Learning by Doing Orto Nostro
There was quite a summer, tranquil and mostly spent working and gardening. We had not planned to start with our plantations already this summer. But, as our neighbors had their land aerated late April, I decided to have ours done too. Marco was there with the tractor, and it took him no more than 20 minutes to do our entire land, so it felt like a serendipitous thing that I was around to ask for his favor. Let alone, an opportunity for me to get a break from my writing and to get my hands dirty. Freddie was at the time in our apartment in Nyköping; I in the house working on my PhD-thesis. And so, lonesome as I momentarily felt working non-stop with the chapters, I got myself a nice pause and spent the last weekend in April shopping for plants. The local garden shop in Muro Leccese helped me pick out (far too many!) cuttings, and so the journey began. It was a trial-and-error experience, and as I planted all the cuttings, all I could think was that I at least initiated our learning for plantations to come. I hoped but could not imagine eating from our garden the entire summer. Wow, little did I know the wonders of our land, and everything but the celery grew like crazy. Well, almost everything: we only got 1 cucumber and 2 melons, but I guess that I had planted and watered them wrongfully. Lessons learnt for next summer. That goes for the number of plants of each vegetable to plant too. How many variations of zucchini, peppers, cabbage, beetroot, eggplant, and tomato can one do in a week, and how much chili is enough for a year to come?! I learnt lots of new recipes, such as zucchini-soup, and I took quite some time drying chili to take back home to Nyköping. It has been sad to (only) go to the grocery store instead of out in the garden for the past few weeks since we’ve returned to Sweden. However, we have plentiful chili to cook with and beyond that, quite some tasty Salento memories to be inspired by, once comes the fall in Nyköping.
