FuoriBorgo

where the wild strawberries grow

The early spring berries and cherries are still timidly ripening in the unusually cool weather – very late in the season for them.  They're smaller than usual this year, and tricky to find: one must know the places where the wild strawberries grow (hiding in the grass amidst the wild thyme in bloom!), and which trees to hike to for cherries.  By now, their locations are mapped in the history of our family.

Spring in and spring out since moving here, we've gone seeking the berries.  It was first me and the two little boys, then the older boys on their own or with friends on some years - a bunch of little monkey-boys climbing up the cherry trees.  Then brothers with little sister in tow, she holding the basket for them.  Some years we've come back with bucketfuls of berries, others there have been none.  Some years the birds and forest critters have got there first.  This year, a convalescent Rebecca (it's been a long and tough winter for her!) proposed we go berry-picking one morning, and she confidently marched right out: by now she knows exactly where to go.

We came back from the berry hunt with a meagre crop, but fortunately, the strawberries in the garden are beginning to ripen, and we added those to the tiny, fragrant wild strawberries and the minuscule cherries - and a dollop of our elder flower syrup for extra wilderness sweetness, and some custard for extra filling for the starving teens, and we had berries for dessert.

March, the warrior

March was called Martius by the Romans, from the god Mars, and it received the name "Hlyd Monath", i.e. "loud" or "stormy month" from the Anglo-Saxons
(The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady)

Our March didn't come in as a lion, but rather as a Roman warrior, with strong winds, sleet, snow, downpours ... oh, what a week!

 

When we took a walk in the woods yesterday, the sky gloomy gray but quiet for the day - all around us was the rushing sound of rainwater, now flowing in streams, brooks and other watercourses, gushing down the steep hillsides in temporary waterfalls.

And then they came in hordes, in their muddy armor, riding their loud horses, racing through the woods like March warriors of our times, invading the peace of the day.

March wreath

It's a minimalist wreath, made with the meagre makings that nature offers us this time of year - March, a month when winter sometimes likes to linger on, but spring awakens.

I twisted some winter prunings from the grapevines into a ring, then wove in the very first spring buds that in our bare and leafless woods are timidly beginning to appear.

They're wild plum buds.  I'm no arborist, but I do know they're plums because in the years we've been living here, I've learned to recognize each and every tree around us.  And I know that these are the budding March blossoms from the trees that will give us plums in August - the fruits that my children (and nonno last year!) have picked and snacked on each summer since we moved here.

Happy March, and happy beginning to a new week!

February wreath - I'll be making a wreath a month this year, using some spur-of-the-moment inspiration on whatever nature offers me at that moment.

just now

It's warm enough to be outside playing and writing with twigs in winter mud, with no coats on!

(Action Pack giveaway is open until tomorrow)

foraging with nonno

Yellow, red and purple - such are the colors of the wild plums this summer, which are growing in spectacular abundance.  There were almost none last year, but I've learned that each year is unique, and that trees, in particular wild ones, don't produce consistently.  One year there may be an extraordinary production of figs (as it was the case last summer) or plums (this summer), and the following year - and maybe the year after - these same trees may produce almost nothing.   Why?  I can't tell, but I like to think that trees know how to do things with care, at a slow pace: they save up for a few seasons to produce spectacular fruits, and then take a rest.

The yellow, red and purple plums that adorn our woods like little cheerful lanterns were not overlooked by nonno, during a visit my parents paid us recently.  He spotted something, and then got up from the chair in the garden with surprising speed, asked Rebecca to get a basket, and climbed up the steep and slippery hill - disregarding his 80+ years, his knees weakened from surgery, the brambles, and his daughter's anxious concern (I did manage to get him to bring one of the tomato canes in lieu of a walking stick, though, and he was glad for it).

From down below, I watched my father and my daughter forage together wild plums: he reaching up to the taller branches, she filling and carrying the basket, over and over.

They came back with abundant booty.  Then nonno sat down to take a rest, and asked "Shall we bake a plum tart?"

And I did.

finally the beach!

Yesterday, I:

-    made sandwiches
-    dug out towels and swimsuits
-    wore pink sunglasses
-    drove to the beach
-    lay on the sand soaking in the blue sky above
-    swam in the cool crystal-clear water for the first time this year
-    forgave spring for three months of abysmal weather

catching up on spring

Oh, how I wish this title meant that spring had finally caught up with us!  Alas, it hasn't – still no spring weather, and with the summer solstice just round the corner, we're running out of spring time.  So, we are catching up on her, doing all those spring activities that we've been putting off, determined to enjoy these last spring days, rain or shine.

How has spring treated you this year? (Has it treated you at all?)

seasons, gracefully

It is always amazing to me how the Lunaria annua/honesty, a hardy springtime plant with bright purplish-pink flowers, thick green leaves, and strong hearty stems, can become something ethereal, with brittle-sand colored stems and translucent oval seed-pods late in autumn (we gathered ours back here).

Yesterday, as I picked the vigorous and colorful stem, I marvelled at how delicate and yet beautiful and grand it would become in its final season.  And I found myself hoping that my own autumn would be that way, too:  graceful, like honesty in the fall.

wisteria at dusk

As night started swallowing everything in darkness, the mysterious indigo luminosity of the wisteria vines at the end of the trail led me to an abandoned water tank, where frogs were singing to celebrate the end of the day.

hints of spring

I spent the weekend nursing the tail end of a virus that's been bugging me for quite awhile.  What worked better than any cure for my body was the cure for my soul that came straight from nature: the warmth of the sun, the bare tree branches budding and the beautiful luminosity of the day - hints of spring, and the best thing imaginable to clear out some of the cobwebs of winter.