A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
The allure of a sunny Spring morning was just too great to resist today, so I ventured out- not too far from my computer and the looming deadline- to a "Secret Garden" path that runs just beneath the crest of the Janiculum hill under Piazza Garibaldi and the noon-time cannon. The path was made as an access point for service vehicles to enter the Botanical Gardens of La Sapienza University (see link in the natural cycle lesson below). It was perfect timing to view the early Spring greens and pinks at their best.
Liturgical: Saturday within the Octave of Easter “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”
Sanctoral: Pope Sixtus I, Rome +125. Led the Church during the reign of Emperor Hadrian.
Human: 46 BC – Julius Caesar won the battle of Tapsus in Tunisia against Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger).
1652 Cape Colony, the first European settlement in South Africa, established by Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck
1917 The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on the side of the Allies
1994 Plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations and sparking the Rwandan Genocide. Those responsible have never been identified.
2016- First baby born with DNA from 3 parents through mitochondrial transfer in Mexico
Natural: The Botanical Garden of La Sapienza University on the Janiculum Hill-- originally a part of the Horti Getae, which in ancient times contained the thermal baths of Septimius Severus. It has been a landscaped garden since the sixteenth century, renewed in the eighteenth century. Today I noticed, visible in the photo above, a few colorful bee boxes placed in the garden. Upon investigating, I learned that they are there as part of a program called the Regina Apiarum (Queen Beehive), an apiary repopulation project for the city of Rome, in collaboration with the Abbey of San Paolo fuori le Mura.
Quote: "Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment." -Ellis Peters
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