Dear gardener friends!

It has been wonderful to read your October updates - I adore seeing gardens around the world, magical corners of cities and hillsides under different light and cloud...

My own, in this beautiful Italian medieval quarter, looking out across the valley, is in a gorgeous state of taking form - much easier to work now as at least some of the plants die back with cooler nights.

Many leaves have had huge growth these past days - such a relief after such few pickings over the summer scorchio and drought. I am loving having big portions of rich dark greens, mixed with olives and herbs, to nourish my diet dramatically.

The chayote/ patate invernale or melanzana invernale as we call it here, is putting out a looooaaad of fruit and flowers - I love how this plant flourishes here so effortlessly, and I just have to water occasionally and keep it supported - here it's up in the branches of the fig and olive trees.

My beautiful lunga di napoli pumpkins - below and at the top of this post - are quite the spectacle: they're ripening nicely, and all three should keep me (along with my 20 + smaller gourds) happily fed throughout winter!

I did some quite big clearing work this evening; it was too insecty to be out until now in the wilder part of the garden, and the undergrowth reeeeaaaallllly took over - but now it is a great joy and very satisfying to pull it all back and make it into mulch for the more useful (to humans!) trees. This is a wee lemon in the corner, next to a tamarillo or tree tomato. There are lovely bella di notte in front, which give a glorious evening perfume... Can't wait to sit down there with a glass of piedirosso' 🥰🍷🍷

I cleared around this young walnut tree too, which last winter I rescued from under deep creepers... it was half buried again, but is growing straight and strong.

And this is a very small lemon tree which has never flourished much: it gets quickly overwhelmed by the enthusiastic wilder plants... though I'm trying to weed them out from between this most-blessed patch of borage.

I think that this below is an olmo or suchlike... Not such an edible plant, very invasive - and fabulous when allowed to grow big for firewood - and baskets, which I recently ventured into! I've cleared around this one to help it grow lots of small branches for weaving.

And this last wee corner was blocked by brambles and passiflora. I cleared it so that some wild spinach and a caper plant in the wall can flourish. 💚💚💚

I hope you enjoyed this wee jaunt around the garden with me - check in again soon for more updates - I am hoping to be out much more often now it's cooling down! 🤩🌈💐🌍

LOVE!

Clare.