All the flowers of the field - and a lemon tree!

The Lemon Tree - after a couple of accidents!

No Italian home is complete without a lemon tree.  Our little 'casina' in the olive grove didn't have one and it was too late in the year to plant one when we moved in last July, so the lemon tree remained a spring promise.  Yesterday we headed down onto the coastal plain to find a small tree for the terrace and a terracotta pot to put it in.  Because it's a rented house, anything we grow has to stay portable.

 Early summer is in full bloom here, flourishing in the warm temperatures and the rain showers.  In another month 'il gran caldo' will be upon us and everything will be burnt brown in the drought.  But for now the olive groves are knee high in wild flowers and herbs. They don't use herbicides here and it shows.  There are probably at least a hundred species, if I knew how to name them - orchids and bluebells, ornamental grasses, chervil and clover, wild garlic, daisies and dandelions, small red poppies (corn cockles?) and dozens of plants I'd have to buy at the garden centre in England - pink and white oxalis, canterbury bells, hellebore and irises. 

The Wild Meadow

 The whole landscape has suddenly been turned into a flower garden, but some areas are more intense than others. Driving down to the tree nursery, we suddenly passed a wild meadow beside the canal and had to stop.  It was awash with flowers of every kind, but particularly poppies, irises and a froth of  yellow over the top from wild rape - like a Monet painting.   I just had to get out of the car and walk into the field with my camera.  These are just two of the dozens of photographs I took.

Afterwards I managed to buy my lemon tree and it's now carefully installed in its pot on the terrace.  If it looks a bit lopsided, that's because we had a bit of a struggle getting it into the car, then out of the car and down our steep track.  Some pruning was required by the time we got to the front door!