Infiorate, Part I

Infiorata, Part I
OMG! June is here! It’s already the 5th and I’m soooo far behind in blips. We’ve been busy, busy, busy. There is almost too much blip material to choose from! When I made our plans to be in Spello, I had no idea how perfectly I did so. We were smack dab in the middle of Spello’s biggest event of the year. The annual “Infiorate” takes place on the Feast of Corpus Cristi, which this year is June 2. The ENTIRE TOWN participates, I mean EVERYONE…toddlers, kids, grandparents, teens, the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker. “Infiorate” means ‘adorned with flowers’ and almost a thousand Spellani work incessantly through the night to florally adorn their town, creating carpets and pictures made of flowers along the narrow streets and wide piazzas. Preparations actually begin months before to collect and dry the plants. Fresh flowers and herbs are also used, collected days before and even the morning of the Infiorata. Wild flowers, herbs, leaves and bark are collected from the surrounding fields and forests, but store-bought flowers are also used. To get the brilliant, pure color in the floral carpets the plants are ‘processed’. “Purple petals’ are separated from ‘yellow stamens” and ‘green stems’. Brown Bark is chipped. Green fennel is chopped. The color palatte of plant materials are sorted into boxes labeled with the color/plant, ‘purple/wisteria’. Theses boxes of ‘color’ are stacked in and around the floral picture ‘templates’. The templates ranged from rolls of white paper adhered to the cobblestones to chalk drawings on stone to iron ‘stencil’ forms. Starting from late morning until about midnight, we strolled through town every few hours to watch the progress: from setting up the canopies over each work area, to drawing the templates, processing the plants, and then finally starting to ‘color in’ the images. As the day progressed, the excitement grew. The images were taking form and the infiorati working on them were in party mode. The crowd grew…there was music, food, vendors. Stores, restaurants, and even our neighborhood bakery were open until midnight. As the infiorati worked feverishly, the town supported them with lots of delicious food, lots of COFFEE, and lots of “Bravo! and Complimenti!” The featured and extras are just a few of the hundreds of photos I took throughout the day. One could not help but get caught up in the excitement and anticipation!