You wanna hear a story? Here’s a story.
This is how I came to be, but in mama’s words this time. Here she goes:
Sometimes I think that when I write about gardens, I must be nuts. So many of us live in small apartments sans terrace or even a sunny window for a pot of basil, but I have observed that in Europe, especially, many families have a second house somewhere, if only for investment, out of the city with space for growing a few well-chosen edibles.
This year I had some delightful surprises.
Last spring, the fallow land next door to our little house in France was invaded by friends of the owner and turned into a garden of Eden ovenight. What had been a weed-choked acre with neglected fruit trees and vines was cleared, spaded, mulched and planted with raspberries, tomatoes, grapes, salad of all kinds, and potirons, lovely equivalents of our pumpkins in the US. A wandering merle or sparrow or one of the many little winged beasts around here evidently visited my compost pile and dropped a seed that generated vines and large elephant-ear-sized leaves, which began feeding the lovely, yellow trumpet-shaped flours that eventually became orange Cinderella pumpkins. They seemed to bask and expand on the sun-warmed gravel that is spread between my growing beds, and there they will stay until October when the witches come out. I would never have thought that my tiny garden would accommodate such rampant glory, and now I have learned that I can plant among the stones.
In another part of the compost leavings, I stuck a few seeds of a simple climbing squash I had had in Los Angeles, the fruit of which grows into long, goose-necked shapes that are almost too beautiful to pick. And they were BIG, some of them 3 to 5 feet long. In this odd French soil, they appeared not to grow at all but only began covering part of my dark green fence enclosure between me and the neighbors’ bounty. But a few days ago, I noticed a sudden plethora of strange long, straight chartreuse-colored shapes hanging in from the vines. They are other-worldly, like what might be found in a moon-man’s garden or the result of some very serious genetic cross-breeding. And just since yesterday, one has grown about 10 inches longer and threatens to break the LaLaLand record. Same seeds, different terroir.
Wandering through the rest of my tiny patch, I came upon a vine that had crept up from my other neighbor’s garden below—an acre of asparagus, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, lemons, oranges, limes, kumquats, grapes from the vines of his great-great-grandfather and an arbor hung with kiwis. The vine on my fence was obscured by tomato plants, which, when pushed aside, revealed the intruding vine curling about my fence and hung with its own kiwis pirated from below! Never have I had kiwis, not even in sunny anything-grows California, but there they were, ripening for fall when the New Zealand jewels go off the market.
I thought it was empty, this delightful treasure chest of surprises, but just a few days ago while fondling my ronds de Nice (a round, succulent French variety of green-striped squash) and lovingly pinching my basil flowers to encourage more growth for the rest of summer’s pesto, what did I see nestled under the leaves of the hearty spigariello plant (yet another surprise from the broccoli family from seeds sent to me by a fellow gardener in Canada—even the Italians I know have never seen this hearty vegetable, let alone tasted the leaves chopped and crisped in olive oil with crumbled hot pepper and slices of garlic)? but an oddly familiar shape, jet black and white sprouting beneath my Italian greens.
It moved.
It moved?
What on earth (no pun intended) would be lurking under vegetable leaves?
A small Tuxedo cat with green eyes like the ronds de Nice allowed me, after two more days under the spigarello and several dishes of tuna moved ever closer to the open French door, to lure her to the kitchen, and thus our household, cat-less for 15 wistful years, acquired Loulou.
Gardens are magical places.
You never know what might be flourishing under that proverbial cabbage leaf.
And this baby doesn’t need diaper changes…
Me, young!
What an exquisite story of how LouLou found a home. You are a masterful storyteller making me visualize every exquisite plant so that I could almost taste it. Thank you, Janet
Thank you so much, Janet and all those kitties I want to meet. Could you send pictures of them to me? Sometimes I like to put my pawpals pics on my blog, if they don’t mind, of course. Yes, I was lucky to be found and I’ve turned into a play cat instead of the scare cat I was when found. TLC works every time.