23 November 2005
Rome
It's cold. It's so cold. It's a front, they say, sweeping in from the Balkans. The whole eastern side of Italy is under snow. It may, they say, snow in Rome tonight. Snow? In Rome? In November? Ridiculous. Anyway, it never snows is Rome when they say it's going to.
It does in CdP. Indeed, it has. Just a light dusting so far but there's lots forecast for tomorrow. My poor, poor plants.
Last weekend I allowed myself to get caught up in a complex project inside. This was partly because it was so finger-chillingly cold outside. After one day of trembling up behind the caravan amongst my Teucrium fruticans and Hydrangea quercifolia, I thought I'd forestall painfully cracked skin on my fingers and move inside, with a bit of central heating to keep me company. It was done with some regret. Saturday and Sunday were, despite the chill, so beautifully blue it made you gasp. Every tree on the hills miles away stood out clearly. The sudden cold had turned the leaves almost Scottish in their colouring.
I didn't do all the weeding that I had hoped to get done up there. Months of neglect meant that the bank to the west and the stretch to the north of the caravan were a weedy jumble, with the occasional planted plant poking through. For winter mulching around there, I resort to the most time- and labour-saving ploy possible: I clear, then I let the trees above drop their leaves on top of my plants, covering and coddling them through the winter, keeping the frost off and the moisture in. Well, that's the idea. In my more negative moments I worry that maybe freshly fallen leaves are not the ideal mulch for my tender plants.
Whizzing about on Google doesn't decide it for me one way or the other. I know for a fact that Americans are being urged, vigorously, to compost their leaves, mulch with their leaves, shred their leaves with lawnmowers and leave them to feed their lawns – but mostly by local administrations which (1) don't want their rubbish collectors to have to deal with industrial quantities of bagged leaves left out on the curb and (2) want to cut the air pollution levels which are one unpleasant corollary of glorious autumn colours – which turn to brown and end up on the bonfire. The days when autumn was defined by that rich smell of burning leaves, a haze of smoke moving through the ever-barer branches, are now over... rightly, of course, because it was a silly waste of vital resources, but sadly all the same.
I am slightly wiser for my research: I now know that maple leaves break down faster than oak leaves; that the former are nitrogen-rich while the latter have, initially, a high acid content. No one tells me, however, whether a thick coating of freshly-fallen elm leaves, for example, does good or harm, or indeed does anything much at all.
This may be because any search involving the word 'elm' generally brings up countless sites about Dutch Elm Disease and other nasties, but not much about possible positive aspect of that plant... which gardeners in large swathes of Europe simply don't have to bother about any more, for better and for worse. What I have deduced from everything I've read is that it would be better if (whatever leaves I happen to have) I raked them up, piled them up, then ran the lawnmower through them before redistributing them where I need them: that way, shredded neatly, they break down faster and, in the mean time, don't fly away with every gust of wind and/or form a thick soggy mat which makes your garden look nasty and may asphyxiate your plants. But all that raking and shredding, in my book, would do away with the wonderful effort-free-ness of letting sleeping leaves lie. It kind of defeats the purpose, if your purpose – as mine is – is to make life as simple for yourself as possible.
What I haven't been able to work out from my research is whether, as they break down, my leaves are gobbling up so much oxygen that what's beneath is gasping for air. For an answer to that, I'll just have to have faith in the thick jungle of ground-cover evidence that emerges unscathed each spring from the leaf blanket on the little slope in front of the caravan: Vinca major in exuberant masses; various honeysuckles snaking through it; Hypericum calycinum, struggling somewhat, I admit, but mostly because of the periwinkle, not the leaves. It does seem to work.
By which I mean it would work, would have worked, had this front not come galloping out of the Balkans. Because what I fear is happening now is that my freshly-weeded beds have hardly a fallen leaf on them to protect my poor, bare plants from the snow that will now fall. Had I had my wits about me, had I expected snow, I would have taken some of last year's left-over leaves and spread them about pre-emptively. I did this, by sheer coincidence, over the Kiftsgate roses I planted in a desperate bid to conceal the ugly tin lean-to roof on the chicken house: in this case, it was because I felt so sorry for the things after I finally removed the Morning Glories that had been strangling them throughout the autumn (how difficult it is to uproot Ipomea – the flowers continue to be so beautiful long after the plant looks straggly and brown; but with other colour in the garden fading, uprooting the things is a wrench). When I allowed the roses to break free, their leaves looked sad and yellow. By the following morning, however, they looked positively glowing and healthy. How generous plants can be, springing back to life so soon when they should really go into a deep sulk in protest at the way we neglect them. To reward them for their lack of grudge-bearing, I buried them deep in lush leaf mould. They, at least, should be happy.
Not so, however, my roses and aromatics outside the kitchen (though the strawberry plants that L strimmed so enthusiastically seem, miraculously, to be gushing back to life). And not my teucriums and hydrangeas either. The poor things have had nothing but maltreatment , from me and the elements, ever since they were planted: the worst, iciest winter in living memory last year; a very faulty watering system that left them parched through much of the summer; competition from weeds of massive proportions. Again, they are another example of plants' immense generosity. I'm just wondering how far I can push it. And what I'll find when I crawl back up there penitently next weekend. And whether, given my garden-guilt, my wildly over-ambitious carpentery project indoors will ever get finished.