Dearest garden-lovers!
An update on my Italian garden: I still have not heard from the family of my friend who gave me guardianship of it (he passed away some months ago), but am working away as if there should be a long-term relationship with this piece of land near my medieval quarter home...
My work approach, which is yielding impressive results, is very much to use what I have and what is around me, rather than going to effortful lengths to force things which might not like to live here, to fit into the biodiversity.
Above, in these first snaps, this includes using stumps of vegetables that might usually be composted. My friends who I stayed with in north Italy, during a recent visit, were going to throw these radicchio stubs into the municipal composting system, but I asked to take them home to Guardia Sanframondi! They came by train in a plastic bag, and have re-taken very well in a pot of water: this is 6 days' growth, and there are some small roots already developing. This makes me really happy: it is a much more solid way of beginning a plant, rather than putting a seed into the ground!
Whilst I was away, my nasturzio had excelled itself: here you get a glimpse of its drama, cascading out of the bed and into our wee cobbled street.
It is such a joy to have these flowers so divinely blooming: they make me feel at home, as they grow prolifically where I come from too (a Scottish west coast island). Here, I've never seen them flourish so well, and think it is to do with them having overwintered. Usually they're sciolto by the cold weather, but it was so mild that they kept growing right through from last autumn (!) Here you can see them creeping along to the bench... Yesterday I came up from the gardens below, to find two young women doing a wee photoshoot in front of them - it was really sweet to see!
Another small but profoundly fulfilling aspect of my gardening this week, is my finally having cleared at least the top sets of steps in Sergio's garden. They were pretty laden with all kinds of happy greens deeply rooted in the wide cracks between the marble steps, but I pulled them all out as best as I could - and it makes a big difference as one enters the garden - to be able to actually walk down the steps freely. I also uncovered the cappero plant which is in a rather inconvenient place BUT I would hate to not try and let it grow there: I had wonderful success making my first capers (and caperberries) sotto lacrime last year, and cannot wait to make more! Our street is quite well known for MASSIVE caper cascades, and this one will have to be limited in how big it can be, but at least it can flow a couple of long branches down one side of the steps.
As chaotic and patchy as this wee corner of the garden, on the first tier, is nevertheless it is so beautifully coming together, that it makes me smile and sing when I visit the space. It was literally rubble and a couple of stressed trees, but with my selective moving of 'weeds' (i.e. useful plants!) up and onto beds to create massive layers of mulch... eventually soil is developing: beautifully rich dark soil all ready to support whatever might choose to grow up.
The rosemary tree that you see the trunk of in the top-right of the above photo, despite having been neglected and maltreated over the years, has now settled into its quirky curved new resting place - and is thriving with tons of new growth sprouting up. It rests into a bed of purple and white irises. So gorgeous when they are all in bloom together. I am glad to see seed pods on the irises just now, too. Below all that, in the centre of the above photo, is the bietole or wild chard/ giant spinach: like many of the plants this month, it is heading towards flower - sending up a big tower of handsome stalk and wonderfully-scented flowers. Alongside the orange and lemon flowers, they contribute to such a beautiful atmosphere. The next-door's garden can emit some very strong chemical smells which they use to try and disguise their cat-effluent stink: so breathing in big wafts of natural perfume is a blessing indeed!
Finally, the asparagus again! I harvested such a great big clump of this, in two visits on the same day - I spent around two hours, cutting my way through brambles and less-thorny undergrowth, followed by two of my cats mew-mewing all the way - and got more asparagus than I ever got in one day! I say this every time, and this is probably because I've been guardianing the plants, helping them grow better. PLUS the blessed brambles have for the greater part closed off the bottom of the wild part of the gardens, so you need to climb down into it from Sergio's or another garden - and only I am doing that, lately. This means that I get all the harvest, where in other years it was often ravaged by the time I climbed down.
I'm so glad of this abundance to bolster my diet, and I feel so good for having eaten at least 4 big meals this week with fresh asparagus: especially the simple spaghetti recipè that my friends in the local general store shared with me enthusiastically. Just onions fried in oil, then adding the asparagi, then the al dente spaghetti stirred in for a minute - and topped off with gran padano gratudiato (grated Gran Padano, a hard cheese). It really was gloriously tasty.
This is an example of the size of the asparagus! Because the undergrowth has grown up this year, the asparagi need to grow taller to get to the light - and the thicker shade further into the season makes them more delicate - i.e. less woody - and so more comestible for humans! You might notice in the bunch too, I found two big cultivated (or americani as it is called here) asparagus spears. I have left them to last, as they don't tempt me in the same way as the wild asparagus does, hehe! We saw a lot of cultivated asparagus in the north of Italy - BIG thick stems, some blanched, some less so - so different to our wee humble things - but the taste of the feral plant is so much more dense and beautiful, as most things that are closer to their wild state are!
Oh, and I didn't take any photos, as I've been eating them as I find them, but the wild strawberry plants this year, descendents of the ones I brought down from the woods above Guardia, at least 13 years ago (when I first came here with Sergio), are now putting out berries at least twice as big as they ever did before. I have never seen such big wild strawberries/ fragole del bosco and I wonder how big they will continue to grow...
