An unexpected delight on our recent visit to the Abruzzo National Park was that our stay coincided with a religious festival in Pescasseroli where the villagers stay up all night to decorate the pavements with patterns created from flower petals and dyed sawdust. I suspect that in the past this was done entirely with flowers – many gathered from the wild – but the sawdust is a more environmentally (if lurid) alternative. The ‘carpets’ run the length of the main street in the old part of town and also lead between the two churches where masses are held for the festival.
The other streets are decorated with boughs of May Blossom and a little square had been turned into a mossy grotto with an altar at its centre.
I loved the tree on its bed of sand with its bark trunk growing out of lawn mowings its flower petal frame and its carefully constructed flowers and leaves.
By the following evening – once the festival was over – it all started to get pretty ragged rounds the edges and all that had been so carefully created was swept away – literally.
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