By Rupert Mayhew / Published on August 21th, 2007 / Family
May 28th 2004
With only two hours of rain in the last two weeks our watering systems are working at full tilt. A new lawn sprayer has joined in the fun and has a huge range, it covers the swimming pool and herbaceous border too when on full blast. With this on and another smaller lawn sprinkler we still have our spring, from which La Doccia is named, still pouring water out. Impressive especially when considering two other small streams and a small spring have already dried out, while the other water courses coming out of the mountain are trickling at best. The La Doccia spring can go through two or three months of drought and still supply the house, although we are careful not to water the lawn then too much, even careful lawns must make concessions.
The Roses in the herbaceous border are full of flowers and even more thick swelling buds. They are climbers and are really settling down now, their second year since being transplanted from small pots. I fastened the ever growing number of stems to the wires to ensure no sudden summer storm ruins the party. Training and fastening fast growing plants is becoming a very necessary task, as so many shrubs planted in recent years put on their main growth of the year. The Abrigia we planted in the herbaceous border survived the hard winter and is flourishing, acting as ground cover for the roses, lilies, irises and gladioli in the border. A couple more years of growth and they should put paid to the weeds which get in the way.
Some of the weeds include wild mint, which came into the border with the wheelbarrows of soil hauled up my Marty, the previous gardener, and myself when he built the border. These grow profusely where we dug out the soil and so every now and again a mint stem must be pulled out. Under the ground the mint sends out suckers, mint is very intrusive and will slowly kill off other plants wherever it is, unless we remove it. By simply pulling them out, and putting them in a glass of water, and replanting, they soon flourish elsewhere. Hopefully in the herb garden, which is covertly taking shape despite my Father’s dislike of herb gardens.
The newer roses we transplanted at the end of April all seem to enjoy their newer sunnier positions and are producing flowering buds for the first time. They were planted in a flowerbed blocked off from the sun by the house. Unsatisfactory for roses who like the sun, and the more of it the better.
Meanwhile my mind is already drifting off to new projects in the garden this winter. One plan is to create a second herbaceous border on the terrace directly below the terrace where the herbaceous border currently is. This is overgrown with wild flowers, such as poppies, and long grasses; the lawnmower cannot reach here so I have let it stay this way. This would be a simple project and ideal for Antonio, we have our own stone, and a second line of climbing roses as bright as the first would look twice as good.
Antonio is coming off the land this week after pruning around 80 olive trees on the farm, he’ll come back to help get the garden ready for the first wedding on June 10th, which with the helicopter photographer, is the deadline for perfection in the garden.
*
May 20th 2004
A hot spell at last, and no rain for about a week means serious watering has started in earnest. Every day for over an hour my Father or I will water part of the garden intensely, we have three areas to cover, so each part is watered once every three days. Until this year the poor lawn suffered and got no water except when it rained.
However, after applying a top dressing of sand, fertiliser and, for the hell of it, more grass seed this week, I am keen the lawn receives more tender care than before –and strimming to the roots doesn’t count. My devious plan is to tap the overflow water supply coming from the waterfall bordering our neighbours land and for this reason I linked a long hose, about 150 metres, to a thicker hose, to a black pipe to a bicycle inner tube to the thick metal overflow pipe. After linking these up the hose became hopelessly tangled up with itself and this took a good half hour to untangle. Frustrating, but all part of the joy of improvising, as I tried to remind myself in between curses. The water supply from the overflow pipe is irregular and depends on recent rainfall as well as how much water the Farmer is using, but it is better than nothing. So after unravelling the long hose and rolling it down to the lawn at Francesca I was quite excited as I scampered up to connect the bicycle inner tube to the metal overflow. It was on the way up that I felt the first raindrops on my face and as I linked the system up the rain came down steadily, to give the lawn some much needed water for about twenty minutes. Disappointing, the rain is good of course, but made it an anticlimax all the same.
Feeling in need of cheer I went to admire my compost heaps which are attracting a fine amount of insects. I almost feel paternal to them, knowing that thanks to my work they have food and a home; and watching them happily buzzing around eating my grass cuttings, the squeezed oranges, the dead tea bags and each other I am full joy.
The heaps are beginning to smell a little though, and once I see a snake or two I may keep my distance. That earlier rainfall was a week ago and we have had none since. So after a couple of days the Hose system, or the furbo, as I have called it, was put to work and started spraying a tiny patch of the already small lawn, but the water is free and a bonus, and I don’t mind getting wet as I set the system up either. I soaked the entire lawn, happy to keep it flowing for hours at a time on small patches.
I have no idea how well the furbo will work, watch this space, and we may have a good lawn soon.
We moved the Umbrelloni away from the herbaceous border. In theory the idea of large sun shades was good, the trouble is once it became a little windy they blew over and caused panic among our guests. Now they are at two strange positions, where no one will ever go, but they will look good when the helicopter comes to take photos on the wedding day, after that they will be sold. The teak garden furniture is also out for people to sunbathe on and really nothing else is waiting for the summer, it is already here. My only worry is how well the water supply and my furbo can last if we have a drought like last year.
*
May 13th 2004
With less than a month to go before our first wedding we are making sure every job that needs doing will be done in time. A month can go quickly in gardening, especially with all the other work to do.
I have arranged for a helicopter to come and take photos of La Doccia on the morning of the first wedding when the house and garden should be looking its finest. This means no strimming on the slopes around the house; though they may harbour snakes being bitten by an adder is a small price to pay to have green looking slopes on all the photos. Usually the helicopter takes pictures in July when the grass is brown, but here we will have soft lush lawns and slopes full of wildflowers.
Naturally the day after the helicopter comes we’ll all be out strimming furiously to make the place safe once more. The slopes will turn brown, die back and look awful, but the postcards we’ll make from our photos will show an immaculate green corner of Tuscany for ever, and will sell the place better.
Now the lawnmower is back the lawn is beginning to shape up. It became too painful to watch as the missing spare part for the lawnmower never seemed to come from Milan to our Mechanic. The lawn grew and grew, soon it became a meadow, then a prairie and by the time the lawnmower came back the lawn was anything but a lawn. As I parked my car and scampered down to the office on Monday morning, all excited at the prospect of taming the lawn, I was horrified to see Antonio strimming, yes strimming, his way through the heart of the beautiful lawn. I managed, just, not to hyperventilate before I stopped him and pointed desperately to some olive trees to prune, which he obediently did, and I was left with half a lawn overgrown, to 12’’ height, and the other half strimmed to the ground.
This is a tricky one, a two toned lawn, and after mowing it twice in 4 days it still looks intriguing. Luckily the cool damp weather, which usually ends at the end of April, has continued and the lawn continues to grow without the relentless sun beating back growth. I top dressed and fertilised the lawn with a sandy mix high in Nitrogen. I know one should top dress in the autumn but better late than never. Top dressing with sand helps the lawn to level itself out, over a period of time, and give it a flat look. Most people in England buy a house and inherit a lawn that may be been worked on for a century or more, every week, without a break, except perhaps the odd war. Not here in the mountains though, I suspect that less than twenty years ago this lawn was ploughed, farmed and harvested to produce something more useful than the grass cuttings I manage to make.
The roses look set to produce all the confetti our wedding guests will need. But the weather has been so bad that we moved the lemon tree onto the terrace and moved a number of plants back under cover. Last Friday we had over an inch of hail fall here while it snowed at nearby Consuma, the Hostas in particular were not happy at the hail. This is weather that is simply unheard of in Tuscany. Elsewhere I have started to identify some of the orchids growing here, we have Orchis Tridentata and Orchis Purpurea in abundance, but the smallest of the orchids here is the most intriguing. It seems to have three different types of flowers growing on the one stem. I expect it is extremely rare, probably unique to this valley in fact, so much so that I am tempted to ‘discover’ it, and name it after myself…
May 4th 2004
We are almost adopting a laid back attitude to the garden this week, so much is growing and flowering it is hard enough just to take in what is happening let alone doing more work, so sitting back and watching what is happening and enjoying it too is definitely a sensible course of action.
The roses are shooting up and looking very promising, these occupy the main flowerbeds and we have a number of large climbing roses growing up walls and covering the Lavenderia. These were planted three years ago, last year they were fully settled and this year they are all very leafy with lots of flower buds waiting to open over the summer. The herbaceous border, built last year, is also a riot of colour and looking very healthy, the tulips are in full flow and, to make a mess of out the terraces, the walnut trees around the house are flowering and shedding thick conical catkins all over the terraces and staircases.
We have not had to water the garden or even the pots once, a rarity by this time in the year, and we have had steady showers, along with sun, all week long. Ideal for the garden but a pity for people visiting La Doccia and hoping for some fair weather. They seem to be enjoying the food and wine though and so I am thinking of growing a few vines here soon to make a little wine, and if that is no good, some grapes for them to eat.
The lemon tree looks resplendent, with about 12 lemons growing and a number more on the way. An olive tree will fit the pot we planned to put the lemon in though. It is too late to replant a lemon tree and so we will wait until September before doing anything. This means we are stuck with a bounteous flowering lemon tree crammed into an ugly black plastic container, with handles, straight from the garden centre. The short term plan is to buy an even larger terracotta pot and put the tree and the pot, all together, into it and put the young olive tree into the smaller pot ready originally the lemon. Both will look good in the car park alongside the geraniums already flowering.
The lawn is now about 8 inches high and is unlikely to be cut until the weekend, when the machine is back and, conveniently, when I am in London. In the 18 days since the lawn was last mowed the lawn has grown, in some parts, over 12 inches, and following a day of incessant rain today, these perfect grass growing conditions continue. All I need now is a herd of sheep to move around the farm and wolf up the thick green grass everywhere.
Talking of walking the land, the olive groves are thick with flowers, Star of Jerusalem (Ornithogalum Umbellatum), White Campion (Silene Alba), Sun Spurge (Euphorbia Helioscopia), all abound and are some I have identified. But none impress, or stand out so distinctly, as the orchids in the olive grove by the Traversaia stream. These are not mere meadow flowers, but instead stand upright and regal, as if the olive trees are there simply to complement their beauty. There are a number of different orchids here, and I am still identifying them, but of all the flowers that grow here, these are the most striking, and unlike the flowers above, seem too well crafted be meadow flowers.
These are just a fraction of what there is, everyday I take new photos of unfamiliar flowers in their natural environment. Luckily there are no stinging nettles like there are in England. When a child I was told Roman soldiers bought stinging nettle seeds over to England in their boots, if that is the case, they brought all their seeds over with them and left none in this part of Tuscany.
Rupert Mayhew recently moved to Tuscany, Italy, from a career in IT in London. He works in and runs an expanding agriturismo and this new role includes the task of creating a garden out of what is now mountainside.
http://www.ladocciawelcomes.com.
rmayhew@ladocciawelcomes.com