An Italian Affair...Food for the Writer's Soul

The story begins two weeks ago...

We are enjoying the rare experience of a writer’s workshop in the hill country 90 miles east of Rome - aptly titled Italy in Other Words. Liz and I have joined a group of six other writers, led by two wonderful educators and published authors from San Francisco and Washington D.C.. Kathryn leads the daily workshop. Helen has family roots in Abruzzo, and a passion to share the richness of this colorful region of Italy.

The medieval fortified hill town of Santo Stefano di Sessanio is an intriguing maze of stone archways, tiny balconies overlooking secluded courtyards, steep cobblestone pathways, and terracotta planters overflowing with a tumble of red and pink geraniums.

Ancient doors stand closed at every turn, daring me to open them and explore inside. Every house in this charming village is a cave of mystery, lit with candlelight flickering against walls stained with age and smoke.

Books filled with yellowing pages of indecipherable Italian script lean against each other for support, their bindings aged and cracked. Pigeons roost on weathered terracotta tile roofs, while swallows dart for tiny gnats in the deep blue summer sky. Old men sit in the piazza, sharing observations of life in their lilting Italian tongue.

I sip on a late afternoon cappuccino, relaxing after several hours of writing. The poppy I picked yesterday from the field down in the valley is pressed blood-red between the pages of my journal, full of the passion of these villages perched on hillsides throughout this beautiful Abruzzo region.

Santo Stefano dates back to the 13th century, a time when feudal barons ruled a dozen villages and shepherds grazed sheep on the rocky slopes of these Apennine Mountains. At night they would corral them within the security of stone-walled sheepfolds.

The crumbling remains of Rocca di Calascio, the medieval, 12th century fortress, presides from its lofty peak 4500 ft above broad, fertile valleys and surrounding hill towns. Wildflowers grow among the ruins of its ancient walls and Rapunzel towers.

Sextantia Albergo Diffuso is our hotel and the rooms are actually houses scattered throughout the village of Santo Stefano. It is akin to sleeping in a cave, except for the luxuries that have subtly been incorporated into the medieval simplicity of each restored room. Yesterday I soaked in my big white tub fragrant with lavender oil, enjoying the tallow candles casting a soft glow on rough stone walls and ceiling. The bed is covered in blankets woven from the wool of local sheep, and on the dresser sits a bottle of locally-made cherry liqueur.

Each morning we wander into the Cantinone for breakfast – a delicious spread of fresh-baked pastries and pies, bowl of fresh fruit, yoghurt, cereal, and three choices of pureed fruit a long wooden table. The room is mellow and inviting, and we sit at rough hewn tables on long wooden benches. One of the two ladies offers to cook us eggs or frittata.

Our daily workshop runs from 9am – 12 noon, with the mandatory break for cappuccinos at a nearby store in the little piazza.

Our group has bonded quickly, and we have surprised ourselves with the vulnerabilities we’ve shared. The focus has been on a combination of travel writing, food writing and memoir writing, critiquing well-written pieces and studying what makes them work so well and why.

The writing activities have been interspersed with tours to local sites (and some further away than anticipated!), including an olive oil factory, a hike to the remains of Rocca di Calascio in the Gran Sasso National Park, and learning about cheese making near the town of Castel del Monte. We saw the sheep being milked, then watched while the milk was churned into mozzarella cheese. After visiting their cheese shop in the nearby village and relaxing with a cappuccino (of course!), we returned to the cheese factory for some tasting of the final product – fresh from the vat.

To support local businesses in the village, we ate at different restaurants each day.

Lunch one day was at a little restaurant up in the mountains of Campo Imperiale (Little Tibet) in the Gran Sasso National Park. The drive wound up into the high pasture land where we encountered a herd of longhorn cattle, all wearing jangling cow bells that echoed across the hills. Unconcerned at our intrusion to their peaceful existence, they wandered across the road in front of the car, staring at us curiously.

The hotel’s own restaurant – Locanda Sotto gli Archi - was a five star affair, where Massimo, the maitre d’, treated us like royalty in his charming Italian style.

Five or six courses are the norm in Italy, and each one brought new surprises. Liqueurs made locally were the finishing touch to our evenings of good conversation and laughter. Two of our writers had birthdays this very week, and we celebrated in style at Sextantio’s Locanda Sotto gli Archi for Gina, and gave Kathleen a surprise at the delightful Agriturismo Al Borgo by the lake.

The village was a perfect retreat for writers, stimulating the imagination with the mystery of the past, settling the mind and spirit with its peacefulness and beauty. Several of us stayed back from some of the excursions to write, or sat up late into the night in our cave-like rooms, and those times of seclusion helped us tap into the wells of our deeper self.

Kathryn gave each of us a 1:1 consultation and critique, and I shared for the first time the opening chapter to my book in process. She encouraged me to change from 3rd person novelist’s view to a 1st person memoir. In the rewrite I discovered the sharp pain of reliving the experience and making it my personal memoir –but when I read it to the group next day, their warmly encouraging comments let me know the story is both emotive and compelling. So stay tuned – the author is inspired to continue with Whatever Comes Next!

Organic Gardening for Health & Happiness

The pace of life is increasing, so if I’m ever going to share about our gardening adventure for this year, I’d better do it now.

Two years ago it was a disastrous vegetable garden. Nothing did much of anything. But then, I didn’t do too well either. Bill passed away in the spring and I was running crazy, trying to be superwoman, doing the work of two people, absolutely driven. Heart broken, the days and nights had slipped into another dimension. Once midnight passed, time ceased to matter, and memories and torchlight flickering gathered me in their comforting arms. All the shrubs and trees planted in Bill’s memory survived – a million buckets of water that summer. But the vegetable garden gave up the ghost, so last year I declared it a sabbatical year of rest to recover. Perhaps for us both. (Do I really know what rest is? Still working on that.)

Time does heal, I suppose. So this year I was ready to try again – but ready for something new. Square Foot Gardening – several friends had been reading up on it – so we decided to give it a whirl. Totally organic. Raised beds. Forget renting a tiller and ploughing and weeding. Forget the long row crops more suited to a farm. Think small, compact, individual squares with a different crop in each square foot. Grow only what you can eat. Intersperse the vegetables with flowers and herbs – both for pest control and beauty. Sounded like fun.

Julie got the jump on the whole process. Bought the book and determined to follow it precisely. We all need a little structure in our lives, so three of us launched in with both feet – literally!

While Scott scrounged scraps of wood and began cutting them to make our 4 ft x 4ft boxes out of 2 x 6s, we girls headed to the horse barn for a truck load of horse manure.

Great exercise! Was this really part of the plan? I’d already driven to Springfield to load by hand a pile of leaf litter that had been composting in a friend’s back yard for two years. This was getting to be a lot of hard work!

The recipe called for equal parts vermiculite, peat moss, and a mixture of 5 types of compost. Technically, we had 3 types and figured that would work. Back at the DeVos ranch, we spread a tarpaulin in the back of my truck, and began mixing. This was a lot easier than shoveling horse manure, and before long we each had our load to fill three boxes. Then came the grids, using thin strips of wood to divide each box into one foot squares.

It turned into a two-day process to finish it. Before you put the soil mix in the box, you have to spread out thick layers of newspapers or cardboard on the ground to kill the weeds and grass, then wet it down. Finally fill the 4ft x 4ft box with the soil mix. And voila! You are ready to plant!

The idea is to put a different crop or individual plant in each square foot, determined by the recommended planting spaces. For example, in a square foot you could put one pepper plant, or 4 lettuce, or 9 beets, or 16 spring onions. The fun was interspersing herbs and flowers for color and variety. It’s optional, but I also stopped by a bait shop and bought several little tubs of worms to add to each planting box.

I got a little creative, and made a long 2ft x 8ft box for tomatoes and zucchinis, and 3 diamond shaped boxes for rhubarb and cucumbers. Peas, beans, and tomatoes are all encouraged to grow up trellises. My peas are a mixture of sugar snaps and Sweet Peas. Metal conduit is used to make the trellis, and mounted over the top of 18 inch lengths of re-bar hammered into the ground for stability. Plastic netting can be strung across the framework to complete the trellis. I had to cut the 2 inch x 2 inch squares to make the grid big enough to train beans and tomatoes. The biggest challenge is to recycle whatever you can, and only buy what you absolutely have to.

The good thing about this soil mix is that it’s inherently loaded with nutrients, and drains perfectly. Even in a flood! Grass clippings make great mulch to keep the moisture in for the summer and reduce the need for watering somewhat. They recommend you place a bucket of water beside each bed for daily watering. It will be sun-warmed and the chlorine will dissipate. Here in Tennessee we get so many thunderstorms, God really helps with the watering. He’s so considerate!

Julie’s garden got a real setback with Nashville’s devastating floods– their whole property went more than 4ft under (including the house & barn). When the flood waters receded, two of her garden frames had floated away, but, to our astonishment, the soil mix was still firmly in its original shape! Still waiting on some soil testing to determine whether she can replant, or if the whole thing has to be torn out because of toxic residue from the flood. While I think of it, the latest report on the flood aftermath on tonight’s local TV news says no new flood insurance is being issued at present to any properties in the Nashville area because Congress has been in recess and thus has jammed any provisions for new federal flood insurance policies. This also means mortgages that mandate flood insurance as part of their requirements are also on hold. Unbelievable!

However, better keep my cool, and focus on the matter at hand. Gardening is a perfect tonic for that. Let me share the words on the garden plaque we inherited from Bill’s Mom, that has graced our garden here for many years.

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.”

You can see by the pictures what fun this has been! Weeding is very minimal. Once a crop has finished, you are ready to plant something else in the square foot space. And the easy part in the beginning is simply planting one square at a time. The perfect way to plan spring, summer and fall crops. Bite-sized pieces to deal with. Each square almost becomes a mini garden. You find yourself developing an intimate relationship with each little planting.

We have a wedding here at Ghost Gums on the Ridge on July 3rd, and the square foot garden is already an attractive feature with a charm of its own, demanding a lot less maintenance than the standard vegetable garden. Totally organic, and healthy too! I leave for Italy in one week’s time, leaving everything in the capable hands of the groom-to-be (Skylar, who is also my housesitter). Confident that it will be more of a pleasure than a chore to nurture our new style of vegetable garden. Feel free to post your personal gardening stories here to share with us all!