Life Lessons from the Secret Garden

The weather has cooled down after our little heat wave last week, now it is at a very comfortable 80 degrees with a cool breeze. I am enjoying the gardens surrounding the house. I feel like I live in my very own version of the book “The Secret Garden”. Every chance I get I am drawn to put on my canvas gloves and grab my handy trowel and start digging. It’s like an invisible magnetic force that draws me in. 

Italy itself is symbolized by this garden, confounding and frustrating with the persistent weeds yet filled with delightful surprises and stunningly beautiful moments. The other day our friend Davide was visiting us at our house on the hill. Davide is a native to San Felice, a beautiful seaside town surrounded by mountains about an hour away from us. Davide’s very roots are sunk deep in the soil and waters of San Felice. He lives to dive in the sea and surface with octopus and sea urchins as his treasures. After catching one he returns to his house to make a delightful octopus salad or sea urchin pasta. He is equally comfortable on land where he searches for wild mushrooms and asparagus. 

While at our house he goes for a stroll only to return with a bouquet of wild flowers. In his hand is the sweet smelling yellow broom flowers that grow wild on our hills. The bouquet also has wild garlic blooms with their purple spherical heads bobbing on a sturdy stem. There are red poppies and purple thistle that punctuate this whimsical bouquet made perfect by nature. 

As he hands me the bouquet, he says “do you know that you have wild strawberries?” “No!” I say, “show them to me!” So he takes me outside, close to where we park the car and pulls back some tall weeds and points to the delicate little strawberry plant with its recognizable green leaves. There, dangling in the middle of the leaf cluster is the tiniest of strawberries, just the size of your pinky fingernail. My eyes widen and I stoop to pick the tiny treasure, I immediately plop it into my mouth and am rewarded with a sharp burst of wild strawberry flavor. I really can’t believe my eyes as I focus in on all of the little strawberry plants that are covering the rock wall and spilling out onto the gravel below. I had seen these same tiny strawberries when I was in Nemi, the strawberry town up in Castelli Romani, the town where Caligula had his party boats. The entire town of Nemi is strawberry themed and they sell everything “strawberry”, from liquors to ice cream and especially the charming little strawberry tarts. I’m delighted that in my yard I have my own “Nemi” strawberries. 

The next day I make sure to remove the weeds from the strawberry “hill” and start to include it in my watering rotation. I also move some of the strawberries to my front garden beds so it can be sure to water them and keep a close eye on their progress.

But there are other treasures I find in the garden. For example, along the ivy covered wall, bright red amaryllis started blooming, they were so striking at they popped up and sported their bright red lily flower all in a row. They bloom at the same time as the red roses that frame my vegetable garden. I can see that a master garden planner had designed this garden, with its rock walls covered in ivy and upper terraces trimmed in grape vines. A beautiful tiny daisy hedge frames the back yard around the patio  where the lounge chairs are. The front hedge is lined with pomegranate trees and daylillies. 

I wonder what other treasure will unfold as summer sets in and in later seasons such as fall and winter. That’s the beauty of a well planned garden, there is always something new to relish. I take great delight in watering and trimming and nurturing my newly found treasures. 

Meanwhile, Jeff is finding treasures of his own. He is finding watering systems and sprinklers and outdoor lights and bbq areas. Slowly, slowly, he get these different systems up and running after years of neglect. Now the house is lit up and well watered. He even designed an outdoor “chandelier” out of a wood frame and some twinkle lights. The “chandelier” hangs over the outdoor table and provides part of the light show along with the fireflies once the sun goes down over the valley below.

But it’s not all wildflowers and sunsets. Our power still goes on and off at will. Jeff thinks there may be a short somewhere and thinks it may be connected to watering outside.  I am still battling weeds in the flower beds and vegetable garden and Jeff is still waging a war against ants and the dogs that bark in the valley below. But it seems to be getting better, or maybe we are just adjusting to it! 

But there are other things we are adjusting to also, for example, after our guests left last week, I was getting ready to throw the sheets in the washing machine when I saw a dead scorpion in the sheets! I had seen them occasionally on the wall outside but not inside! Anyway, they are pretty small here, about the size of a half dollar in total, including their creepy little claws and scorpion tail that seems poised and ready to sting you. Anyway this one looked smashed and dried up, I’m not sure if it got killed when my guest had taken the sheets off the bed or if it was killed once it was in the laundry basket in the cabinet. But I hoped it was not in the bed with my guests! 

I thought of just flicking it into the bathroom sink but then I thought “I better not touch it, I will use the soap dispenser to flick it into the sink”. So that is what I did and much to my surprise it was alive!!! It started running and clamping its little claws!!! Thankfully it was already in the sink and was trying to crawl up the sink! Surprisingly, in my horror I had the soundness of mind to quickly turn the water on and it swirled down the drain clamping it’s little claws as it went swirling down! Yuck! Shivers ran down my spine and don’t think I looked at that drain the same way again when I next washed my hands or face! Well, that’s living in the country I guess. You cant have gorgeous sunsets over the valley, wild strawberries on rock terraces and flowers without the weeds, ants, dogs, power outages and scorpions!  Anyway, don’t worry, apparently it is only as dangerous as a bee sting….don’t forget we have black widows back home in California!

That reminds me, I have a friend from Africa who lives in front of the sea. She is a refugee living in a camp. The camp is actually a house confiscated from the mafia, that is why it is a government house for refugees. Surprisingly it is in a beautiful setting with a large lawn overlooking the sea. She told me that one day she was hanging her laundry out to dry on the hedges when she saw a big black snake! She said it was 4 inches around and very long! Because she is from Africa, when she sees a snake she thinks only of death so she ran away screaming and fell down and gashed her leg and only then did she realize she left her two year old baby there on the lawn with the snake! Oh my! I guess a scorpion is better than that! I didn’t think they had snakes in Italy! I asked an Italian friend who was sitting there as my African friend was telling the story, if snakes in Italy were poisonous. She said “no, but I guess they can still bite and that wouldn’t be pleasant….” Yikes! I forgot about their fangs! I pictured a big black snake with fangs hanging from someone’s arm! Yeah, that wouldn’t be cool. Hmmm, these are definitely not things you think about when you think of Italy! Now when I’m tramping around the tall grass or running around my house barefoot I think of these creepy little critters.

My garden makes me contemplate life, like how we should “grow” where we are planted and if there are weeds we must work diligently to remove every one. Reminding me that some “weeds” in our heart or mind are very persistent so it’s not just one weeding attempt that will remove it. It takes effort and persistence to a have a clean heart and garden!

I’m also reminded that life is not perfect, when we gaze out over a peaceful sunrise with our cup of coffee, the barking dogs will punctuate the perfection with a healthy dose of annoyance. When we marvel at a fluttering butterfly or delight in twinkling fireflies we have to also accept their insect cousins the scorpion and mosquito. Yes, life is not perfect but the garden teaches us to take the good with the bad.

Articles About Traveling & Living in Italy:

The Italian Alps in February (Published February 13, 2019)

House Hunters International in Italy (Published April 24, 2019)

A Californian Surfing in Italy (Published May 1, 2019)

Our New Town in Italy (Published June 17, 2019