Vegetable Patch or Vegetable Garden?

The Choice Before Us

Gardening is hard work. Enjoyable, but hard. A vegetable patch, which requires constant care: planting, watering, hoeing,weeding, pruning and harvesting, and whose produce is by its nature almost entirely seasonal, is consequently very hard work.
There is a local saying, l'orto vuole l'uomo morto or 'the vegie patch will be the death of you', loosely translated.
With that in mind, here is how things are evolving da noi/chez nous.

Bufo bufo pays us a visit

Toad in a Hole

 This morning as I stepped outside to do some work in the garden I was confronted by a toad sitting on the cast iron bars of a drain. 

Possibly he was searching for water. So I decided to offer him some. 

Yellow Foxglove

An Unexpected Treat

We first noticed the long stalks with  blackened buds at the end of one summer a few years ago. Wild foxgloves at Le Ripe. Next season revealed them to have rather dirty yellow flowers, not the favoured blue or purple. 

After that we considered ourselves lucky to have native foxgloves yet unlucky that they were such an unprepossessing colour.

Ocimum Basilicum

It's not Summer without Basil

Once on a trip to Greece we noted the pots of small-leafed basil sitting, round and pretty, on verandahs. To our surprise we discovered that it was decorative basil, that the Greeks do not eat basil. Subsequently we introduced some Greek friends to pesto and it caused quite a sensation.

Pergolas

Getting there

 From Wikipedia:

A pergola or arbour is a garden feature forming a shaded walkway, passageway, or sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained. 

I would argue that woody vines and other climbing plants are almost invariably trained on any pergolas worthy of that name...

The pergola is the ultimate 'garden feature' which tends to be both functional and decorative. I assume pergolas have been around for a long time. The Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, has a wonderful depiction of an early renaissance pergola. 

The Perfect Woodstack

Zen 

and the 

Art of Building a Woodstack

How to fool a bumble-bee

...and further your species.

The other morning while hanging out the washing I spied an interesting flower bobbing in the grass. It had three mauve petals and was being plundered by a bumble bee. Or so it seemed.

 

On closer examination the bee turned out to be part of the flower which was a tiny orchid.

A Rose is a rose is a rose

Roses in May


In a 2013 post Roses are pink , Le Ripe's roses were introduced; here is the next chapter.

  My inherited cultural references being at least partly British, I usually associate the optimum blooming of the rose with the month of June, but here at the 43rd parallel north things start getting exciting in mid May; this year some summery weather has accelerated the excitement.

Pizza in Chianti

The Requisites of a Good Pizza

We have had an outdoor pizza oven at Le Ripe for one year already but it is only now that we feel relatively confident about our pizza production; we still have to be tested for large numbers.

Below is a summary of the 10 most important things we have gradually learnt about making - and eating - this Neapolitan specialty.

Slow Food in Greve

 Greve does it again

You cannot deny that Greve is bursting with initiative. Last weekend it was the Flower Show, this weekend the town is hosting its annual Slowfood market which highlights the produce of a number of Italian Comuni or towns, from Grumes (Trento) in the north to Positano in the south. 

that lovely backdrop again, plus a stunning sky this weekend

Greve's Annual Flower Market

Greve in Fiore

Once a year at the beginning of May Greve's beautiful piazza is enhanced by serried ranks of flowering plants.

Found in Woodpile

Nest eggs

Uncovered in woodpile, roughly-woven nest of moss, straw and wood shavings with six tiny eggs. Might be redbreast or starling eggs?

If anyone reading this blog can identify the eggs, please send us a message.