I actually thought of this title a couple of days ago before the weather turned yet again, although I still don’t think we can call it winter, even though the night time temperatures drop below zero and the other day we actually had a sprinkling of snow, so has Spring sprung early this year?
Here at Sensone everything is starting to germinate, the daffodils are not only peering above the ground I have some in flower, which is unheard of at this time of year, last year we were recovering from a heavy snow fall. Although the locals have warned me that it is not too late.
For me although the weather has turned it is still not that cold up here, I think there has only been one day this year when we have had a ground frost. So I have the feeling that Spring is here.
Nearby the horses field the daffodils are in full bloom the beautiful yellow flower brightening up the sparse fields, dancing in the wind they always bring a smile to my face. Primroses colour the banks and if you look closely you can see my favorite flower the wild violet.
A flower that holds many memories; I remember when I was a child and I don’t know if any one else can remember, but those violet tasting sweets, such a distinct flavor but as a child and now if I can get my hands on them I love them. It also reminds me of Edna my Mother in Law it is her favorite flower so it always brings me closer to her and as I smile at the flower I am sure that I can feel the warmth of her smile in recognition.
Spring is such a busy time for us at Sensone and there is always so much to do. But this year I like to feel I am ahead of the game, I have already dug over my vegetable garden and covered it in horse manure (something I have loads of!). Yeh! The greenhouse is almost finished, I won’t remind you all of how long it has taken us to build it but we just have to make the doors now and then I will be able to get inside of it.
I don’t know if any of you have watch “The Cube” on English TV, well my greenhouse looks a little like that, a huge great big cube stuck on the side of the mountain, I am sure it will look less conspicuous once there are plants inside and the banks have recovered from all the digging.
All I have to do now is to flatten the terrace, remove all of the stones, dig it over and put on more manure, I don’t think that this space will be brilliant for the veggies this year but who knows. I already have some of it dug over and it bears my raspberry plants (I so love my fresh raspberry’s) and I have just brought two gooseberry bushes and a ribes (not sure what it is called in English but it is those small red berries that they serve with puddings in posh restaurants.
So fingers crossed that this year the neighbours goats don’t enter the garden. Last year they trashed the place. Between the herd of about 100 goats and not forgetting Coco my little pony who kept escaping and dug up all of my potatoes, I didn’t see a return on the fruits of my labour. But I know that this year is going to be different.
We believe that we have fixed the fencing so that the goats can’t enter and the pony cannot escape although we will only know for sure later in the year if he gets a whiff of the scent of a female horse in season. Last year we lost him for three whole days before by chance we heard that he had travelled all the way to Tiglio and was now encamped with his new girlfriend. Stallions can be quite a handful when they want to be. So once again fingers crossed.
We have also been busy pulling up some of the old dried wood that clutters our forest floor, we have so much dead dried wood we will not have to worry about not having enough, which is great as we only have wood central heating here. But the house is always hot which is great. It is really hard work harvesting the woods from the forest and I really don’t think people understand what good value they get when they buy wood from any of the wood merchants around here.
First the trees have to be cut down (although here at Sensone Mother Nature has done a lot of that for us), then they are loaded onto a trailer for delivery to the wood merchant lower down, where they will be unloaded, then the wood merchant will cut to size and reload onto the Ape or trailer for delivery to the customer, whereby they will handled once again when they are left at the customers house. Sometimes the customer is lucky and the person delivering will stack the wood neatly away, if not they will have to be handled again,(we always stack the wood away for our friends). There’s a lot of work that goes into those little pieces of wood you throw on the fire each day.
Once again though I think we all do it because we love working in the forest, for me it is about returning my forest back into a healthy growing area, the forest at Sensone haven’t been worked for over 35 years, so at the moment it is not a healthy forest although we have been working hard to cultivate certain areas back to health. But we have a long way to go.
This year I want to concentrate on the really old Chestnut trees, so hopefully under the watchful eye of Danielle I will learn how to prune and save these old trees. The Kings and Queens of my forest but I will keep you posted on this as we go along.
The next nice day we have I am going to be planting my onions, Sergio (my neighbour has given me the bulbs and has told me that the moon is good and now is the time to get them in the ground). I cannot tell you how much enjoyment I get from watching this grow and as I use a lot of onions in my cooking I am hoping this will be a good year.
Nigel and Diane gave me a Wisteria plant last year and as the winter set in all the leaves fell off and I was left with a very sorry stem, however, I am really pleased to say that it too has started to germinate and there are new growths appearing along that very sorry stem, so it looks like it has survived the winter.
At Sensone I am trying to grow everything organically, and when I say organically I don’t just mean without using pesticides and stuff like that. Every thing is either given to me as a present or I grow it from seed. So sometimes it can take rather a long time for me to really see the fruit of my labours, especially with the goats and Coco.
But already the roses, the lilies and all the other plants massacred last year are starting to sprout and recover, so watch this space Spring is definitely in the air, I can reclaim my reception room which was the make shift greenhouse and my thoughts now go to Spring Cleaning – oh no!.
article by Sensone