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ROME
16 March 2008 |
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I love the yellow that means spring. On that cold damp north bank
outside the back door, the few daffodil bulbs that I planted a
couple of years ago have exploded into a waving mass of pale yellow
loveliness. (As has our flat in Rome where a great armful of them
has been distributed round the place in vases.)
And round the corner behind the chicken
house, the forsythia is a sight to behold (though I do so wish
that Vittorio would hurry up and take away that horrible caravan
for his lucky poultry).
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But spring in our garden is also the various pinks
of the little fruit trees: the apricot blossom has gone, the peaches
are splendid, the cherry is yet to come. Most heart-warming of
all is the little Abate pear tree which I managed to leave without
water for so long last summer (its water pipe had been cut through
but I didn’t notice until the poor thirsty thing had wilted
and lost all its leaves): it’s now covered in tight little
buds, edged round in darkest pink, and just ready to burst. How
wonderful that plants don’t bear grudges, or mine would be
sad indeed.
There’s a tiny splash of gaudier
pink where the chaenomeles is blooming beneath the cherry trees
too.
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It’s so frustrating returning to the city –
always, but at this bursting time of year in particular. I want
to be up there, tending my (uncharacteristically) neat rows of
little vegetables. They’re so plucky-but-vulnerable looking
there in their beds, I feel they need me at hand. I’m hoping
that whatever it was that was gobbling up my produce in the autumn
has found juicier fields elsewhere. (I now believe that I was being
attacked by a selection of animals: boars and porcupines, maybe.
But when I voiced doubts about his boar theory for my spinach,
Vittorio decided that our woods probably harbour deer, which would
explain the dainty way that that crop was lopped off regularly,
with no lumping hoof-prints or signs of digging and snuffling.)
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The only comfort, is that every time I go up there
these days, the place looks neater. Vittorio just bustles about
and does whatever he thinks needs doing. I asked him to take a
few ugly jutting branches from a couple of the elm trees, but he
didn’t stop there: all the trees have been cleaned up, their
trunks shorn of unfortunate sprouts, other larger badly-placed
branches that I hadn’t even noticed havebeen removed and
stacked neatly on the woodpile. The artichokes are looking luxuriant,
the dreaded Arundo donax down towards the vaschetta
has been hacked down and burnt off, the encroaching weeds have
been removed from the carpark.
In fact, I finally get the feeling, each
time I drive down the lane, that one day in the not-too-distant
future, the garden may look like I want it to look; that it will
no longer struggle to turn back to jungle between each of our visits.
And that’s a very good feeling. |
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