16 May 2004

A particularly vivid memory from the Sussex part of my childhood is the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fate of elms. As the Scolytus multistriatus beetle fluttered from tree to tree, spreading the fatal Ophiostoma ulmi fungus, so the End of the British Countryside As We Know It was gloomily forecast. Still, there are nostalgici who lament the passing of the British elm. Well, if anyone is gasping for a taste of elm, come to my garden. Or even better, if anyone is dying for an elm eradication spree, be my guest.

Let’s give my Ulmus minor the benefit of a fair trial. Their dark shiny leaves do produce marvellously green patches of cool in the summer. And I love the deep purple of their tight folded flower buds. And now I’m struggling. Because with aching muscles and the fresh memory of almost plunging inelegantly head-first down the slope to the south of the caravan, a fresh-snapped elm root dangling from my hand, I can’t say they have much more to recommend them. And so to the bad bits.

In the old days, Italy’s share-cropping farmers encouraged elms. When the summer sun seared the grass in the fields leaving nothing for the cows to chew over, they would gather frasca – the choicest of thin branches with the greenest of leaves attached. It was good fodder. To make the trees doubly useful, the farmers would sling grape vines from trunk to trunk festoon fashion, a practice that basks in the heart-warming title of vite maritate*** (married vines). But even Luigi – our memoria storica who was born in our house 76 years ago and is following its resurrection closely – admits that it was a close-run race between the elms’ benefits and the trouble they caused. Because their roots – and their suckers – go simply everywhere.

Around the caravan and up above, behind the chicken house, there are dozens of smallish trees – between four and eight metres high, say. There were more, but we had some bulldozed soon after we bought the place. At the time I had yet to tussle with them, and my innocent heart ached with each tree that was yanked up. Innocent indeed. Now I might even contemplate a sprinkling of agent orange.

My little periwinkle patch in front of the caravan is punctuated with knee-high sprouts of elm leaf. When I planted here, I made no attempt to remove the network of roots, not realizing the grief they would bring. (These, I keep attacking with the sheers in the hope that they will give up before I do.) To the north and south of the caravan, I had a better idea of what I was up against. With pickaxe and mattock, I cultivated a fine crop of blisters.

There’s no telling what you’re going to find under one of these clumps of elm leaf. Sometimes you take a deep breath and prepare to throw your whole weight into shaking the clump a little loose – at least enough to see which direction the spaghetti-junction of roots heads off in – and find yourself abruptly on your butt, having pulled the whole thing out with minimum effort. These, I suspect, are the ones you’ve already isolated with sweat and tears in earlier, forgotten, punitive raids on connected clumps. Most times, however, you spend hours locked in a puzzling battle with this hypogeal biomass. Roots shoot in every direction: some you follow right back to a large neighbour and lop off as close to the mother plant as possible; others disappear into the deep, with little hope of ever digging deep enough to grub them out. Generally, they rock inscrutably back and forth until in frustration you grab a saw and saw them off, resigned in the knowledge that their offspring will be back to haunt you just further down the road in no time at all. Other times, when you’re sure that you’re dealing with something akin to woven steel rope that will never succumb to mattock, saw or bulldozer, the whole root system decides to snap. This always (and only) happens when you’re teetering on the top of a slope, perfectly positioned for plunging down it.

When he passed by last weekend, our architect Michele scoffed at the three rustic steps I built some time ago up the slope to the south of the caravan, by the chicken house wall. “Steps to where?” he asked with a withering look at the thick-matted weed they led up to. Touché. The idea had been to continue working up, to the level above the back of the caravan, and to create a glorious oasis of organised calm on the relatively flat area up there. There, I thought, the builders’ debris had never reached. But no, when I tramped a path through the weeds, I found bricks and beams, and yet more forty four gallon drums of inidentifiable murky liquids. L & I made short work of those a couple of months ago, heaving them out onto the drive and hoping they’d disappear. Now they’re in the grass beside the drive. Well, it’s a step in the right direction.

To bring the slope immediately behind the caravan under control, I cropped the weeds that grew there – it’s too steep to contemplate pulling them all out; I didn’t want to find the caravan under the slope, so left their roots to hold it together until the job could be done by a plant of my choice – and planted 20 Teucrium fruticans. This wonderful plant with olive-coloured foliage and pale violet flowers is a god-send: its capillary root-system binds together any bank, however steep; it thrives with a minimum of water; it has no PH preferences; it’ll survive through frost and fire. Once it’s settled, it’ll expand out and up by half a metre a week in summer. So why isn’t it growing in leaps and bounds on my bank? Not enough sun? Too much rain? That planting was the end of work on my oasis. Choosing taps intervened, and landscaping took a back seat.

Yesterday I resumed my onslaught, working on the weeds from the top of the stairs. Here the battle involved not only elm roots but parietaria.

Last summer, I ended each land-clearance weekend with red and swollen arms and legs. During the week, I would wake in the middle of the night with limbs bleeding where I had scratched myself raw. I wondered at the punch these Umbrian nettles packed. Only a few weeks ago, in a visit to Rome’s shambolically lovely Orto Botanico, the expert showing me round said “watch out if you’re allegic; that’s a fine crop of parietaria.” I looked at the plant he was pointing at: shiny papery leaves with squeezy rosy-coloured stems. I pull that stuff out by the armful; it grows everywhere in my stone-filled ground and even straight out of the walls of the chicken house. Carefully avoiding contact with nettles, I pick that up with gay abandon. My red, itchy limbs fell into place. Now I learn that Parietaria officinalis cures a plethora of ills, from eczema to arthritus but I certainly won’t be handling it. Yesterday I donned trousers and a long-sleeved cotton shirt when I waded into my weeds. Today, I am unblemished.

This weekend, by the way, I waded into my weeds with gusto. My plumber told me that spring would begin on May 15 and he seems to have been correct. I’m confused, however, about which Old Wive’s Tale he subscribes to: catalysts for St-Swithin’s-style 40 rainy days are Ascension or Santa Croce on May 3, depending on your region; neither of these corresponds with a May 15 let-up. I must ask him if there’s an Umbrian variation. (It worries me somewhat that rain on Good Friday – and rain it did – signals downpours for the whole of May.) This weekend, however, the sky is cloudless and the temperature is the kind that you wish would go on for the rest of your days.

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