Please, I'm Trying to Learn Here

You know if I love noontime lectures, and I do, I'm bound to love noontime lectures where lunch is served even better. It was Maymont presenting this irresistible combination today and the topic du jour was Italian Renaissance Gardens. Art, history, food: score!

The event was held in the Garden House but walking through the grounds to get there on an overcast fall day was a treat in and of itself. There were groups of schoolchildren having lunch on blankets and chattering as happily as if it were a sunny warm day.

The landscape under the cloudy sky was monochromatic and certainly barer than my last warm-weather visit, but still a lovely sight to behold. I know two couples who had their first dates at Maymont and I'll bet that there are plenty of others who chose it for its bucolic (dare I say wooing?) charm.

The lunches came from A Sharper Palate and each was labeled with a picture of an animal: chicken, pig, turkey or "Med" for Mediterranean salad. A stranger recommended the smoked chicken salad and for dessert, I deliberated, but settled on the chocolate raspberry cake.

My smoked chicken salad sandwich had more heat than any chicken salad I'd ever had, making for an unexpectedly delicious surprise. The only downside was that it came with potato salad and I would have preferred fresh fruit.

It worked out well, though, because one of my tablemates (an architecture professor) had gotten fruit and offered to trade with me. He justified it by saying, "I had fruit for breakfast." (I don't care what your justification is, just take this potato salad off my hands. I mean, thanks.)

The lecture focused mainly on two Italian villas and their gardens. I love the notion of villas; what stressed city-dweller doesn't want a nearby house in the country in which you can cultivate your soul and have philosophical discussions outdoors?

Dr. Reuben Rainey had chosen his two favorite villas, Villa Medici Fiesole and Villa Lante, both with crisply defined outdoor rooms; the ceiling of these rooms was either the sky or a canopy of trees. I'd get philosophical too with the kind of views these places had.

Water features were popular and the Villa Lante had many "water jokes" where a spray would come out as you walked the path between buildings or up from benches as you sat. A sense of humor would have been required in the Renaissance, I think.

My favorite water feature by far was the enormous stone buffet table with the wine cooler carved out of the center to hold chilling water. But of course those Renaissance types knew how to drink well.

And, to my taste, plant well. Flowers were chosen in these gardens for scent more than anything else, which is exactly how I decide which flowers I prefer. If I can't smell it, all the beauty in the world is lost on me.

Chilled wine, garden rooms, fragrant flowers...if it weren't for villas being outside city limits I could almost have been, like, fer sure, a gnarly villa girl.

Like totally.