Bella Tuscany Read Free Page A

froze all in one day. “And more trees can be planted immediately. There's plenty of time.”
    Plenty of time. What a musical phrase.
    Five cypresses, two pears, a cherry, a peach, and two apricots delivered from the nursery line the driveway, awaiting Francesco and Beppe, who already have argued over where each will receive the right amount of sun. They have pruned the olives, which also suffered in the hard freeze. They whipped around the terraces with a ladder, ruthlessly cutting off freeze-burned limbs, then took us on an inspection tour, examining each tree for damage. We stand before a scrawny olive on the first terrace. They shake their heads sadly, as over the deceased body of a friend. Ed grieves, too, since the casualties are his three-year-olds. On the surviving young ones, the usually glistening leaves are dry. The worst sign is split bark; the farther down the tree a split occurs, the more damage. Those split at the base cause the men to shake their heads and say in low tones,
“Buttare via
.
”
Get it out. We will have to dig out at least ten; others they're iffy about—wait and see. A few scraggly leaves on one, shoots at the bottom of another, offer just enough hope to leave it. On the lower slopes of town and in the valley, many groves look dead, and grim-faced men are sawing off thick branches. Hard as it is, the lesson from the record-low 1985 freeze was to prune severely and the trees will regenerate in time.
    Nothing is more sacred than the olive. Francesco eyes two oaks on the olive terraces and shakes his head. “Good for the fireplace. Too much shade for the olives.” Ed is careful not to disagree but also to point out emphatically that because of me, the trees have to stay. I have a log bench under one and like to read there. Otherwise, we might come home one day to find the trees cut, Francesco having assumed we agreed. I'm blamed for all deviations of the weed machine around flowers and for any decision that interferes with the self-evident rights of olives and grapes. Ed certainly would lose face if they suspected that he will transplant a wildflower in the tractor path. The men prune and fertilize all morning. Beppe and Francesco tie each new cypress to a giant stake. Between the stake and the tree they stuff a handful of grasses to keep the stake from sawing into the slender trunk.
    Although the December freeze totally killed my hedge of herbs and the floppy blue plumbago by the cistern, the balmy, delicious early spring compensates. The laurel hedge Ed doesn't like but doesn't have the heart to eliminate, has, of course, thrived. We work all morning, chopping, digging out, and clearing the dried plants. I feel my neck and arms start to turn red. Is the breeze balmy? Or do I feel its sharp origins in the Swiss Alps?
    The worst loss by far is one of the two palm trees on either side of the front door. One looks better than ever. The other is now a tall trunk with a fan of brown, drooping forlornly. From my third-floor study window, I can see a green frond emerging. A hand-span wide, it does not look promising.
    Â 
    Signor Martini is now Anselmo to us. He arrives in his real estate clothes, driving his big Alfa and shouting into his
telefonino,
but soon he reappears from the
limonaia
transformed into a farmer—tall rubber boots, flannel shirt, and a beret. What I did not expect is how completely he would take over. “Don't touch!” he warns. “If you touch while the dew is wet on the leaves, the plants will die.” I'm startled; he's so emphatic.
    â€œWhy?”
    He repeats himself. No reason. Usually, these pronouncements have some basis. Perhaps certain funguses are transmitted more easily—or something logical.
    â€œWhat is that?” I ask him, gesturing to the thriving, knee-high plants he has put in on the third terrace. “There are so many of them.” I scan the rows; eight rows of ten—eighty plants. He has neglected to