How does our garden grow?

Danny has always been a dedicated gardener, and he's always been particularly dedicated to two kinds of plants: things that grow in the desert, and things you can eat. Decades ago, when we lived in an apartment in upper Manhattan, Danny filled the windowsills with cactus and succulents. In later years, when we had property in various places, he created cactus gardens, fruit orchards, and vegetable patches wherever space and climate allowed.

Here in our Fidenza apartment all he has to work with is a few windowsills and the balcony off the living room. But one of his first purchases was a small selection of cactus, and they've managed to survive and thrive even during the many months when no one is here to look after them.

Those buds in the bottom center have opened since I took this.

The other thing Danny started planting was basil, parsley, thyme, oregano, and other herbs. They did very nicely while we were here, but when we came back to Fidenza five or six weeks ago after six months away we found that most of them had pretty much died. It probably didn't help that the area had an unusually dry winter.

The chives from last fall were among the casualties.

The only survivors were the rosemary and sage on the corner of the balcony, overlooking the gelateria. Recently Danny added a lemon, for which he is plotting to get a much bigger pot.

Lemon on the left, sage on the right, rosemary in the middle.

Once Danny started watering, some of the holdover plants revived. It also started to rain, and rain, and rain, so maybe that helped, too. The parsley's ability to come back from the dead was particularly impressive, but then the oregano started putting out leaves as well. The thyme on the end appears to be irreversibly dead, though.

Recently Danny invested in a bunch of new plants--that lemon, plus more cactus and more herbs. On the dining-room windowsill are oregano, a new thyme plant, mint, and basil.

And out on the balcony we have fresh attempts at chives and cilantro, both of which are hard to find in the markets here. They aren't used in Italian cooking, so why would anyone want to buy them?

That's cilantro on the left, chives on the right.

When we first got here earlier this spring, after a long and arduous journey, we discovered that Pam and Romano had arranged for their son to clear the cobwebs out of our place and had left us a columba, a (vaguely) dove-shaped cake that's the Easter version of panettone, but with sugar-and-almond icing, no raisins, and extra candied orange peel.

I swiped this off the internet because we ate ours too fast to take a picture.

Buttery, sweet, and delicious, it more than made up for the sad discovery of our dead herbs. Really, they are wonderful friends.

Even before we got in the door, though, we found another present from them: a new doormat.

It makes me smile every time I come in the door.