Poppies Shpoppies!

Greetings from The Gardener. AKA HWADATFW.

That's He Who Actually Does All The Freakin' Work.

I thought it was a good idea to establish something at the outset of this blog. It's my firm, long-held belief that there is a place for flowers. In someone else's garden.

Poppies? Now you see one:

Now you don't:

That's the only good thing to be said about flowers. They're dispensable.

Poppies

The Gardener has been weeding. So why am I complaining? Because at this time last year our garden was a mass of poppies.

Now it's a mass of tomato, potato, corn, onion - you name it, plants with one lone poppy here and there.



He says now that he's turned the ground over there will me hundreds of them soon. I'm sitting here, drumming my fingers.

In the Shadow of the Tower

Torre del Cassero Rebuilt 14th century

We share a common wall with the old fortress that dominates the skyline of our town. This is where our dogs, Dermott (pictured) and Snowy take their morning stroll before breakfast at the bar in the Piazza. The tower is 35 metres high and is beautifully lit at night from lights buried in our garden.

The terrace sits high above a little street that separates the garden from our apartment. We cross via a tiny bridge.
We are separated from our neighbours' garden by an ancient cisterna that used to collect water for the village laundry.

It's been a bit of a lucky dip discovering just what is growing in the garden apart from the undergrowth. There is a lovely old rose bush which hasn't had much attention.
Shortly after we moved the rose cutting The Gardener had potted up from our previous residence, bloomed for the first time. I thought it was a good omen.

When our furniture finally arrived from Sydney, our two dogs were joined by a Dan Murphy Camp Dog, all the way from Alice Springs in Central Australia.

He isn't a popular figure with the local cats, generations of which have lived and died in our garden shed.