ON STONY GROUND.

23 April 2015

Our trip to Bologna has been postponed until May as Joel had a relapse this week. After finally agreeing to see a doctor he discovers that he’s been ill for nearly 4 weeks because his sinuses and bronchial tubes have been having a fine old time harboring a massive infection. Now, after several days of antibiotics, cortisone, steroids and an amazing daily potion of B vitamins combined with natural remedies, Joel has returned to the living and I have binned my nurses uniform. Not before have a good bitch and moan about how if he’d gone to the doctor when I first asked him to, he would have saved himself a week of feeling like shit and me a week of extra work. Then, using my baser instincts I activated his Jewish Guilt Button and got us booked into a luxury hotel for 4 days this coming week.

We first heard about this hotel several years ago but found its in-season rates to be so laughably exorbitant that we never gave it a second thought. But it’s off -season now so I figured I’d check it out. Sure enough, although still on the high end, rates are a third of the price. So this week you can reach us at Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, a mere hour and a half drive from here and where I, too, will be taken care of.

But back to the doctor’s office. There are several MD’s in the village all of them good, but this one is considered the best. He’s the equivalent of an American Medicare or British National Health doctor. In other words, free. Not even a co-pay. He arrives at 10 a.m., by which time the waiting room is already full, the first patients having secured their seats by 8. We arrive at 9:30 and join the standing line amidst the bandages, splinted, one-eyed, coughing, sneezing locals. Joel qualifies as one of the half-dead. Our dear friend Luana waits with us for 3 hours. Luana likes to act as our translator in these situations, which is hilarious as she speaks not one word of English.

But here’s the great thing: everyone waited with such equanimity. Chatter and laughter punctuating wheezes and sneezes. Unlike big city waiting rooms where no-one makes eye contact except with the ubiquitous TV monitor inevitably spewing news of alternative deaths via Isis, Ebola, nuclear war, or merely having the life squeezed our of you by one of the 1000’s of boa constrictors which are now, along with pythons, populating Florida.

So, how lovely to spend yesterday digging in 30 plants in a new bed that will perfume the air on the way to the clothesline. Among them, rosemary, laurel, lavender and roses. How amazing to inspect the new fig tree and find a baby fig birthing on every branch.

In case you are new to this blog, or perhaps have forgotten earlier descriptions of our patch of land, scroll back up to the opening photo.

Underneath this surface is rock and shale. When I work it with my male-peggio (bad-worse) tool, sparks fly. I can manage half an hour of this which will reward me with a hole deep enough to add soil and a plant. That’s right, one plant. This type of sterile soil, and I use the word ‘soil’ ironically, is called galestra which has a nice alien-planet ring to it. Obviously, when I’m making a large border, or bed, which I am this week, I have the ground excavated or, if planting succulents, which have shallow roots, I make do with a jack-hammer.

There’s something deeply satisfying about this ongoing duel with the land. Perhaps the I’ve-met-my-match element is comforting. I, too, can be a bit flinty on the surface but keep at me long enough and I’ll yield. To see everything I’ve planted in this stubborn ground flourishing, in spite of the locals shaking their heads at my ideas, is an example of what vision and perseverance can harvest.

Of course, one has to accept the limitations at the outset. No use considering lilacs or lindens, peonies or lilies or any of the thousands of cultured creatures a garden of rich soil can bring forth. But isn’t that life? Accepting one’s limitations and making the most of the truly possible? I was going to say that gardening gives me hope, but actually I don’t believe in hope. Hope seems to me to have a lot in common with luck; two unrealistic notions which imply that somehow, without having to lift a finger, everything is possible. For me, the greater idea is possibility, itself, which insists on us taking responsibility for that which we want to achieve.

I want to achieve a humble place of beauty here, and it’s possible if I accept the limitations of what can grow in the terrain. It’s a waste of time to hope for anything else. And in that regard, I am finally give up hope for becoming a different person. I will never be an exotic, hothouse plant. But it is possible for me to chip away at the stony ground of my defenses in order to let m y native gifts flourish.

Which brings back once more to the doctor. It strikes me, that early on in his medical studies he made a decision based on his native talents: an ability to take his time, a sense of humor, a genuine compassion for the sick, a willingness to go without lunch in order to attend to every person waiting, and a respect for the humble roots of community. No rarified specialist, with its attendant fame and fortune, this country doctor toils every day to nurture the health of the locals upon which stony ground we survive.