the Greenhouse comes into its own...

...preparing for the cold...

Citrus trees start to suffer when temperatures get below 5 degrees Celsius. Recently there were a couple of nights that were pretty close to the limit, so we decided, for caution's sake, to retire our citrus into the greenhouse: one clementine, two lemons and a lemon which has reverted to its scion and become an attractive Seville orange...

  
...are now safely housed in our new greenhouse will be put to the test for the first time this winter...

The citrus will be in the company of a gardenia, two plumbagos, a polygala, three amaryllis, a cactus, a recovering orchid and a small mandevilla, not to mention their permanent hosts: jasmine, a large mandevilla and a stephanotis...

The greenhouse has been fitted with a special red light to promote growth and warmth. We hope our tender plants will be cosy over the winter.

And we look forward to quiet winter days when we hope to sit inside enjoying the green and the - relative - warmth.

Tomato Tribute

Solanum lycopersicum

 (fruit of the month)

 

Our beef tomato (cuore di bue) crop this year has offered up some impressive specimens.

One above all, weighing in at 877 grams, has inspired a tribute from afar. 

"Every August a tomato festival is held in the little village of San Giovanni Pomodorino. Contestants come from near and far for the coveted prize, pomodoro gigantico, which is to produce a cuore di bue as near as possible to 1 kilo in weight. 
 

This year Lulu from the nearby village of Santa Letizia Martina arrived late for the ceremony.  She rushed up to the stall where the judges were already preparing to award the prize.  Only one tomato had managed just under 850 grams.  

When they saw the size of Lulu’s entry the judges conferred and decided to accept her exhibit.  They placed the tomato on the scales.  It came in at just under 900 grams.  The chief judge who came from the rival village of San Giuseppe Solanum surreptitiously put her finger on the scales to give a reading of 1000 grams.
 

Lulu returned in triumph to her village where the cuore di bue now sits benignly in a niche, labelled In excelsis australis."

Thanks to H of Higher Bugford, North Devon.

A Wood in Winter

A wood which has become the extension 

of a 
Chianti garden

Once the woods around here were cultivated for their various uses: brush for fires and ovens, wood for fuel, tools and farmwork and to make charcoal.

 Friends of ours near Panzano in Chianti have spent endless hours clearing the brush, brambles, stunted trees and bushes from the wood above their house.

The Fallen Cypress

Resuscitating a Tree

The day the builders came and, manoeuvring their digger in a tight space, crashed into one of three cypresses we planted over ten years ago, setting the tree at a 45 degree angle, we were not sure whether it could be salvaged.

After we watered it thoroughly, presumably to ease its shock (it happened at the height of a very hot summer), the cypress rapidly sank to the ground, where it lay for over two months.

The experts told us it was better to wait for cooler weather but when they came to visit the patient they were concerned that many roots had been broken in the fall; perhaps the tree was compromised. 

The Long Dry Summer of 2017.2

...and the rains came

 ...finally, almost 60 millimetres

I only wish I could have captured the sound and fury of it all, the thunderbolts and lightning flashes. 
Thor and Zeus really let us have it, at last.

looking south towards Radda (invisible)

The Long Dry Summer of 2017.1

Waiting for the rain

these are early morning shots, before the heat sets in

As we walk crunching on the lawns - what say I? - former lawns and meadows, at Le Ripe, I reflect that the place is looking more and more like Australia. The hills have turned prematurely brown, the earth is parched, some bushes and trees, or at least their foliage, have died.

most hills are browner than this, it is quite marked

The drought has been with us since spring. There have been two mediocre rainfalls in the past 4 months or so, totalling about 30ml. It was almost the same last year but at least then we had enjoyed spring rains.

some plants have fallen by the wayside

Cabbages and Flax

 Surprising Sprouts

At Le Ripe early this spring we had a man with a tractor work over our orchard to tumble out the biggest stones and level the ground for easier mowing.

 The resulting freshly-turned and raked earth cried out for seeds. Grass would have been the obvious choice but inspired by friends, we opted for something prettier.

Our local supplier sells sacks of flax seed. Since the flax flower (linum usitatissimum) is a pretty blue, we thought this would make an attractive first planting before grass seeds were sown in autumn.

Oscar Tintori's Garden of Eden

The Citrus Hesperidarium at Pescia

If you drive to the west coast from Florence you may take the Firenze-Mare motorway along the broad valley of the Arno all the way to the sea and Pisa or Lucca. En route you will be treated to views of one of Tuscany's celebrated plant nursery districts (others are to be found further south along the Arno and in Versilia on the coast). 

Battalions of cyprus, platoons of magnolias, brigades of tufted or twisted ornamental bushes, divisions of deciduous trees, regiments of shrubs: an entire army of woody plants marches towards the sea. It is a magnificent display of human enterprise, the varieties of horticulture and human-imposed order.

If you have time (and you really should make time), on the way towards Pisa and the coast, you could make a detour at Pescia (exit at Chiesina Uzzanese) to visit the glorious, perfumed citrus nursery founded by Oscar Tintori. Here you will find gigantic greenhouses covering 2000 square metres and sheltering hundreds of different varieties of citrus plants.

A Clump of Violets

Spring's Herald

Spring arrives officially in about 10 days but there are some exciting harbingers in the garden, not least of which this spectacular clump of violets, all the more precious for being wildflowers.

From Farm to Forest

Back to Nature

registry map of Le Ripe

When we first arrived at Le Ripe we invited an 'arboreal archaeologist' to examine our trees. We rather fancied that some of the old apple trees might have proved interesting and we thought she could advise us on how to proceed with new plantings at Le Ripe. 

When I showed her the dense woods, full of brambly undergrowth, trees reaching for the sky through thickets of blackthorn and juniper and said something cheerful about it all having gone back to nature she stopped my ramblings with a curt: 'This is land which has degenerated'. 

Although at the time we were shamed into silence, we now have a different perspective (see the post on Monks and Forests) on the fate of forests. 

However, paying respect where respect is due: Le Ripe was once a fully working farm where the native woods provided fuel, forage, fruits and timber for tools; where grapes, cereal crops and fruit trees were cultivated; where livestock grazed; where bamboo and certain trees were planted for their agricultural usefulness. Since it was abandoned in the 1950s or even earlier, the land has been steadily reverting to its pre-agricultural state, 'degenerating' in a sense, although regenerating in another sense.

Until recently, apart from a detail in a neighbour's family shot from 1946 (see below), we had no documentary record of this process, but now, thanks to the internet we have found aerial photographs, starting in 1954, which provide a striking testimony.

2013: for the purposes of comparison with 60 and 70 years ago

The entire area captured in these aerial photographs is of great interest, but for the purposes of our exercise, the Le Ripe property comprises the central area of the photograph, bordered to north and east by the Pesa river, to the south by creeks and to the west by the crest of the forested hill (see map at top of post).

Le Ripe 1946, from the Pesa river (the houses in the foreground belong to Casanuova delle Ripe, a hamlet below Le Ripe): note the terracing, the tracks, the sparse vegetation. these were pastures, grape terraces and fields for growing cereal crops to which the large ricks of oats and wheat bear witness.

Coming Home

 Autumn Clearing

After some weeks' absence we return to a changed scene: although according to the calendar it is still strictly autumn, it is picturesque autumn no longer: rain, wind and lack of sunlight have drained the colour from the land. Nature is resting. 

the bronze and copper leaves of the hortensia quercifolia, a gift of autumn

Yet the garden is greener, bushier, leggier than when we left. And since our return the sun has been shining every day, which makes for tingling, beaming mornings in which to work outside.

The Garden at Villa La Foce

Foreigners in Val d'Orcia

Cecil Pinsent's closed green garden at La Foce with its crisp hedges. Monte Amiata is palely visible to the south-east

If you look at the historical black and white photographs on the Villa La Foce website, as backdrop to the depictions of hardworking and celebrating sharecropping farmers, you will see a lunar landscape: harsh, barren-looking hills, and stretches of empty terrain succumbing to the plough for the first time. Today's intensely-cultivated, ordered and verdant sweep of valley and hills with the famous cypress-lined road winding up the hill opposite La Foce were unimaginable 100 years ago. 

Val d'Orcia before the new owners of La Foce intervened

This ostensibly timeless scene has come to symbolise Tuscany, despite the fact that it represents only the area south of Siena, that it is completely man-made and of recent creation, and that its creators were a British garden designer, a British-American woman and her Florentine husband.

A Drought in Chianti

Where is the rain?

the parched earth; grass non-existent; dead leaves from tired trees

even the St John's Wort looks exhausted

It has been many weeks since our part of Chianti has seen rain. It is still summer of course and summer means heat, dry grass and watering each evening.

Tending the Rhubarb and Tomato Jungles

The pleasures of a vegetable garden

butternut pumpkin flowers

Villa Poggio Torselli

The Queen of Villas and her Garden

Villa Torselli seen from its cypress-lined avenue, a perspective visible when driving along the road from San Casciano north towards Ospitaletto. Apparently dubbed the Queen of Villas (although when and by whom is unclear)

the austere facade is surmounted by terracotta sculptures of the four seasons, a theme reiterated throughout the villa and the leitmotif of the garden, not surprisingly

Yes, that is Florence 8 kilometres to the north and yes, that is the Duomo, barely perceptible right of centre, although to the eye it was quite distinct

Palazzo Corsini and the Artisans

Artigianato e Palazzo
 A high-end craft fair in a special setting

the loggia of Palazzo Corsini, a former casinò or hunting lodge which was in fact a villa surrounded by a garden; the many Greek, Latin and Etruscan plaques on the villa wall were collected by an 18th century Corsini

the setting for the annual craft fair: in the 17th century the sculptures were placed on pedestals of decreasing height to give a greater sense of depth and perspective from the loggia. Some of the original sculptures are now housed in the Bargello while others are at either end of the bridge of the Santa Trinità.

one of the barn-like limonaie or lemonaries where 130-plus citrus trees overwinter in their huge terracotta pots

For the past 22 years, each May, in the middle of the month, a unique range of arts and crafts is on display in a unique Florentine location.

the parterre: neat box hedging is filled with sumptuous peonies; teucrium, cistus, roses and lavender abound - recent departures from the original purely baroque setting

Springtime in Chianti

A Glorious April

Sparkling, sun-filled with light breezes and clear skies. This April we have been blessed with fine weather, early and abundant flowering and mild to warm weather.
More rain would not have been amiss (whatever happened to April showers?) but it seems churlish to complain. 

It's Springing

Another Early Spring  

Should we be worried?
Or just accept it, together with Emily Dickinson?

Autumn Great and Small

Zoom out and zoom in on those once-in-a-year colours

 

A Happy Ending for Mister Fox

The Fox has Fled

Regarding our posts The Downside of a Fence  and Mystery Solved

we are delighted to announce that in all probability, Mr Renard has escaped the confines of our garden where he was inadvertently imprisoned during the installation of our perimeter fence.