Murder by Death

I'm the daughter of two parents with two green thumbs each: my mother was a florist and my father used to be one of the more well-known orchid breeders in the US.  Neither of them could touch any plant without it thriving.

Their daughter had thumbs so black that when my father named an orchid after me, he took a photo of the flower, had it blown up to life-size, framed, and upon gifting it and the naming to me, asked that I stay away from the live specimen and stick to the photo.  It was a fair request really, and best for all living things concerned.

Then about 9 years ago I moved to Australia and a substantially different climate than my SW Florida home.  We have seasons here, and richer soil; maybe it was just my own maturity.  Suddenly I wasn't doing so badly with living things; I could grow a fair few veggies in pots at our rental home and when we bought a house and started a proper garden, I started having more successes than I had failures.

All of this rambling is to say that while I'm certainly not what I'd call a "Gardener", it's definitely one of my interests and I'm enjoying learning more each season so when I saw this book at the FOTL sale, I snapped it up.  I enjoyed A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun and this looked to be similar but with a gardening focus - just the thing to peak my interest.

There are people out there that are just interesting to talk to - not necessarily riveting, but they hold your attention and offer a pleasant way to pass the time.  Notes from an Italian Garden offers the same.  I looked forward to picking it up and I lost myself enough to regret putting it down.  The author and I share an interest in growing unusual plants, heirlooms, food, and occasionally plants that aren't really meant to be grown where we live.  (At last count, I'm up to 23 different varieties of fruit - 3 of which I'm definitely not supposed to be able to grow here in Melbourne.)  That shared interest kept me more glued to the book than I otherwise might have been.

The only downside of the book: it has done nothing to discourage my fantasy of chucking it all and moving to a sunny part of Europe.