VICTORY GARDENING
February 26, 2015
Crap on a bun is the phrase I’ve come up with that succinctly describes our February. And now we can move on. I don’t care that February’s not over yet (as of this writing); it’s a short month and I just made it shorter.
I started the day with a bit of a baby weep upon arising before meditating on the possibility of inviting positive energy. Then we mailed my UK Passport application at the local Post Office, which made for a momentary bypass of the positive headed straight for Italian farce. Fingers crossed, we got back on the road, heading to Chiusi to visit a nursery recommended by our dear friend Larry.
On the way we chanced a stop in S. Quirico to see if the bakery had made our favorite bread and crackers. It seemed too much to hope for after a month of Murphy’s Law; especially as every time we went to this bakery in February, it had been futile; the last loaf just sold, the crackers baking for another 2 hours. So, when I entered the shop and saw amongst its honest sweets and savories, 4 loaves and 8 sheets of crackers, I knew the energy had turned. This bread, indeed, the staff of life, not the stuff you spread crap on.
The day was cooling; gunmetal clouds gathering like ammunition, the air electric with winter’s coda. But you can face anything when the scales tip toward spring.
Vivaio Margheriti is the finest nursery I’ve ever visited; a perfect blend of quantity and quality, it stretches for acres. We were ferried around on a golf cart – excuse the mixed metaphor – down lanes and lanes of enormous trees and shrubs and vines, everything beautifully tended. It made my sap rise. If it weren’t for the raw temperature I would probably have exceeded the budget even more. As it was we chose an enormous cypress tree, a mature fig, plus 2 plum trees and a cherry. Oh and a voluptuous honeysuckle vine for over the garden gate.
I love this process of choosing established trees and plants. In spite of their size they become babies up for adoption as one circles them, noting their height and shape, looking for any sign of disease. And let it be known I have rescued many a diseased nursery plant and led it back to health and flamboyance.
Back in the office we met Enzo, the owner, who not only recommended a fine restaurant for lunch, but told us he’d meet us at our house in the afternoon in order to check out our patch. And indeed, in less than 30 minutes after our return, Enzo arrived, having driven an hour as if it were just around the corner. He made some good recommendations, shared an espresso with us, oohed and aahed over Joel’s work and left saying, I thought, that the crew would arrive next week to begin the work.
So, we’re in bed the next morning with our breakfast trays and books reveling in the lazy life when my phone rings. “We’re here,” a voice tells me. “Who? Where?” I ask. “The crew,” comes the reply, “In front of your house.” Jaysus.
And so it was that on Friday 27th February, spring arrived along with an excavator, an enormous flatbed with the trees and another truck full of rich earth. The sky was clear deep blue, the sun strong and I spent the day pruning, weeding and laying stone while the team of 3 men excavated, amended soil and put everything in the ground. What joy! To work in silence except for the occasional buzz of an early bee, birdsong, and the sheep chorus at milking time. The smell of rich earth, the feel of one’s body still strong, the dirt under the nails, the vicious rip from a rose thorn, the standing back and admiring the new additions while envisioning future possibilities.
CHERRY TREE
PLUM TREE
FIG TREE
Mid-afternoon we stop for espresso and the head guy, Paolo, as if reading my mind, says “Who does the watering?” “Me,” I say, and he groans. Because in spite of the fact that I have chosen only heat and drought tolerant plants, in high Tuscan summer daily watering of some things is a must. This has meant an hour my time very evening which, depending on my mood and any social engagements can be either a meditation or a resentment-filled chore. So of course I agreed to the laying down of an irrigation system that can be programmed. The work will be done on Monday and then an apron of topsoil will be spread around the house and seeded with clover.
Back to nature. Yes, such a cliché. But as a writing professor once told me: beneath every cliché lies gold. The connection to nature, not just walking in it and admiring it, although that has value, but the hands-on wrestling with it is intrinsic to simple well-being. The mind floating free above busy hands; the employment of instinct while gathering age-old knowledge; the rewards and the heartbreak, the relentless march of nature pitted against human will until you are bent over in humility, bowing to the ground. This, to me, is true freedom.
Maybe it’s because the element of victory will always lie with the land. Therefore any achievement one experiences, whether it is the healing of a sick plant, a bumper crop of vegetables or a good season flowering, these achievements are only a temporary harmony between land and lover, and as such relieve us of ego. Every gardener and/or farmer, knows that hard work only takes you so far. The rest is fickle chance. Perhaps what I love most about gardening is this knowledge that exercising my will is only that; an exercise in fertility and futility. It is a rare experience for we humans, to enter an endeavor feeling the relief that there is nothing to win and nothing to claim.
During WWI and WWII those who remained on the home front grew ‘victory gardens,’ so named not because a war would be won, but to boost morale. While thousands were being slaughtered over a piece of territory, those at home worked tiny parcels of land growing fruits and vegetables in order to help with rationing. In America alone, some 20 million victory gardens were planted on city rooftops and backyards. What a shame it took war for people to reconnect with the earth and even more of a shame that in so-called peace-time, this endeavor was abandoned.
I’ve been at war with myself many times, but every time I touch the earth, prune a shrub, feed a tree or deadhead a rose I am totally at peace.
