24 YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF ROMANIAN HERITAGE AND COMMUNITIES
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Epilogue.
Even if Tuesday and Wednesday were the days of travel for volunteers and the Pro Patrimonio team on both days we worked hard to clean the place and complete the main path. We relied exclusively on the help of older children from Mihăileni, whom we thank, once again, for an exemplary involvement.
The last touches of this year’s garden arrangement will be made during the week of the landscape and sound workshops, August 23 – 29, together with our 100% reliable team from Mihăileni: the children’s community.
We leave free the place for Concerts on Siret, a new project conceived and initiated by Pro Patrimonio.
We saved the last day of summer school for planting on the side of the house and cleaning the back bank.
Once they know us in the community, the children of Mihăileni cannot imagine not helping us. So we have been working with some of them today.
We ended the entire program with a surprising and comprehensive four-hour tour of Mihăileni with the local history teacher.
We are glad to have been able to leave behind a brighter face of the garden and a better context for future cultural events.
Sunday – day for rest
After a week full of adventures, almost daily rain, searching, hiking and hard work, we chose a Sunday with somewhat more relaxing activities.
In the morning we went to see the pulse of the Mihăileni market.
Until noon we gave free control over botanical print experiments personalising the site shirts with leaves and flowers.
In the afternoon we were welcomed for a special visit to the Miclescu Manor at Călinești where we were loaded with stories of the place and photos of the garden and the house.
We collected sights from our trips, vegetables from the greenhouses in Mihăileni and ended the day with an overnight visit to a village wedding.
Communitary Saturday – call to “clacă” (work gathering).
The yard was cleaned, decorated and prepared all morning to receive the visit of the Mihăileni villagers coming to attend the work gathering. Together with the village boy-helpers we “sprinkled” the planting beds with pine wood chips, put all the plant pots in place, edged the current “pool” and the future main walkway with Corten sheeting and prepared the botanical print workshop.
Around 25 children and a few adults joined the afternoon planting event. With many of the children we had the joy of seeing each other again after last year’s workshops. We were pleasantly surprised to see the children as enthusiastic and full of life as they were in 2020. The race of “who planted the most plants” was hard to contain. Good thing the team kept up with the kids’ fast pace. You could see the results of the two-hour teamwork in front of the house in ornamental plants and shrubs along the fence.
The reward for the labours of the land came in the form of pies, doughnuts and a musical recital by a nearby children’s group.
We squeezed the last of the children’s strength in a hammer concert to print their souvenir bags.
End of the day with a round of tag in the garden, watering plants and stories on the porch. That’s enough for today. We look forward to a Sunday of relaxation and artistic experimentation.
A day as intense as can be in Mihăileni!
We depend on mechanised machinery to make our garden work more efficient and to fit into a particularly tight timeframe. Yesterday’s storm blocked machine access to the garden in the morning and even by midday we were anxious whether the excavator tracks would be able to scrape through the muddy site.
Luck and the machine users’ goodwill were on our side and we managed to fill the drainage ditch today.
Along with this big bump, we prepared the ground for Saturday’s upcoming plantings and welcomed the new family of decorative and climbing plants as well as the bags of mulch to our yard.
The future gravel driveway has now become a geotextile “pool” and is temporarily set up as an amphitheatre space for the “clacă” concert.
The evening of this full day also sees the “christening” of the new drainage system with a heavy rain, in the spirit of what we are already used to these days.
Ground mounts decrease in some parts but increase in other areas of the garden.
Storm code, mud pools and geotextile paths through the house and garden.
This day was not without adventures for the Enescu House team either. The work was largely split between those levelling the kerbs of the new gravel driveway and starting to dig the soil for the future decorative areas in front of the house, and those working ‘in the trenches’ on the house drainage ditch.
Along with manual work with shovel, spade, sledgehammer and foil preparation the excavator completed and helped us for a good part of the tasks.
Unforeseen events are always present, but accompanied by good humour, good food from Siret and help from neighbours.
The landscaping site has started!
Even though the full team was to meet up only in the afternoon, the work started in earnest.
One of the major works planned for this week is the resurfacing of the main driveway. We want a generous gravelled area in front of the house to better showcase it and more appropriately host local educational and cultural events.
So we cleared the old stone kerb path and the landscape volunteers from Cluj laid out the new path.
Although we were to receive the mechanical help of the excavator only tomorrow, the local crew surprised us with time to spare for the work and we started digging for both the new driveway and the new drainage ditch for the house in first day. The site “got ennobled” along the way with mounds of dug dirt and deep mud left from the rain. The team hangs on tight!
The three volunteers arrive from Bucharest during the day so the next day we will be more prepared to fight for the new Enescu House garden.
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The diary documentation through texts and photos was done by Andreea Machidon, coordinator of the Heritage Education program for Pro Patrimonio Foundation.
Work team: Andreea Machidon, Mihai Puica, Diana Teodora Vacaru, Adina Ispas, Mihaela Lungu, Adina Rachita, Ana Maria Pravicencu, Ruben Mardaru şi Marcu (+2y).
Details about the School of Landscape, Art and Sound at the George Enescu House in Mihăileni
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“School of Landscape, Art and Sound” is a Pro Patrimonio Foundation cultural project, co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the way its results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grantee.
UiPath Foundation is a Pro patrimonio Foundation partner in the program “The Children’s Academy of Music and Education” which has been running from the beginning of 2020 at the George Enescu House in Mihăileni.
Project parteners: Botosaneanul, Radio România Muzical, Revista Zeppelin, National Geographic, AsoP, Filiala Teritoriala Vest, Societatea Internaţională George Enescu din Viena, Fundația Remember Enescu.