| CdP | |||||
February. How did that happen? What a terrible winter this has been. The bleakest, greyest, blowiest, dampest. Outside the kitchen window the olive tree is rocking frantically. It seems to have been doing that non-stop for weeks. We really couldn’t have picked a worse winter to move to the country. Mind you, friends in Rome are at their wits’ end too. And if I were forced to choose between country slush and city slush, I’d take the former any time. At least it’s clean. I was in Rome, briefly, yesterday morning after dropping L off at Ciampino airport, on his way to Berlin for the film festival. Am I losing it completely? Or am I getting the world properly into perspective? How… how can people live in a place which they themselves have filled with so much litter and ugliness? I guess it’s best that they all stay right where they are, concentrating their filth in one spot and not bringing it to my little corner. But much as I love Rome, that does get me down. Over Guidonia, where I went after, I shall draw a velo pietoso, as we say: show some pity by drawing a veil over it. The garden that I was working on down there with PC before Christmas didn’t get washed away in the deluges they have had, though the area beneath the umbrella pines on the via Tiburtina side of the house where grass should have been sown is a muddy quagmire: there hasn’t been a moment since November when it has been dry enough to go to work there. And the owners (or the garden contractor, a gruffly friendly man with, I suspect, a plant-supplier relation who specialises in flimsy annuals) had ‘brightened up’ what should have been a long and elegant cushion of balls of buxus with some very undignified pansies. But all in all the place looked all right. Though how on earth they’re going to tempt wedding and confirmation parties down there to use the facilities when (1) Guidonia has been so much in the news lately for a particularly vicious rape… and the dreadful social conditions which made this incident a nastiness waiting to happen and (2) no one has any money any more for lavish gatherings, I really don’t know. Taking PC’s advice and planting a tall ilex hedge to hide the huge, and hugely ugly, concrete barn not far from the house might have helped to make the whole thing more appetising, but they seem to have decided against that. Hey ho. Tomorrow, on the other hand, I’m off to the Maremma, in Tuscany, to stand in a different muddy patch and decide where to put the pool in a garden I’m doing there. I think this project should be swift and hopefully painless. The owner – a friend of friends – is decisive and fast-acting and wants to get the whole thing – house and garden – ready for next summer. But why oh why are all my projects quite so far away at the moment? All my projects… what am I talking about? With the global financial system collapsing about our ears, gardens really aren't the first thing that your average punter is thinking of spending his or her money on right now. And the fact that most people despair of ever seeing a day pleasant enough to venture outside again doesn’t help the orders flood in. But a feeling of poverty, and uncertainty over how long this downturn is going to last, don’t help. Maybe I should swing round to the other side of the village where I see building work is going on apace on the house of Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy, and leave my card in the letter box. I shouldn’t imagine he’s struggling to pay the bills. L says I’m ludicrously un-pushy and will never get anywhere if I don’t learn to sell myself better. And he’s right. In the moments when I have any desire to go outside – or when it’s not so muddy that digging is impossible – I am working on L’s Herb Garden. This is a bit like C’s Bathroom, in that one person’s name gets attached to it in popular family lore, even if that person has little or nothing to do with the creation/use of the thing in question. L has been demanding a space for herbs for ages. And ages ago, I graciously conceded one to him – perfectly located, just outside the kitchen door, turn right, down the four steps, there it is, in a spot which gets sun from dawn to about 4pm, even in the depths of winter; currently it’s grassed over, but it’s a silly place for grass – a pain to get the mower down to. While he hasn’t been making his herb garden, of course, I have been planting herbs all over. But many of them are in places where even I admit it’s a bit of a pain to get to in adverse weather conditions and/or late at night. But the chances of L ever making his herb garden are slim. This, I should say in his defence, is mostly because he’s working so very hard. But I also detect an element of pre-emptive throwing in the towel in terror at my possible disapproval. Am I so fear-inducing? Am I so very judgemental? On one of those rare blue mornings we’ve had this winter, I got as far as extending (not very well… I ran out of the appropriate kind of sand) the patio bricks to eliminate a rather silly little square of lawn. And the short slope (also previously un-mowable grass) down to the putative herb garden has now become a strawberry patch. And half of the grass has been pulled up in the triangular area where the herbs will go (in terracotta pots of various shapes and sizes, set in gravel). And then the sun disappeared. So now, to stop the topsoil disappearing down the slope, what we have is a not-so-pretty bright blue tarp with some upturned pots on it. And a long list of the herb seeds that L would like to order. Basta. In the mean time, my efforts at being oh-so-organised with my seed planting were blown away, quite literally, last night. When I opened the shutters this morning I saw that my tiny plastic greenhouse, so well anchored (I thought) into the ground at the southern end of the house was lying upturned down on the second terrace. I managed to rescue some cabbage seedlings. And a couple of poor skinny leek-lets. There’s much to be said for sticking with the makeshift shelf I’ve set up beneath the south-facing window in C's bedroom. The great outdoors is fraught with danger. | |||||