I don’t know what it is about Italy, but I do know that Italy has rubbed off on me. You see, each year we spend many hours on our Italian balcony (on days whose numbers are dictated by the phase of the moon) watching tanned and toned Enrico wrestle the soil beneath us into a vegetable garden, an orto of monumental proportions, lettuces here, beans there, zucchini flowering at the perifery, tomatoes snug in their little tripods.
So this year Martha bought the lot adjacent to our California home. I can tell you why. It was a garden, an orto of similar proportions to Enrico’s. It has a shed, a chicken coop, a watering system (disconnected, its tawdry tubes proudly erect, clacking together in the evening breezes). Grapes of an indeterminate type tangle tantalizingly on the trellis.
So this morning, the first morning of our ownership, I, like Enrico, turned the soil by hand in the corner of the garden that still had shade. I felt my flab ripple. Just a little. I felt the sun on my ample forehead. It was hot.
But, for a moment I was a gardener. Or at least I was the one who did the earth moving. Martha will plant the seeds. It is a reversal of the usual dictates of gender.
I will soon be picking little things to eat out of my garden. Or, that is the, ahem, dream. Actually, it is supposed to be over 100 degrees for a while, which means pretty much everything in and near the garden will likely commit suicide, except for the gardeners and probably a few sassy gophers.
But it’s a start. By the time we pay somebody to build a fence, fix the watering system, and trim the fruit trees I’ll have so many tomatoes in my garden I’ll have to start selling them.
Anybody want a $500 tomato? Eating like an Italian doesn’t come cheap you know.