When I took this house with a garden back in March, it was sudden. It was all a piazza; chance meetings, a tenant who wanted out of a lease who a friend of a friend happened to know, rushed appointments, sudden decisions. In three days I went from a wannabe resident to someone with a lease on a house in Orvieto. I gazed in quiet horror at the long list of collaborating circumstances that would have to occur in order to render what I had just launched as anything short of insane.
Looking back over my life so far, I seem to have found a canyon that has invited me to leap about every fifteen years. There are, of course, small leaps one must take, almost hourly. But the big ones that involve lots of untangling and getting used to unfamiliar circumstances, those have been spaced like landmarks that are instantly recognizable even though I’d never seen any of them before. They always feel crazy and they always feel right. This one is an extreme of both; totally crazy and undeniably right.
I don’t quite understand, nor necessarily accept, the notion of destiny, but if ever anything has felt destined it was moving here and all the interlocking parts that have lead up to it and made it possible. I don’t really mean personal destiny, I mean a knit-together destiny where entrances and exits are all perfectly timed to weave previously unrelated plots together into an elegant pattern. Watching this, participating in it, has been like swimming in a huge, calm, warm lake of affection. The notion of “obstacle” has repeatedly dissolved into inspiration.
But we carry with us our minds and our bodies, and our minds have habits and our bodies have limits.
These first weeks began as I turned the key in the gate’s lock and heard no click. I’d not been receiving electric bills, so immediately assumed the power had been turned off due to nonpayment. Claudia had generously given me a ride from Fiumicino, and after I turned the key for the third time and announced my conclusion, she gave the gate a little push. It squeaked a welcome and swung open. Ah yes. This is not retirement I’m entering, it’s a new phase of living. Stay awake. Pay attention.
That same evening, I swept the paved areas in the yard and grimaced at the weeds. I had cleared weeds in April, spread plastic over the bare areas, then ran out of both plastic and time. I leaned on the broom, sighed and tried to imagine what plants might go where. Two weeks later I had installed a garden. It was nothing like magic. It was many hours of hard work. But it was work without frustration or annoyance, and that truly was magic.
Six hours of one afternoon were spent uprooting an oleander bush that had been unwisely planted, or allowed to grow, under the apricot tree. The two were forever in competition. The oleander never bloomed for lack of sun, was always spreading upwards into the apricot to discover light. The apricot just got huger. I took the side of the apricot, but felt bad for the oleander.
On the other hand, nothing was growing by the garden wall. Most walls here have such things as oleanders planted just inside to send a cascade of leaf and flower over the top and into the street. So, I decided the best resolution was to move the oleander to a spot near the wall.
The soil here is full of large stones and old pieces of terra cotta from former roofs and who-knows-what. The roots of the oleander had wrapped themselves around whatever of these they encountered; it became my job to reveal them, unwrap what I could, carefully cut what I couldn’t, and keep digging. When the plant finally came lose and I took it over to the hole I’d prepared for it hours before, it fit like it belonged there. A week of copious watering, the oleander showed vigorous new growth. I hope for rich bunches of red blossoms, but will be happy with any flower at all.
Alla Rupe will be a bit different from Postmark, Orvieto. Despite what I tried to tell myself, October to May was a long vacation that planted the seeds for something more permanent. This, now, is the beginning of something more permanent. Outcomes from this vantage are always mysterious. That’s the fun of it.
Thanks for tagging along.