We woke up this morning to a dusting of snow, the first that we’ve seen here this winter. There were a few dingy patches of it up at Castiglioncello when I went there before Christmas with my sister Claire and her thrilled Australian son who had never seen snow before. And there was sufficient frost clinging to the grass outside our kitchen door some mornings to send my nephew into raptures: out he’d go, and back he’d come, clutching clumps of frost-coated grass which would go straight into the freezer. Also discovered in the freezer this morning as I cleaned it out, ready for the move back to Rome, were some impressive icicles, found by L in the ice grotto on the path down to the jurassic field. But on the whole it has been cold and blue and that restrained, pared-back, eye-catching palette that a winter without the all-levelling effect that everygreen gives.

The house was full and the garden much neglected over Christmas.

For the first time in – I think – 20 years, we had a real Christmas tree, a live one in a pot. I rashly declared that once in 20 years was all right, that I’d have no qualms whatsoever about cutting it up for firewood when the festive season was over. After all, conifers don’t belong in our neck of the woods, and play no part in my grand garden plan. But this morning when I had removed its baubles, I found myself admiring its neat shape and general pluckiness. Could I bring myself to haul it out of its pot and leave it in the chicken house, ready to be cut into logs? Of course not. Since then I’ve been trying to think of an inconspicuous corner where I could hide it, in its pot: that way I could leave it to fate. If it dies, it can go on the log pile. If it survives, I can drag it back into the living room again next December. But it’s the inconspicuous corner that’s causing me angst.

Most of my Yuletide gardening efforts seemed to have been focussed on edible things. First came the crab apple. I had my heart set on a Malus ‘Hopa’ or ‘Red Splendor’. In the end I settled for a ‘Red Profusion’ which my research told me was similar. Anyway, it’s a splendid tree, planted with much sweat and toil because the ground where I absolutely wanted it was cement-hard. It’s right at the point, I realised, where the bulldozer passed and stood most often when I was redesigning the levels in the sweep down to the front door. I spent a good two hours there with my trusty pick, on a day when Claire and family had gone off to Florence for a jaunt and when L and C were still in Rome, hacking away to make a great big hole, wide enough to fill with luscious compost and to plant the tree in such a way that it would be comfortable. Let’s hope.

In the vegetable garden, I put my broad beans and early peas in. To return to a topic dealt with some months ago – yes, my hunch was right: porcupines (or whatever beasts were munching their way through my baby plants) do indeed seem to work on sight and not on smell. Because the tiny lettuce etc leaves I planted beneath fleece some weeks ago are still there… being engulfed by weeds and absolutely not growing, but still there. Now the well-covered broad beans and peas that I planted with the help of my six-year-old nephew J also appear to be flourishing, ungnawed. This state of affairs – flourishing, as opposed to uneaten – may not last long. When I took a sneaky glimpse under the fleece yesterday morning, each of the delicate little things was wearing a tidy jacket of frost: they were white, not green. Surely not a healthy state of affairs if it continues too long.

It’s odd, the exposure of the plot where I’ve built my veggie garden. In summer it swelters in the sun which passes much higher than the great big oak tree down the bank. In winter, on the other hand, there are long stretches of day when it languishes in shade. I hadn’t realised quite to what extent. I mean, in the early morning it is in full sun… but early mornings at this time of year are so cold that full sun doesn’t do much to melt the ice. And it’s back in the sun by mid-afternoon. But through the middle of the day, it’s shaded. Perhaps I should think in terms of planting some early crops in more exposed places. Ah, the importance of seasonal forward planning!

Wonderful Vittorio has finished installing my wooden vegetable garden edging, and has done some smoothing of the ground surface. I extended my watering system along to the three new beds. Now all that remains to be done is to purchase the thick fleece which should help to keep weeds down along the paths between the raised beds, lay it, then get the gravel to cover the between-bed surface… a half-day’s work. But when, I wonder, will I find that half day now? No rush though. As long as it’s ready for next summer, that’s the important thing.

While I was pottering around the house, weeding and mulching, L had embarked on a grand plan of his own. Poor L: I think he gets frustrated at my absolute sway over things gardeny. We’re good about agreeing on what to do inside – in that a balance of terror reigns and neither of us dare do anything to upset that fragile equilibrium. But outside L has had to work hard to invent his own spaces. The pizza oven, for example, is unquestionably his, especially since he attended his professional pizza-making course at the Città del Gusto (www.gamberorosso.it). The product that emerged from that oven this Christmas was immeasurably better than ever before.

His other outside realm, now, is the woods. With brushcutter and chainsaw he has reopened the old road down into the valley. (One first, eroneous, attempt saw him clearing out along the stream rather than the road, and it was along there that he found a kind of cave, festooned with ice stalagtites.) Mario says he used to farm down in our valley; that there was a whole other field down there that he cultivated. But decades ago there was a landslide along the road that he used to drive his tractor down, so he stopped, and nature reclaimed the valley. That the valley is wild and has been for many years is obvious. We’ve hardly ever been down there: descending always involved a painful scramble through brambles. But near the stream, the brambles give way to great expanses of head-high ferns and towering equisetum, where the odd stray dinosaur wouldn’t look at all out of place.

Now that L has done his heroic task of clearing much of that old road, right down to where the level ‘field’ begins, what isn’t clear is why Mario gave up on the area. There does appear to have been a tiny landslip, but nothing that couldn’t have been easily mended. Maybe he just got bored with that field. Maybe it was getting too much for him. Maybe he was just losing interest and letting it go back to nature seemed the easy way out. Whatever. Now Lee wants to make it into a woodland idyll. But even here I can’t help putting my oar in. I found myself scowling at some of his suggestions for understory plantings, pointing out that in such a natural place he couldn’t possibly think of introducing anything that wasn’t strictly autoctonous. And so it’s back to the drawing board for him, to study the natural flora of the place. Aren’t I lucky to have such an obliging husband?

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