21 May 2006
Rome
I
spent most of last week tapping my barometer anxiously and scouring the sky
for rain clouds. Which never appeared. How quickly we pass from despair over
constant rain to despair over no rain at all.
So great was my angst, that yesterday morning at 7.30am I was already in the car... me, on a Saturday, knowing full well that there was no way I could stay up there overnight; that I would have a certain number of hours of daylight in which to do something to save my gasping plants, after which I would have to squeeze my weary bones into the car and do the two-hour bolt back to Rome. Only visions of total plant-devastation could have prompted me.
C tells me (often) that I'm ridiculous. Why don't I just leave her alone in the city if she has some unmissable appointment down here (and let's face it, even meeting her friends in the centro storico to stand about gossiping for a couple of hours is more unmissible than being hauled up to the infinitely dull country), and go up to Umbria in relaxed mode?
But I find the idea of leaving a 16-year-old alone in the Big City – L is out of town – just as disturbing as that of leaving all my plants to die of thirst. So, out the door at 7. Short sharp shots of coffee. A quick whizz around a building site near Cetona where, at some point in the near future, I'll be planting the garden I've designed. And then home to work.
After my watering system experiences, my advice to anyone who needs more than a couple of dribbly pipes is... pay an expert to do it. As it is, I have lowered my expectations and settled, for the moment, for a grateful-for-small-mercies kind of system. I worked from 11am until 10pm. I cobbled together something that will at least keep some of my plants alive. Enough of them, that is, to avoid too much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Patches of my freshly-weeded lawns (growing beautifully thank you) will thrive. Many of my Felicia roses will continue to spread their heart-stopping scent around the front door. And, I reckon, between the dew that still falls at night up there at 500m and the general dampness that the watered patches create, even the plants that don't thrive shouldn't actually die, yet. And by the time that they are on their last legs, it'll be summer and I'll be up there much more regularly.
Oh no, what am I saying? I promised myself faithfully that by this summer, I would no longer have to punctuate my day with moving sprinklers about. Nor would I adopt my habitual evening pose, a hose in one hand and beer bottle in the other, staring, rapt, out across the surrounding fields. So many promises, so many of them broken...
As I cobbled away up there yesterday, I was making promises to myself, and laying wise plans at a furious rate. How does one – and by one I really do mean 'one', ie me – manage to keep up a garden and expand it and perfect it when one is only on the premises for an average of a day a week (over summer, that average should improve)? As I yanked weeds from my rose-and-herb patch outside the kitchen, I made a wise resolution: don't plant anything new until you feel you've got existing things under control. But to get the little that I have back under control would take me weeks! Must I leave the rest of the garden jungly until then? And why oh why , then, do I have 25 roses ordered from Barni (www.rosebarni.it) arriving at the front gate at the end of this week, ready to be planted next Saturday in a brand new bit of garden? And how will I live with the swaying weed fronds that are engulfing the path down from the car park to the front door? And that bank of rubbly-looking stones as you exit from the front door: can I live through a whole summer coming face to face with that each time I walk outside? (Come to think of it, I may have to because the dozens of Cistus laurifolius seeds that I have sown in trays on my Rome balcony are showing no signs of germinating, and that is what I was intending to cover the rubble with.) And the area that will one day be concealed by the rose hedge up the top? I can't possibly leave that in the patchy, rocky, weed-choked state that it's in now... I mean, that's the first thing you see as you drive down to us; we can't have an entrance that looks like that!
So, fine resolutions all out the window. And once again, I'm forced to cope with the dilemmas thrown up by conflicting interests and demands.
How does one reconcile an adolescent daughter for whom the country is a living grave, and a country house that you not only love but need – and want – to spend infinite amounts of time in and on? How does one reconcile the passionate need for a beautiful country garden with living and earning in the city, but not earning enough to be able to employ a gardener... whom, in any case, I'd never let loose by himself without me there to supervise for fear that he took one look at my wilderness and decided he'd "fix it up properly" for me his own way rather than the way I want?
One other resolution that I made, and that I may even keep, is to be not particularly ambitious, and very, very philosophical about my garden, at least for the next two years, until C is at university and I am gravitating more and more towards my country existence. Only then will I really start worrying about those out-of-the-way bits of garden that have been put on hold. And only then will I expect any real order.