The Kitchen Garden, Flowers, Vegetables and Quotes
A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space – – a place not just set apart but reverberant – – and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.
Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
Ein Herbst, der warm und klar, ist gut für’s nächste Jahr”. – Bauernregeln für September
“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
George Eliot
Between the last days of July and the beginning of August I sowed sunflowers in the garden for the first time and this week they started blooming, so I enjoyed catching their bright smile and infinite beauty.
What kind of flowers would you like best to have into your own garden?
“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can”.
D. H. Lorenz
“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation”
Henri Cartier-Bresson
In these days, the garden is offering a vision of poetical space, where a palette of warm colors lets soft tones vibrate and shine to a mesmerising Autumn light.
A sprinkle of pink and golden shades for this September Monday bouquet made of home grown blooms to wish a good new week to everybody!
Someone would say that “Pink is not only a colour. Indeed, it is an attitude”. Would you wear your pink glasses to look at the new week?
“In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought
and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November.”
– Rose G. Kingsley
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
November Sunday in the garden: sweet vanilla persimmons up on the tree are getting ripe and zucchini flowers are to be picked: they long for being filled with creamy ricotta cheese, tiny strips of pistacchio mortadella, chopped green olives and then fried in extra virgin olive oil.
The glory of gardening:
hands in the dirt,
head in the sun,
heart with nature.
To nurture a garden,
is to feed not just the body,
but the soul.
Alfred Austin
On May 1st: Doing some work of finishing carpentry in the green terrace by polishing with some excellent oil for restoring and renewing the old (more than 20 years old) made to measure wooden pantry cabinets. It’s gonna be a well done work. Let’s enjoy a coffee pause now.
…and finally May arrived to bring sunshine, beautiful daisies and more moments for enjoying an amazing nature
A bit of poetry in the green terrace tonight. The magic of beams of light in the jars illuminates the little growing plants of tomatoes. Soon, we are going to have sweet yellow tomatoes for our appetizers.
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” —William Makepeace Thackeray
There is nothing better than picking up sun-warmed tomatoes and smelling them, feeling them and scrutinizing their shiny skins for imperfections, dreaming of ways to serve them. – Jose Andres
Some books are worth a reading and sometimes are worth a reading again, even after more than ten years from the first time, when it’s offered you the chance of doing it.
June is welcome with these small riping golden tomatoes on the balcony.
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, power and grace. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Vinca flowers on the balcony of August
Vibrant, elegant Mandevilla in bloom
Mandevilla flowers are still taking their own time to bloom and September month is still good time to keep on blooming. Taking photograph is to catch their beauty.
A basket of pomegranates from the garden: a generous harvest in October
November and its uncertain weather
Eat like a local
Last week, during a walking tour in the surrounding area of Lecce, in the South of Apulia, I took a pic of these gracious wild blue flowers blooming in the middle of ancient stones. Indeed, we love to have these vegetables cooked and served with legumes, which become a typical dish best appreciated in Apulia from locals, travellers and tourists. Can you tell about the name of these vegetables?
For celebrating December 8th
Pink marguerites daisies on my balcony
January 1st 2023
Dew drops on freesia leaves on January 1st 2023. It’s new life up on the terrace. Everything is sparkling and shines of the light of the new day.
Let’s keep on wondering..
Let’s keep on wondering..
Where does creativity come from?
Why?
What is the purpose of creativity?
Enjoy the day, everybody and make it sparkle
First Freesia flowers in February: Spring almost at the door
“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Up on the terrace on March 1st
“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers
Tulips
“The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ”
― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above
Here come the hyacinths
It’s time to stand up on your toes and dance
Springtime
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
A floating blue iris
May 9th: my first iris bloomed and it looked floating in the blue
Dahlias in their glorious splendor
“If we design our gardens to be regenerative, the result will be functional, beautiful spaces full of life and vigour, robust enough to face the challenges of the future and elegant enough to beguile all those who walk among them.” ― Rees-Warren, Matt
A new green dress for the Autumn
After a year, graceful vincas are blooming again in the green terrace and more and more small plants are going to bloom. It seems they found their ideal environment for the Autumn season.
September in bloom
“Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.”
― Paul A.M. Dirac
Welcome Autumn
Christmas paper stars
Christmas paper stars to bright a new good day
The first two daisies of the new year
Daffodils in February
The Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee: a poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company. I gazed – and gazed – but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought: for oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils. 1807 – W. Wordsworth
… and I keep on wondering
In the mood for blooming
“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo
First weekend of March
Äntligen, välkommen vår!
Easter week
“The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.”
― Wallace Stevens
Light in the flowers
“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”
― Meister Eckhart
Welcome, May
Sieglinde Accommodation
(CIN: IT075035C200034479)
In June at the sea house
Early, this morning, I went into the garden of the sea house to say ”good morning” to my new plants that I chose yesterday afternoon at the Greenhouse. There are sunflowers, lavender, rosemary and, of course, jasmine cannot be missing. As the garden work progresses, I will add other plants that are simple to grow and can regenerate season after season. Wishing a fabulous June to everybody 🫶🏻
Climbing jasmine plants to be naturally intertwined with the old vineyard stakes that create spaces and flowerbeds
Small rosemary plants to cover and look out from a long flowerbed
At the weekend
After choosing some beautiful plumbagos and other jasmine plants at the greenhouse last Saturday, here we are now preparing to plant them near the maritime pine hedge at the sea house. Larger pots and an ornamental net to support them will be necessary. Their light blue shade is lovely, it is as if nature has painted plumbago flowers usiing the color of the sky. What do you think?
Wishing a good day to everybody
Selma accommodation (CIN: IT075031C200034481)
Small red roses in the garden
Good morning from the garden. Finally, yesterday afternoon we applied a net to the fence and transplanted climbing plumbagos and jasmines to support them and help them grow better. Now, we also have small red climbing roses next to the entrance to the house. They’re so graceful, aren’t they? Now it’s time to go to the local food market. It is truly extensive and varied, with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, cheeses and many other artisanal products. Wishing everybody a good day
Less is more
2025
Happy New Year!
The Light has changed
Suddenly you realize that the light has changed. It becomes welcoming like the mild temperatures for a few days now. So we take a seat on the green terrace to enjoy lunch in the open air.
New small potatoes on arrival
Heat-resistant plants for the balcony
Höstens dofter
Äntligen! Jag är på terrassen för att hälsa på de två nya granatäppleträden jag just planterat. De tillhör två olika granatäpplesorter och kommer att producera saftiga, söta frukter.
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