According to various books I’ve been reading, the Italians have two words for “garden”. The first is giardino and signifies a garden that is grown for pleasure – containing flowers and other pretty things. The second word is orto and means a vegetable or kitchen garden, obviously a distant sibling of our “horticulture”.
I am making an orto. Words cannot express the sense of satisfaction that I get from that concept.
Today I planted six varieties of good old-fashioned potatoes in a bed I made from mushroom compost and the famous pea-straw. I have Nicola, Red Star, Ruby Lou, Desiree, King Edward and Kipfler. After making the bed and planting the little seed potatoes (so tiny, but bursting full of shoots already), I wrote their names on wooden stakes and hammered those into the edges so that I would remember what I planted. The result looks like we’ve had a mass tragedy in the pet department and have resorted to a mass grave.
It looks quite peculiar but I don’t care – it’s six square meters of redunant, ugly lawn that has been redeemed into something useful and interesting. Another six is being dug and prepared for seedlings (next weekend, I suspect). And then there’s just the patch around the dead Hills Hoist which will yield at least another two plots the same size. Any spare space will be filled up with melons or pumpkins.
For once, I am looking forward to Spring and Summer. And I shall spend it in my orto.
