Natural wonder

While we were still down in Montagano a week and a half ago I went for a country walk one morning, trying to work off a little of the delicious Molisano food people kept plying me with (and that I kept saying yes to). I headed to Matrice, the next town over, which is about 45 minutes by foot from downtown Montagano.

Matrice is home to the Molino Cofelice, the mill whose owners gave us a great pasta-making class last summer and where we've enjoyed shopping for pasta, stone-ground flours, and other delicacies. This time I was amused to see they'd created a gigantic hay-bale couple to welcome visitors.

A few meters farther on, on Strada Provinciale 56 just past the intersection with Strada Statali 87, I noticed a cluster of hand-painted signs alongside the road identifying various trees, shrubs, and minerals. One explained that this was an area didattica--an educational area, open to all--and another proclaimed  (in Italian) "Dedicated to those who love beauty." I walked into what appeared to be an orchard with dozens of trees, each bearing a hand-painted Italian label--a cherry, a grafted apple with four varieties on one tree, a pear, a pomegranate, plus all kinds of pines, oaks, and other trees.

I returned later that day with Danny in tow and we toured the whole garden, a labor of love that veers hard in the direction of obsession. It features not only local plants but exotica such as gingko biloba and a giant sequoia that's already some thirty feet tall.

The proprietor, Rocco Cirino, and his wife, Gabriella, came out to greet us and eagerly showed us around. He's a retired geography teacher, she a retired teacher of accounting or economics (I wasn't quite clear on this noun), and the garden and its signs are his handiwork. Covering a hectare of land (about two and a half acres), it surrounds a rather grand house and tennis court that appear to have received rather less of Rocco's attention than he's given his educational project.

He showed me the Pond of Love where frogs mate every April and the couple introduced us to their dogs, Molly and Bianco, their large family of cats, and the goldfish in the Gabriella Pond, which surge to the surface when she feeds them. (You can see Rocco and his giant sequoia in this Italian TV clip about a prize honoring his commitment to the environment.)

That's Molly on the left. The way they pronounce her name is adorably Italian.

Despite his fervent environmentalism, Rocco is opposed to wind energy, at least when it comes to windmills in Molise, of which we'd spotted one or two. Several signs in his area didattica declare opposition to l'eolico selvaggio, savage wind. Windmills are fine when they're off the seacoast, Rocco explained, but they make too much noise to be put anywhere near where people live.

In the multi-room garage-cum-basement under the house, Rocco has put together his own natural history museum packed with maps and books, seeds and birds' nests he's gathered, and rocks and fossils he's found at local building sites.

Rocco with a woodpecker nest

Adding to the somewhat otherwordly atmosphere were several dozen larger-than-life papier-mache puppets lurking in the dark beyond the museum room. They are put together by local children and displayed in the town's annual Carnevale parade, Rocco told me, and the Cirinos have volunteered to store them for the town the rest of the year.

That's a map of Matrice in the foreground. Rocco points out it's shaped like a bird.

One of the cartoons looming in the background, alongside what I think is the mascot of the Matrice soccer team, is the U.S. president, For some reason they dressed him as the Fonz.

There is just no escaping him, I guess.

After giving us an extensive tour (in Italian--I don't think they speak much English), Rocco and Gabriella urged us to come in and have a little something. This is southern Italy, after all, where every encounter seems to start or end around a table. But we were already behind schedule to meet up with our evening engagement (it involved pizza) and we begged off rather than show up an hour late. Sometimes we are terminally American.

I suspect anyone else who stops by Rocco and Gabriella's eccentric but charming educational garden will be greeted with similar hospitality. So if you visit, allow plenty of time.