I have mentioned that I am not a gardener. My mother is a gardener. She can make anything grow. I can make anything wilt.My husband is not a gardener either, although his mother was another gardener who could make anything grow. She could snap off a small branch of any plant, take it home, stick it into a pot of dirt and it would grow into a beautiful, healthy plant. I think there's magic involved in there somewhere. If I stick a twig into some dirt it just dries up and dies...
So, in short, the green thumb gene seems to have skipped a generation. Only time will tell if our sons have inherited the magic touch.
Nonetheless, every summer we plant a vegetable garden. Not only do we boldly undertake this enterprise knowing full well that we have no talent for it. We also lack a viable water supply at our house.
We live outside of town, amid the olive trees (see blog title) and city water does not reach us. Nor does the sewage system, but perhaps that is best left for another blog post... Anyway, we have a cistern and every so often the big water truck has to come and fill it up with what they call "undrinkable" water, or water "not fit for drinking." Meaning, full of microbes and bacteria and all kinds of who-knows-what nasty stuff. So it's only good for washing the dishes and taking a shower with your mouth tightly closed. We have to buy our drinking water in bottles.
Last year my husband decided that we would drill for a well in the front yard. He hoped to hit an underground vein of fresh water. We found salty water. Each time they drill a hole it costs about €800. So, he decided to drill another hole. Not my idea of a good investment of our meager funds, but by the time I caught wind of hole number 2, it was already happening. Of course, this time we got saltier water. Hmmm...
If you're interested in seeing what an €800 hole in the ground looks like, check out my story about how my son got his foot stuck in it.
The cistern water is limited and expensive so we don't use it for the garden. But we have €1600 of "free" salty water out in the front yard, so that's what we use to irrigate the garden.
This year, who knows why, we only planted tomatoes. They sure are pretty, aren't they? I wonder how much they cost each if you divide €1600 by the number of tomatoes produced per day...
7 comments:
Your tomatoes are well in advance of ours! Wells are certainly an expensive option, we are lucky enough to have one and we use it for watering the garden, the only costs being electricity for the pump.
I hope your tomatoes taste like they are worth 1600 Euro. Thank you for the idea about the cocoa powder. I will have to try that. I have so much zucchini left, that I see another batch of muffins in our near future.
Tia
PS - I am totally jealous of your 'about me' description. My husband and I still talk about how much we loved being in Italy, even though it was only two weeks.
OH, HAHAHAHA! I'm no good at growing things either....but your tomatoes are LOVELY! Well (hehe) Done!
Your tomatoes look lovely and are so much father along than ours, so bravo, salty water or not, something is working. We started planting a garden last year, nothing fancy but it makes me happy. My mother was like yours. She could make anything grow. Why can't that be passed along genetically? Oh well.
Stopping by from SITS and following too!
LindyLou - longterm savings was what we had in mind when we had the holes drilled, but it didn't quite work out as planned!
Glugle - visiting Italy is different from living in Italy! But, it is a lovely country and I'm not complaining! Let me know how the muffins turn out.
BJ Mama - glad I'm not the only one!
CityMouse - well, it's very hot down here in southern Italy, so things probably come into season earlier in general. Thanks for following me! You made my day! :-)
goodness, I had no idea there were places where drinking water was not brought to the houses by the local council!
Francesca, can I assume that you live in...northern Italy? We're in the wild west down here in the heel of the boot! ;-)
Post a Comment