even though these are morning glories, they are reminiscent of the point
I know that Umbria is technically in central Italy. But, somehow in my own mind, I imagine all gardening in Italy to be rooted in southern Italian gardening…… It’s odd, I know.
I have been reading a piece in Edible Manhattan about Sara Jenkins’ visit in Umbria with Chef Salvatore Denaro http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/free-range/under-the-umbrian-sun-sara-jenkins/. Yesterday, I passed by it a couple of times on my Facebook feed. Although I passed it, I was somehow drawn back to it. Today, as I read along, what struck me so uncannily was how powerfully the description of Chef’s Denaro’s garden and lifestyle resonated with me. There is no need for me to imagine what they are talking about. There is no not understanding the entire scene nor the sentiments which accompany it. I know this because it is in my own DNA. The tendrils of this story wrap and wind as intricately and completely as those of my burgeoning morning glories shown above.
Instantly as I read, I am transported back to my childhood. I feel a kinship with all the people around the world who are as instinctively drawn to repeat the ritual of planting year after year as is Chef Denaro. And, at the very same time that I am completely fascinated by this as if it were a wholly new discovery, I completely know this. I am aware that people repeat this cycle over and over, until the time of their own death, having the ritual being as wholly part of them as breathing, eating and all the other totally basic functions of their beings. It matters not how large or small the garden is. Only that one is driven to do it.
The vegetable garden of my Father, my Uncle and those of some other close family members is one of the strongest and evocative memories of my past. It would seem quite certainly that, the seeds, roots and tendrils which emanate from these images live within me. I carry them everywhere in my heart and soul. And, as a consequence, from the time that I was a small child, I have been strongly drawn to people’s gardens everywhere.
While I get some extremely strong core reactions to standing in every single piazza in Italy and feel an overwhelming and organic need to return there daily, at standing awestruck at the sight of David in Florence, from roaming the streets of Paris alone, alive with wonder at what might appear around the next corner, I am most often struck with a person’s instinctive need to grow things. Perhaps it is because I can see people’s gardens everywhere and, I only get to Europe occasionally.
A few years back I sat on the terrace at Le Sirenuse in Positano, and watched in awe, as a man tended his garden, perhaps barely 3′ x 3′, on a tiny terrace extending off what I could only be described as the side of a cliff. He worked as if he was without conscious thought. His toil was deliberate and as like the instinct to eat to survive. I instantly knew this. I fell in love with the hanging lemons all along the walkways in Positano and in Taormina. I never wanted to leave. I can feel myself sitting below the grape arbor in Bellagio, at Bilucus, eating a delicious lunch. My eyes return again and again to the grapes. I am enchantingly happy. I can feel the soles of my feet trying to put roots down into the cobbles. It is unmistakable.
When we were there in Positano and I stepped outside of our room, my gaze was drawn downward to the garden of Palazzo Murat as it juxtaposed the two hotels. I could not wait to go down and step through there on my own. And when I did and saw the care and obvious love of the person who designed and tended this garden, I was awestruck. I felt like I could stay there forever.
When we drive from LA to Santa Barbara and we come upon the unending fields of Strawberries in Oxnard I am instantly alert. When I tread along to the Luxembourg Palace and my eye stretches along the great swaths of flowers there I am happy. A lump may come into my throat. Last year when I visited Hyde Park, I enjoyed the tour of the house. But, it was when I stepped inside the garden that I was enraptured by its unencumbered life and inherent exuberance. Butterflies and bees floated, swooped and worked. In comparison, the house held an aura of death, sadness and the distant past, but the garden was alive and bursting. What I most recall about reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, probably when I was in my early teens, are the scenes in the fields, the growing and working. Those mental images have stayed with me for decades. Recently, I began watching Giada’s series on Positano and southern Italy on Sundays. Even though I don’t make a point to remember it is on tv, I know it is and somehow I am there to watch it. I am envious and wish to be there again. Every step in Naples, the pizzerias, the smell of yeast and smoky fires. Some of what draws me in is the seemingly-endless life outdoors. I know this not to be true, but it seems so. I think about those like Katie Parla, Elizabeth Minchilli and a host of others, who had the foresight and wisdom to move to Italy when they were young. How lucky they are. And the host of other chefs, writers and gardeners who travel back and forth there often, as if on a mission. It is as if there is some gravitational pull there, as forceful as the moon itself.
I do not have a large vegetable garden of my own any more. But, I remember every one I have had. I remember every one my Dad had, what was planted where, his daily forays there and how the crops performed. Experiments with pole beans, their tendrils reaching and jumping over to the tomatoes. I remember his tenderness and devotion of caring for his garden. I remember my zinnia beds from the time I was no more than 8 or 10, preferring the “Cut and Come Again” variety of seeds, the practical me thinking this made the most sense for my toil. I remember watching as the bush beans grew from tiny little slivers to maturity. I see them picked at perfection in the old colander. I see my Dad’s handsome hands with a packet of seeds, tops folded back precisely, gently squeezing that packet open – like you would a carton of milk for pouring. He is ever so carefully and diligently shaking the seeds into the perfectly-formed troughs in his pre-sifted topsoil. His hands patting down the soil. A gentle watering through the rosette of the old galvanized pail. It is no accident that I collect antique galvanized watering pails to this day.
Time, movement and the inability to allow neglect have kept me from opening a huge bed. But I grow things every year in various small venues. I need to have living plants around me all year long, even if it is a solitary hydroponic basil plant on my kitchen window sill in the depths of Winter. I must have blooming color or at least green foliage in my sunroom. I hoard my spent geraniums at the cusp of frost into the house to endure. I await the agapanthus magically pushing a single bloom in the kitchen in the Spring. I need to see proof of life every day. To read the description of Chef Denaro’s garden in this article makes me certain of one thing. The garden of Chef Denaro lives within me.
The ongoing yearning desire and fascination with the images of growing a few basic staples and then venturing off into more, here and there seems entirely instinctive and undeniable. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and zucchini seem to be the most common core of these. Green beans, cucumber, lettuces, herbs, primarily basil, of course come next. Then a full complement of herbs, parsley, thyme, oregano, chives, lemon verbena, tarragon, cilantro, sage. Trying melons. A single Peach tree……
These days I spend my time feeling pulled from place to place to see and feel the energy and the soulfulness of the practice of simple and complex gardening. To this day, the growing of things fascinates me. I will go out of my way to observe the hanging of heavy fruit upon tomato plants. I love to ogle the offerings of farmers at any and all farmer’s markets. I have been stalking peach orchards and will now move onto apples. I find the celebration of masses of produce uplifting. It is my first instinct in the morning to step outside the door and see what is new in my own yard.
I become instantly delighted at the surprise of these three apples as found on a single tree in front of a restaurant today:
I cannot say what this is. I can not say why the fragrance of Basil sends me instantly into a swoon and to the image of a small farmer’s truck, parked in our driveway and seeing massive tied handfuls of Genovese Basil being given to my Mom 50 years ago. To be lured by the color of aubergine eggplant and to be fascinated by the countless formations and hues of heirloom tomatoes, as if each one were unique, like snowflakes. I marvel at the wonder of this all. I love to wonder at the need for people to grow things. Every time I pass by Wightman’s or drive along Lamington Road and see the fields outstretched in back of Melick’s, I am instantly drawn and a feeling of solace settles within me. And along with this is the wanderlust to see more.
I am no expert in the study of DNA. I am no geneticist. I only know what I know.
These days I am acutely aware of the declining moments of sunlight each day. When I awake, I am frustrated at the dark instead of the light. In the evening, I fret at the loss as I watch the sun drop below the tree line earlier and earlier each day. I marvel at how the difference of one month is so obvious, seemingly exponentially different. I try to mentally hold off any images of what is coming. I celebrate the arrival of apples and the continuation of peach crops that remain. The scent of a ripe tomato feeds me.
The harvest time is really still in full bloom and this feeds me. The formation of seed pods, the drying of flower heads, the splaying of seeds in their own effort to return, feed me. All growing life timelessly feeds me. And while I have never met you Chef Denaro, I know you, yes I do – as surely as the sun came up over the horizon this morning.
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Read more about my travels on the blog. Search: Positano, Taormina, Florence, Venice, Rome, Milan, Tremezzo, Paris, California………