The three P's of wisdom in rural Italy

As things start taking on a semblance of normality, there is occasionally the time to think. Make no mistake, there is still plenty to do before we could say the house is "phase 1 finished":

- light fixtures to replace the blatant wires and bare bulbs
- office file cabinet to eliminate the iceberg-pile of stuff in the corner
- patio paving and loggia
- garden differentiable from the nearby forest so that it actually looks like we're in control, not the plants (weeds)
- TV moved from temporary location with frenzy of wires to permanent wall fixture
- furniture in the lounge(s) to replace picnic fold-up chairs, Marty Crane specials, and bare carpet
- kitchen drawers to reduce risk of back problems from having to bend over for everything
- proper storage space for tools so that we can actually get in and out of our back door without tripping over something

... and so on.

Basically what I'm finding is that there are 3 main ingredients for living contentedly here, or anywhere, for that matter - planning, passion, and patience. (OK, "passion" may be a bit poetic, but it was alliterative.)

The prime example is the garden. We planted vegetables back in April/May, romantically envisioning the bulbous onions, fabled beanstalks, and Popeye spinach adorning our daily tavola. Indeed. But such is the fertility of the soil here, and such was the dampness of the spring, that our garden positively exploded, burgeoning with green growth everywhere to such an extent that I'd barely finished the hacking through the rash-inducing, sweat-provoking, jungle-like growth on the bottom slope that I had to start again on the flat surfaces on the top (since they'd shot up in the interim like speeded-up home videos).

The vegetable garden? Forget it. It was a tangled mass of stalks and vines and leaves and grass and weeds within a few weeks of planting. It was so overgrown that on several occasions I simply turned away from it and banished it from my thoughts (at least temporarily) because it was so overwhelming I didn't know where to start. Eventually I came back to it, of course, and did some weeding, just enough to be able to recognize the vegetables from the feral growths that had invaded the place.

In the meantime, of course, while I turned my attention to the vegetables and my back on the remainder of the garden, the parts I ignored took the opportunity to enjoy a growth spurt. When I looked back at them again, it was as if I'd never even tended them in the first place.

Demoralising. When we stopped and commiserated with each other, we came to the realization that we just tried to do too much. We weren't ready for the vegetable garden, to give it the numerous hours per week that it needs. We hadn't planned adequately on what we wanted to plant and harvest, when we were going to do so, and where we were going to put them. And after a hellish year of renovations and nomadic living when everything was such an effort, we wanted it to happen too quickly.

Well, guess what? Everything is still an effort, and it'll always be. The garden will come in time, but only in it's own time, and after we've put in the time. And got the blisters and callouses on our lily-white hands.

Only if we embrace the process too, not just the end result. Without the passion going into it, the results will be lacklustre.

The same is true for the rest of the house and the property. Ditto for living here - the language, the friendships, the life...

It reminds me of an article I read some years ago about a young Yahoo! turk who had reflected that something that took two years to come to fruition (in business) was way too long. Six months was basically the edge of his time horizon. As a forty-something at the time, I had to smile wryly at the impetuous impatience. Such is the world in some minds.

What I'm finding is that things that endure take a little longer. And they don't have definitive measuring units - they simply take as long as they take. And there's no place better to learn that lesson than out here in rural Italy, where this concept is baked into the earth and infused in the veins of the locals that surround me.

I'm coming to terms with it, and calming down as a result. The key is to keep planting one foot forward, and if you get knocked backward - as we have innumerable times already and will be in the future - to step up and plant it again. With conviction. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Deliberately. Maybe in a decade or two, I may even have a few pearls of advice for my son and his progeny.

Having endeth-ed the lesson here, a couple of more encouraging sequels. First, the fava beans were delicious and monstrous, we're enjoying the 3 types of onion right now, and the potato plants have been prolific in their output. Casualties? The peas and spinach. But 3 out of 5 ain't bad for a city slicker with computer keyboard fingers.

The rest of the garden, too, has taken it upon itself to grow anyway, in spite of my efforts to hold it back, rendering a colourful display that will be the subject of a pictorial blog in the not too distant future.