Dearest Gardening Friends,
Here we go, action shot!, coming out of my cantina and wandering along the Via Dietro Gli Orti, in Guardia Sanframondi, Italy... The cats usually come with me.
Right at the door I have these huge blooms flowering, which a friend gifted me years ago. This year they're particularly large and dramatic, making a lovely welcome to visitors at the door.
And a big pot of bean sprouts, which I forgot I'd plants: must get them in deeper soil asap!
I eat the leaves and flowers of nasturtiums in salads - especially love the warm potato salad with flowers stirred in when the tatties are still hot - and I look forward to harvesting lots of green seeds for a condiment similar to capers, and then the dried seeds for guerilla planting! There are a few that have self-seeded in wild parts of the garden, which makes me happy!
The nasturtiums also have been exceptional this year: I have just 3 plants, but each of them grew to epic proportions, and spilled out of the raised bed in front of the Arthouse, into the Via. This is them rather subdued, after a couple of months of flowering! Their perfume is quite strong, when they are prolific like this.
In amongst this bed of mostly-nasturtiums, is a sage plant, a peach, and a pomegranate - all vying for space. I'll see what succeeds.
Along the Via, there's a glorious passionflower, which I've guided up the walls of an abandoned garden, then up a lamp post: their smell is exquisite. They are quite invasive in the gardens, to using them to line the streets is a good compromise. I couldn't believe it the first time I ever saw a passionflower - they are just soooo otherworldly!
The other side of that lamp post is the albicocca apricot: a tree that grows prolifically into the Via each year, and we have to pin it back with a big piece of wood! The strong cold which endured longer than usual, coupled with a lot of rain - much more than usual - has made many soft fruits sort of conk out before fruiting, this season. Others are flourishing, but this apricot has just a few fruit on it - usually it is laden.Looking forward to scrumping for what I can, when they ripen, as their owners do not often visit.
Next to and intertwined in the albicocca is this gorgeous melograno pomegranate, which I get really inspired by in my paintings... The stage of their buds opening and the big silky flower expanding - it is so heavenly, and speaks so clearly to the divine feminine... Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Next to the melograno is this big, native grape vine. It is communally pruned each year, by whomever happens to be passing with a pair of forbice secateurs. This year it has a really nice-looking series of grapole bunches forming.
Other young fruits, as we reach the edge of Sergio's garden: orange and manderine orange.
I really love the forms of small fruits forming, and love the idea of massive paintings in oil, of them scaled up....
This is a pot outside Sergio's garden, which I planted up. I care for a lot of the plants in the street, too, not just in his garden and in front of my house. It's such a beautiful wee street, and it makes all the difference to have a few pots in constant bloom. Above is a smaller than usual version of a gorgeous poppy that was cultivated in Edinburgh, Scotland, by one of my elderly art students - he gifted me the seeds about 20 yrs ago, and I've grown them in Scotland an in Italy, very successfully, saving the seeds each time.
Sergio's gate: I put this freshly-sloughed snakeskin that I found, around the ironwork, as a totem to protect the garden.
These days have been bright and scorchio in the morning, then heavy and stormy in the afternoons, for the past few weeks.
The bougainvillea is coming back to it's superior form, after I excessively pruned it, because it was growing inside Sergio's house! I still have to pull away some dried branches from above it. So glad it is flowering profusely again.
Inside Sergio's rambling giardino, there is a lot going to seed, after the spring flowering. The marigolds are giving the last of their flowers - as seeds dry in multitudes, and new wee shoots are already coming up.
They are some of my favourite seeds to collect, because they dry so well on the plant, and are such interesting forms. This is the biggest plant (above) that is ending its cycle, in his garden.
So many flowers on the olive trees, after we excessively pruned them in the spring. Phew! They really needed an epic pruning, but it is always a bit of a gamble, about whether a plant will flourish again quickly.
A couple of examples of the extreme undergrowth that pops up everywhere, if I don't do a lot of mulching and pulling-up of plants! Above is parietaria a wall plant which is of the most prolific growing that I ever knew, and below is bindweed and I think Old Man's Beard or similar, which are along with brambles trying to smother a less sturdy olive...
Near the less-sturdy olive is this great soil, where soft green plants have been proliferating, and I've pulled a few out and mulched the corners and edges. Next to one mulched corner I put a wee twig of a rose cutting in - and it is growing up nicely: this will make a wonderful cascading rose plant, in the future. There are many very beautiful roses in Guardia S., which I regularly take cuttings from and replant.
Below is the quasi ubiquitous chayote or patate invernale ('winter potato): it grows sooo well here, as I have shared before, and this year I had a ton of seed-chayote to lob in to multiple corners and edges: this is how one of them is enthusiastically taking up room over some thick mulch, under a fig tree.
And the figs: they are less than usual, but growing very nicely.
Above are some lovely radicchio which is grown from a stump, after we ate radicchio and pasta at Maria's relatives house up near Venice - and I told them not to throw the stumps out: there are two which took really well.
And this is where I stepped on the strawberries! There were so many that I literally took one step and squished 5 of them. I ate and ate, and couldn't eat any more, either way: these are fragole del bosco or wild strawberries, which I have NEVER seen this thriving! I have never in my life had that many wild strawberries from a small patch of plants! They are growing bigger and bigger each year too, as they become less wild and more comfortable and fat, living in Sergio's garden!
MMMm: the asparagus is really vibrant and generous this year, too - I have been cropping it from the wild below the garden, and also supporting a few plants which have sneaked up into the cultivated parts: they are giving bigger and bigger spears, too.
Such a blessing.
The sage plant is so happy here: this was one of those tiny wee potted seedlings from the market, which don't always succeed, but this one is fabulous. Sage seems a tad sensitive to the extremes of temperature that we have here, and it often molds and dies back. I'm hoping this has the right micro-climate to stay well.
The marjoram is right next to it, a similar wee pot buy; it is currently flowering fabulously, and I will go and harvest it very soon: maggiorana is one of my favourite aromatic herbs for cooking with. Such a beautiful plant, also.
Oooh, and the carciofi artichokes are doing so well; they suddenly shot up much taller and put out their flower buds. They are so majestic.
The cachi persimmons are forming nicely: these were one of Sergio's favourite fruits, though I never liked them much... I am going to persevere and try to enjoy them more, in his memory.
The canopy of the gelsi mulberry is really lovely now, after all the pruning it got.
And the fruits are just ripening - though they are quite watery and much fewer than usual: usually they are crazy abundant.
My proudest success: the tamarillo or tree tomato - albero di pomodoro - grown from seed from a local fruit a few years back, and now making her first fruits!!
It is a crying out for joy moment, seeing these beautiful shiny young tamarillos taking form!
I've been relaxing in the lovely evenings, up on Sergio's balcony, with Vittorio, having an aperitivo... The mosquitoes are not out yet, so it is perfect for sitting and enjoying the garden from above - and the panorama, as the sun sets...
Oh, and a final note - from way down in the wild part of the garden, between the asparagi, I found a Clathrus Ruber! This is the second time in the 13 + years I've been here, that I've found one down there, but they are fairly rare. Quite a spectacle, and I thought that some #fungilovers might enjoy it.
