Midsummer's day 2010
Weeks ago I heard a long-range forecast. It said that May and June would be very very iffy because some weather pattern – I can’t remember the name – which usually makes Eastern Europe miserable at this time has shifted rather this year, and is hanging over southern Europe. July and August, however, should be lovely.
Or maybe they were just saying that to stop us spiralling into depression.
I should say that the lovely days we’ve had over the past few weeks have indeed been wonderful. The thermometre has been showing anything up to 32 degrees but the feeling in the air has been 27. And everything is so green. Green/waterlogged today (it has been raining for much of the past 48 hours; it snowed near Bergamo yesterday!) but lush and gorgeous when the sun shines. Of course, the occasional drop of rain is most welcome at this time of year, to stop the lawn looking like burnt-out savannah. But this is too much. Far too much.
It was a huge pleasure, for example, planning, ordering, planting and sitting back to admire the tiny garden I did with Peter in Spello: all in the space of about three months. Why can’t gardens be like that more often? In the Maremma, on the other hand, the owner seems to have lost interest. Or maybe the work on the house cost him more than he thought. For whatever reason, he seems to be skirting round me, and giving me a very wide berth. I don’t know what will come of that.
And in the mean time, to pay the bills, I’m writing writing writing. About Venice for simonseeks.com; about Tuscan food for Aurora’s recipe book which she has sold to Rizzoli US who have gone remarkably quiet as, I suspect, they secretly completely rewrite the whole book to make it more ‘American’… rather purpose-defeating really, given that its main selling point was that it was meant to be wonderfully Tuscan.
Then there was the Rome Shortlist for Time Out and more Venice articles for Departures and… the list goes on, and nowhere do gardens feature (with one exception).
Then there was the terrible frustration of non-growing vegetables: seeds which never became seedlings, seedlings which were hopelessly squashed in March when we went to Sri Lanka (Geoffrey Bawa's garden at Lunuganga is pictured, left) and 50cm of snow fell here just when no one was expecting it.
I moan because it’s grey today. In fact, in the interest honesty, I have to admit that all this damp has given us more artichokes than we know what to do with; broad beans (planted post-Sri Lanka to make up for the squashed ones… so why do I usually bother tending them so lovingly all through the winter?) which are so laden – even at this unfeasibly late point in the year – that they’re all collapsing on me; strawberries galore; courgette plants which promise to inundate us with produce (unlike last year’s pathetic dry-mold-covered specimens). So if the tomatoes are skulking and sulking, and the beans are surviving only thanks to a fight to the death between me and armies of microscopic slugs like I’ve never seen before, then I guess it’s not the end of the world.
I can also rejoice about my black hollyhocks. I have to say, I had little real belief in Eve’s ability to collect the right seeds from the garden that was Ro’s in front of their Sussex cottage. But she got it right (oh ye of little faith) and now they’re blooming – slightly less dark and more purple than I remember, but glorious anyway, especially mixed in with the Rosa chinensis mutabilis and artichoke plants in my one properly new garden bed: the triangle between the drive and last summer’s efforts at making a lawn, below the orchard level. That, at least, is giving me immense satisfaction.
In all that time, the one thing I did begin writing, on March 5, then gave up when I realised I could say no more, was this, for Elspeth:
I have been so bad at keeping up my website, mostly because nothing seems to upload any more and files I tried to post even last December failed to leave the safety of my computer. Now I’m writing this, determined in some way or another to make it appear. If you have something you’re committed to, you have to carry it through.
This is for Elspeth. She launched a new blog on March 3 (www.gardeningagainsttheodds.com). Posted on her old blog on March 7 (http://elspeththompson.wordpress.com). And died on March 25.
On February 24, we had discussed an Italian visit:
Good time to think about making future plans to come to Italy, as you say - I was only thinking the other day how long it seems now since our last trip and how nice it would be, as you say, to catch up properly over a good few days. As we have already taken M out of school for a week for this trip, and Frank's dad is coming here for easter, we would either be talking about end of easter hols (mid April) or most likely a summer jaunt - end July or August. If we got a date settled I could get the flights sorted in advance thus a) saving money and more importantly b) ensuring it happens. Might be just myself and Mary if F cannot juggle time off, but I am sure he would love to come too. Can't wait to see your place in the country.
And we exchanged holiday news:
Oh, enjoy Sri Lanka. Strangely, I was just talking to my dad, who is staying at moment, about possibility of travelling there with him next winter, as he was stationed there on national service and has always wanted to return - ma was never interested. It sounds amazing. We are just back from Tobago which was heaven - came back on Sat to glorious sunshine so began to think we had avoided the endless snow, rain and drizzle and MUD, but it began all over again on Sunday.... Oh well.
And of course, as always, she enquired after C. Everyone I met while I was at Cambridge is fascinated by the idea of one of us now has an offspring reliving our varsity adventures:
How is Clara enjoying Cambridge?
much love, as ever,
x Elspeth
Elspeth took her own life, which is the hardest way to lose a friend. If someone is hit by a bus, or cut down by disease, it is devastating but has its own, tragic, logic. If someone commits suicide – someone, that is, who is a sane, warm, grounded person with every reason to love the life they live – that leaves you thinking that a phone call just at the minute of ultimate folly, an email pinging to distract her attention, a bird flying into a window or a banging shutter might have been the random event that pulled them back. Instead there’s a void with no logic at all. Just a devastating emptiness. I have cried on and off all day.
Elspeth was a distant acquaintance at Cambridge, one of those elegant in-demand women who for me came under the heading “willowy”. I’ve always aspired to “willowy” but I know I’ll never get there.
We became fast friends when she accompanied her then-partner to Rome, to study at the British School at Rome. During the break-up of that relationship, she holed up in our flat in Garbatella and subsequently wrote lovely, poignant things about it her book Urban Gardener. It was spring, and the jasmine and bouganvillea were coming out. I like to think that the balcony she wrote about in the Sunday Telegraph in April 2007 was ours:
Opium poppies, on a sunny spring day, can split their glaucous green buds to shake out the finest tissue-paper frills, and I’ve never forgotten the thrill of seeing a hibiscus flower unfurl one early morning on a balcony in Rome.