comes back again, the magic vanishes. Forthysia bunches become yellow flowers again.
This place especially, where the long branches of three big weeping willows reach the surface of the pond, offering views on to the blooming water lilies, looks familiar.
Claude Monet loved this spot that he painted over and over again, and that is even featured on the huge Grandes Decorations at l’Orangerie.
The vertical lines mixed with the floating water lilies and the reflections on the surface of the pond challenged his command of perspective.
Cold Winter days finish in a symphony of very tender colors, soft pinks and blues, whereas milder days generally offer dramatic sunsets with flaming reds on low clouds.
As it was last week, it was just incredible to be there, in the absolutely empty garden, walking around the frozen water lily pond waiting for the sky to change.
During the Winter parenthesis, when it is closed for five months, Giverny stops being iconic. Monet’s pool is no more the motiv for world wide known canvases. It becomes a patch of nature again, a very small place indeed lost in the frozen landscape. The realm of wild life.
A small coating of snow hides the surface like a new canvas.
Long blue shadows stretch on the shining whiteness.
Not a single flower.
Even the brave pansies are covered with a blanket of snow.
No colors, except for the green bridges.
Birds are hiding, but their prints are everywhere, like strange words written in the snow.
And the running water of the river reminds that life is awaiting under the appearant death of nature.
Fall is a talented artist who paints beautiful works on Monet’s water lily pond at Giverny.
Late October is the best time to admire the warm reflection of foliage on the surface so often painted by the master of Impressionism.
Liquidambars, weeping willows, poplars, taxodium, beech, chestnut trees all offer their brightest tones duplicated by the mirror of the lake.
Then the breeze comes like a magic stick to blur it all and turn the perfect images into nature’s brushstrokes.
And the little green bridge is there to frame it all.
Monet’s gardens at Giverny will soon close: next Sunday in the evening, on November 1st. Just before their Winter sleep, they offer a gorgeous show on the side of the water garden.
The tall trees that surround the pond change their green or dark red colors for much brighter ones.
The taxodium becomes as red as a squirrel. It will last a few days and then it will loose its needles, until new ones grow next Spring, giving it a fresh green look.
Through the branches of the taxodium, like a spying eye, one can spot a window of Monet’s house in the distance.
The dock offers good views on the small bridge over Monet’s pond at Giverny.
There are six bridges in Monet’s water garden, the biggest being the one Monet painted so often. But the smaller bridge at the other end of the pond is very charming also.
This side of the garden is bathed by the sun in late afternoon. The warm light generates beautiful reflections on the surface.
One would like to do like Monet, just sit down and gaze at the water for hours, scrutinising the changing colors of nature.
An unusual view of Giverny: Monet’s water garden is covered by snow.
Not much but enough to transfigure the usually colourfull garden. The pond is frozen, except for the place around the island and the borders.
In the background the roses arches at the dock are still there as a landmark to the dormant garden.
Winter is a good time to sort out pictures. I spent a rainy day browsing through last years photographs of Monet’s garden and came to the idea of making a Giverny Calendar out of my favorite shots.
Here is the result, a wall calendar to accompany every Monet fans and garden lovers all year round.
I hope you will like it. I did my best to choose for each month the corresponding flowers in bloom at this time of year, but of course this was not really possible for winter months.
The Giverny Calendar is for sale on line for 27.99 US dollars. You can see all the pictures by clicking on the months.
I would be glad to have your feedback, in order to improve next time.
Joyeux Noël! Merry Christmas!
The colors tend to disappear under the soft veil of the fog.
Mist likes to stick in the Seine valley, especially on chilly autumn and winter’s days. This magician creates strange effects, unreal silvery lights that linger over Claude Monet’s pond at Giverny.
The usually precise lines of the reflections on the surface become less defined.
Like a parenthesis of hapiness on a dull day, the pink nympheas prove that colors are not swollen by the grey shades as they are by the night, but only softened. A careful look reveals them. The surrounding greys make them even more vivid.
Two big wisterias top the bridge in Monet’s water garden at Giverny. One is a pale lavender, it blooms first for two weeks, generally at the beginning of May.
It is followed by the white wisteria. So if you come in May you are pretty sure to see the canopy flowering. But according to the year the blooming period varies. if the Winter was mild and Spring early, the lavender wisteria starts earlier, at the end of April. On the contrary a late Winter can delay it up to three weeks.
But anyway, there is always something spectacularly beautiful to admire in Monet’s garden, from April through October.
The fallen leaves of the three liquidambars look like stars picked on the surface of Monet’s pond at Giverny.
They twinkle against the dark blue reflection of the sky.
In 19th Century France it was a common pattern to paint murals of stars in the night on the ceilings of churches.
This is the Famous Japanese Bridge that Claude Monet painted so often.
It deserves lots of capitals because it has become the icon of the painter’s garden at Giverny.
In the bright sunshine its green turns almost blue, as can be observed on Monet’s paintings of this motive.
The picture was made in July when the wisteria tangled on the arbor flowers for a second time. This second blooming while the leaves are out is by far more discreet than the first one in May.