The phrase that begins the parade is "now that xe scumisiemo qualcossa seems to make this garden," translated "it is time to start to do something about that garden." This phrase is the prelude odyssey, the announcement of the epic, the signal of distress that is about to fall on our house.
To give a better idea, however, must be first created a little 'atmosphere.
As you know by now, my family and their animals living in Lanzano, a remote farming community of origin, which is a perfect example of "civil death" of the Veneto. It should be noted, however, that we do not live in Lanzano center. We
out.
In the middle of fields.
I mean, if you live outside the church could not keep geese guard; the noisy happy family would soon be expelled, the pollution of the town increase exponentially within a week, due to continuous movement in the car that my mom is forced to do.
So we live in the countryside. Large garden, these geese guard the nests of wasps everywhere and, in the early days, even a decent round of sewer rats-ie big rats-which was promptly cut off from the gun cat patrolling the property.
addition to this, a large vegetable garden.
This is the greatest pride of my father: his beloved garden, when he speaks in the light up the eyes, where he spends most sultry days to sow seed, with which haunts the lives of three children by warning that the peppers are drying up and so launching the implied order of "go to him drink."
this garden, it should be noted, is beautiful. It has been edited, designed, planted, plowed for years. An army of gardeners has intervened several times to restore it, creating delightful pergolas corridors between the flowerbeds and roses and changing or reinforcing the poles on which they climb the bean plants.
Two clearings of land are occupied by crops of wild flowers that my mother-curator of the aesthetic whole-seed in the summer. The grape that makes sweet spot in the fall, and strawberry beds on either side of the color in summer, fading from green to shades of red. In the winter off, but when covered with snow looks like a secret garden, magically.
and spring, the problem.
The first sunny day, usually with a temperature in excess of those twelve or thirteen degrees because of the cold out in the garden to prevent the dormant part of a farmer on Sunday. On the morning of that day, while children are in school, partly an exploration of the pater familias. Armed with a cup of coffee after breakfast watching the swan was from the garden and shaking her head, then do a full tour of the garden began to plot how to regain control of the situation Ortobotanico home. His wife, worried and also of his army-green cup of coffee, the cup without handle because of an unfortunate fall from dishwasher-, looks through the door window, foretelling woe.
However, it is only during lunch which is dropped the bomb, "now that xe scumissiemo qualcossa par to make that garden."
Looks of terror are moving around the table.
The "par qualcossa to the garden" is a phrase with a single translatable propostizione in Italian, however, it is reported through three different phrases.
The first meaning, the more explicit, with which one can explain such great threat is "we must start working in the garden. " Then arm themselves with pitchforks, shovels, rubber boots and old sweaters, to spend a few hours to shake the earth, uprooting the old plants, weeding and tilling the soil, since in this campaign Venetian seems that the stones keep the rate of reproduction dramatic and consistent. Legend has it that they are real potatoes, forgotten by the farmer-and annoyed by this omission-tramutatesi to break stones in the plow blades, forcing the hapless farmer plowing fields by hand. The issue is resolved then working in the garden, his hands in the mud and the earth under the nails, all in complete silence, except for exceptional insults to the stones that prevent the activity.
However, this year the task of eradication has reached record levels: never, in fact, had seen dad uproot trees eggplant.
Trees, I'm serious. The seedlings
innocent, having been eradicated at the end of the season, had continued its miraculous growth, probably by absorbing all the nutrients on the land that was intended for the young shoots to grow for the next decade.
The second meaning is sowing.
horticultural activities may seem innocent, but it is not. Sowing is earlier careful planning: where to place the plants? The criteria for placement (although "accommodation" then is absolutely not the appropriate term: intercropping or rotation of the seedlings would be more appropriate) are various: affect appearance (yellow peppers, eggplant purple, blending in with?), strategic (how heavy a basket of tomatoes over the radicchio? Chicory is then planted in the border less distant from the front door), temporal, cultural (the Venetian is the product of peasant agricultural proverbs such as "Saint Valentin ortzin if the verse," if you you a bon Bisaro, in semena Febraro "," ventisá March, April temperature, farmers, fortunes, "which are repeated at the wheel during periods of sowing). Then obviously affects the biological and scientific side, and finally the war: the war against pests has never ended.
seed following fertilization, and here I'd rather draw a veil.
Last but not least important of the three sentences included the word peasant is "tidied up the garden as they should, now we need to keep in this state."
This is not easy.
Not only plants grow many second-and-me moving during the night itself. But the stones proliferate, weeds invade, give the flower beds. We must therefore move to tidy up every day, tear, cut, and of course before they collect the fruits of hard work to be eaten, grow immeasurably up to five pounds of weight and become inedible, or falling miserably holes filling of insects and rot. It should also be made
guard because geese do not decide that the afternoon snack consisting of fresh radish.
This happened last year, when he was still not familiar with our pens. The radicchio was lovingly grown, Dad had grown from seeds. Small and tender shoots take root and leaf of the embryos developed.
had been planted, ruining vertebrae and spines, covered with towels and protected as a helpless baby. Terrified by the stomach killing of our birds to watch, we kept under constant control of the garden, worried that at any moment the long work of father would disappear in the bill of two geese.
Seeing that the couple was walking in the garden without showing little interest in chicory, we relax. By now they had become radicchioni chicory, prosperous clumps of lush foliage, thought too large to induce the webbed into temptation. Dumb us.
One afternoon, Dad was walking. She looked the grass-plot of the protected, and found nothing. Tabula rasa. A clean sweep. Only two large white feathered duck, unable to stand up to a full stomach, they looked happy, they had waited for the harvest became abundant, and then engage in a satisfying night binge.
And we call them stupid ...
