A moment
To Italians, everything has its moment. The San Remo Song Festival is in February, May Day is in May, weddings are traditionally in June, tomatoes are ripe to eat in the Summer months, September is gorgeous, and The Virgin Mary was told of her imminent Happy Event in December… a quick eighteen days before the arrival of the Messiah. Swift work there. Between these and other hallmarks on the calendar, you can pretty much do as you please. Easy-peasy. The Italians go shopping or head to the sea. Here at Il Poggiolo, we abide by the seasons, too. And the season now, as February bows out to March, is garden prep—Spring Cleaning & Pruning at the ol’ Poggiolo corral.
What fun!
This is a major occupation for both You and me. We divide the labor to conquer. You does the Snipping & Clipping; I do all the rest short of calling in a bulldozer, including picking up debris after il Dottore You. Our gardening act is somewhat akin to un ballerino in a pair of Crocs cavorting around a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers pushing a loaded wheelbarrow. Nonetheless, the garden prep requires Time & Energy… and Fortitude… of all of the participants. Even the Dogs. The Canine Crew has a supervisory position, like a UN Observer in a war zone, so they can watch, make mental notes, get in a bit of sunbathing at the Scenic Overlook, or bark at aliens passing by beyond the boundary of the garden’s fence.
I forgot to mention Worry in the previous list with the other three. I start in July. Hits me right in the gut, usually provoked by a Spring-like sunny, breezy day, which is not our typical Summer weather. Heat, haze, no air. The sinking sensation repeats fairly regularly throughout the succeeding months. The stress level is compounded by the overly long Italian Holiday Season… five weeks if you chuck the religious holidays at the first of November: Ognisanti e Il Giorno per i Morti. If you can’t bear to chuck, taking after You, WHO NEVER THROWS ANYTHING AWAY, then double the holiday weeks to ten. Yes, a near endless maratona di feste.
So, tra-la-la, here we are on the eve of putting the garden to rights after the Fall/Winter hiatus. It would be cool if the weather would decide to collaborate. Why is that? Why, when one has a Task List written on two pages… single-spaced… to knock off ASAP, does the weather act so contrary? Spray for rain and onwards to occasional bouts of heavy downpours lasting just shy of fifteen minutes, thick grey hanging cloud cover when misting or manifesting other phenomena, winds of various velocities, and the darn cold. None of it is at all conducive to yard work. The weather did abate being shitty and in time for You’s weekend arrival last Thursday. On Friday, we went equipment shopping. We came home with a limb shredder. It was disassembled to fit in the trunk… You refers to it as the crawl space… of my new black MG sports model car. A $2,000 investment… discounted. Here’s a photo…
Why the investment? Well, here’s another photo…
A kind neighbor and a Codiponte Good Friend came with his gas-powered chainsaw… an item I am deathly afraid of. My Hardware Store Guy said it was good to be afraid. One can lose a limb and one not belonging to a tree… and promptly got to work. I steadied the ladder. At one point, though, the Good Friend got a little too ambitious. As he aggressively sawed away on a huge branch, it kicked out from the whirling chains of the saw, and as it fell, it managed to make a deep gash in my Good Friend’s left hand. The one which was holding the huge branch. I took one look at the localized blood & guts and said… Pronto Soccorso, subito! He would have none of it. I fetched disinfectant and paper towels. My Good Friend stood and stared at his maimed hand. Shocked, I suppose. I dabbed and bathed and swaddled. Then, my Good Friend went home to have his wife play a better Florence Nightingale. Guess what? He was back in fifteen minutes and got on with sawing. When the piles of branches and limbs… from the trees only… my Good Friend said he was done for the day, bid me a Ciao, and off he went again for home. Took his chainsaw with him. Whew.
In the few sunny days afterward, I vigilantly and manually and slowly dealt with the piles of my Good Friend’s handy work. My new ones were for firewood, another for kindling, and a third for burning. And with that, we have come to why I made the $2,000 investment. Burning is now frowned upon, though it is still quite legal unless otherwise prohibited, usually from June to September. Oh, it has nothing to do with pollution but with forest fires. A major concern in these parts. When it’s hot, it don’t rain. In my short career of seventy-three years, I have been in tornadoes, hurricanes, and an earthquake, too!!! and I know… ruthlessly… I DO NOT EVER WANT TO BE IN A RAGING FIRE. I’ve seen Canadair turboprops and helicopters, the latter dangling enormous buckets full of dripping sea water pulled from the Mediterranean fifteen minutes flying time… swoop right over Il Poggiolo to put out fires burning furiously on the mountain opposite Codiponte. Three times in our sixteen years here! Let us not forget: LA 2025. I rest my case.
It’s a stupid machine. I was ramming bunches of branches… nothing poetic about it, just eager to get the job done… and the thing would cough and sputter and grumble dead to a STOP from the overload. I quickly realized its modus operandi was one stick at a time. So be it. The thing responded by aptly ingesting the single branch, grinding into something a bit more than sawdust, and spitting it out towards the machine’s base. Wonderful! You will later redistribute the woodsy stuff on all of our potted plants and elsewhere. Next weekend, weather permitting.
Last Friday, we busted our butts. Rain was predicted for Saturday. And it did. You poked around the garden Snipping & Clipping in his Crocs. I manned the machine in my New Balance trainers. Then, with another recent purchase, a battery-powered and mamma-sized chainsaw, I went on with the work. The mamma-saw was perfect for cutting thick branches & limbs for firewood. Trucked the lot down to the cantina. It took ten trips with the wheelbarrow. Did the same with the large pile of kindling… to the cantina! Swept the terrace of the Scenic Overlook of sawdust. Stored my tools and the ladder and went inside for a well-earned non-alcoholic beer. Offered one to You. I got an… Euw, ick!