Our first year anniversary on this land is coming up in a couple of months, and this is a nice point to begin focussing on the actual gardens here - as we contemplate how to organise the spaces right next to the house(s!)
We are still in this first year cycle of observation of our territory; taking in every day, how the soils, the trees, the plants and insects, the waters, the light, the ambience ...how it all comes together: how it has been worked in the past... and how it would prefer to be worked.
When we arrived on the land, it was in the middle of a most intense heatwave drought - which endured and endured. Fountains closed soon after we arrived, and the earth here when we saw it per la prima volta was strimmed bare and so scorched, hard, cracked. There was an absence of birdsong, and only the hardiest insects were still this high up the mountain and exposed.
This month the heat is returning, and we're reminded of the beginning of our adventure and the state that the land was in then. Mostly monoculture, where it was being run (inconsistently) as an olive grove. It had been hacked back aggressively, to be made 'presentable' for sale. It looked sad, to us. And we began immediately...
...Doing very little!
Hahaha - but seriously: we tweaked and tidied, put things in (a more natural, symbiotic) order, and made paths through the wildness.
The wee garden to the side of the house was tended to here and there, but mostly we were watching for what would come up, identifying plants and flowers, seeds and insects. As the winter progressed, we watched variety and marvel after variety and marvel, pop up and join us.
We continued to maximum pull up a few nettles and brambles here and there, and to mulch with them. The grasses continued to grow taller and more dramatic - and the wee gardens slowly but surely started to flourish.
Multiple carloads fom our previous balconies and giardinetto in Guardia Sanframondi, of cuttings and plantlings and seeds, came with us, trip by trip.
This end of May, we are full into the rewilding of our Eden: the nights are a magical cacophony of birds, mammals, insects; the stars reflected in the fireflies starting to proliferate.
The mornings are similarly noisy, as we wake with Nature waking: a wild orchestra of animals evidently ecstatic to be alive.
The biodiversity is veritably thrumming!
Every walk out into it brings new sights.
Everything is dynamic, rich, vital. We (
A huge poppy head came open last night: I photographed the tight cap it still had on... then just 30 minutes later it was baring its purple-pink crumpled silk skirts. Then this morning it was glorious: such a vision of beauty-full expression, fully open to the morning sunshine and the bees.
We get a great deal from our land, though our focus (obviously!) is not conventional veggie cultivation.. Let's see what we can create in our newly-acquired orto next door - we are just beginning to clear it, and can take photos of it from above, where we often sit in the evenings.
In the meantime, today I'll be balancing the completion of a painting commission with clearing a cellar 🤗💝🌟
