Living in San Giorgio di Pesaro and Kingston

Can you spot the difference? (no marks for white sky verses blue sky).

Yesterday the large “Tree of Paradise” (Alianthus altissima) was chopped down. The tree was slowly dying and when there was a strong wind branches would come down. So decided it was time to get rid of it and try to plant something in its place.

We did not come back from the Fano Festival of Flowers empty handed. After spending the summer watering the pots on the terrace Bill has decided to take global warming seriously and is seeking out plants with minimum water requirements. The result is our first bowl of cacti with an assurance that more will follow.

Our pots of geraniums did not do well this year. So finally we decided to throw them away and on emptying the soil discovered the problem – chafer grubs. They are, as you can see, horrible looking things – fat and if you are a bird very succulent. In three large pots we discovered over 60 grubs. The grub of the chafer beetle survives by munching on roots of plants and grass. Chemical control is effective but we had only treated the soil once and obviously this wasn’t enough.

Having failed again to maintain a lawn in part of the garden we have decided to create another large shrub bed and minimise the amount of lawn. Once I started to dig I discovered why grass may not have been growing – builder’s rubble. When creating the initial shrub bed I had been told that the builder had buried a lot of rubble in the garden. I had assumed I had found it and excavated it when creating the first bed. However, it seems that the lake of rubble goes further than I first supposed and I can now look forward to a few days heavy digging.

While the hot dry Summer has killed of some plants and part of the lawn it has also meant our first harvest of grapes. We planted the vine (white muscat) last year and this year we have 4 or 5 bunches of small but very sweet grapes.

Bill planted some courgettes (zucchini) in the garden. They have done very well. Unfortunately he didn’t pick them while they were the size of a small courgette. He left them a couple of days and they had turned into small marrows. In the picture the courgette on the left is a medium sized courgette, the white bottle is a litre bottle of milk. The remaining “large” courgettes” are what we have harvested two days later.

We are now expanding our recipes for cougettes. We have had stuffed courgettes, ratatouille and courgette risotto and are thinking of writing the book on “100 things to do with a courgette”. 

Last year created a gravel pathway round part of the garden. This year I finished the task by adding a gravel terrace and a series of steps. So it is now possible to walk “round the garden”. I want to plant some roses and aromatic plants round the terrace and up the stops so that it will be a pleasant place to sit. However, as it is too late in the year to plant roses I have decided to wait until autumn.

A neighbour has lots of chopped up pine trees lying in his land and so I have asked him if I can take a couple of logs to use as economic seating.

The plant in the picture is an Echium and since I saw it in a gardening book I thought it would look good in our garden. It is a Mediterranean plant and thrives in hot dry conditions. Believing in global warming I thought starting to get Mediterranean plants for the garden would be good future planning. Tried to order it from local garden centres but got no joy. Then discovered a garden centre in Toscany who deliver. So ordered one from them at a cost of 7 euros plus postage. The postage came to 13 euros and so I am now the proud owner of a 20 euro plant. However, if it looks as good as the picture it will be money well spent.