Melissa, thanks for a wonderful letter.

Is there anyway you can dump a ton or two of large boulders at the base of the slide?
The toe of the slide needs to be stopped.

A less effectiive action is sticking pvc pipes into the slide to dewater the slippage zone.

(Do your husband or you have any soils, civil engineering, strength of materials training or experience?)

Goodness, Melissa, you go from drought to deluge. Holding up a hillside would seem to be more than a one-man job. Do you have folks coming to your aid? Your husband sounds like a wonder and a good fellow to have around. Is your house in any danger? Hopefully, not!!! I do wish rain could be shared, but no one knows better than you that it can not. It's definitely a spotty proposition. It's cool how clay stores up water for the future. Yesterday I was so excited by a thread about mature roses needing more infrequent watering. Until Cupshaped said - this doesn't apply if you have sand. :(( I guess that's the amendment I should have been using!!

If you've had enough rain for the time being, I hope you're seeing sunshine and the fields are green and the slopes are solid. And pssst, take some photos.

Sherry

Micheal, thanks, I enjoyed writing it.

Ann, that's not impossible, but it actually seems easier to set my husband to terracing (I'll ask him if this is the case) than to track down our farmer neighbors, who are behind in their work from all the rain, hire them and their tractors, and locate some boulders, then work on steep, soaked ground with poor access. Oh yes, and the leading edge of the slide isn't on our property. (My husband checked what I wrote and agrees with it.) My husband's a retired civil engineer. I appreciate the suggestion, and it is sensible. Possibly I make too much of the difficulties of access, and am too used to a budget shoestring approach. But that's how I am. I want to plant a tree above the slide area to help the roses hold the soil--a pear would be pleasant.

Daisy, how's your garden coming along? You must be enjoying your spring in Crete! You know, I'm not sure if the season there is like ours here. We're inland with some continental influence, and though we have mild winter temperatures and abundant summer heat, the intense lush greenness of spring makes me think of what I've heard of spring in England, though of course I've never seen it. I think we have a lot of the same plants: lilacs, privet, laburnums, oaks, peonies, clematis, viburnums, roses, hawthorn--also bearded irises, I don't know if they're characteristic. I'd be curious to see a warm part of England where the soil was clay, in order to make comparisons with the flora here.
Of course we also have our plants of more Mediterranean character, including my Tea and China roses and all the aromatic shrubs and subshrubs, but you'd be surprised how little a presence these have in the countryside and how exotic they look there. My garden is full of these plants, but they look like they came from somewhere else and have be treated, stylistically, as most welcome guests to be made at home in the garden. I know what I've just written isn't very clear: the subject needs a thread of its own.

Sherry, that's exactly what happens: drought to deluge! The one stable characteristic of Italian weather, as I've known it the last nine years, is that ANY weather pattern is going to go on longer than you want it to: it brings you to your knees in supplication, and then, if you're lucky, it stops. Oh, and July is always hot. Aside from those two fixed rules, anything goes. At least I don't have to worry about running out of water this summer. Aside from the slide, the garden looks pretty good! And the rain has stopped, with no significant precipitation in the two weeks' forecast, so perhaps the slump will stop spreading. I'd love photos, but then I hate taking pictures. I'm hoping a photography-loving gardener will come along in time, armed with camera and good will.
My husband IS good; that's why, coming from a family background of intelligent, opinionated women who knew how to choose good husbands, I chose him. Definitely the man to have around if you're stuck in a burning building or are standing paralyzed in front of a charging tiger.
Our house and the other buildings of our settlement were built, I believe, on a spur of bedrock, and are not likely to fall victim to a slide. The big garden is well below the house and the area of the slump is a few hundred yards away from the house.

Melissa

*** I'd love photos, but then I hate taking pictures.

Oh, Fiddle Dee Dee! That's why cameras now are called 'point and shoot'. You write with such charm and care that I can't imagine your photographs not being composed in that way as well. Stick the camera in your pocket when you go for your strolls in the garden and capture those wondrous moments in nature. To me there's nothing more perfect than a digitized rose. It's like having my cake and eating it, too. Your written descriptions are lovely, and the words do paint pictures in my mind, but my gluttonous eyeballs still want to see Italy! But I won't belabor the point further. (I understand hating to do something. With me it's reading manuals/directions and putting together mechanical things - but photography can't be THAT bad!) Enjoy your spring (and record it for posterity)!

Sherry

Your husband has the background to handle the problem.

(I worried, because we've seen people just shovel out the toe of the slide and expect to solve the problem that way. Anyone who drives the interstate just east of Roanoke might wonder at the truck inspection area at the base of Angels Rest Mountain. It's where the interstate first cut into the base of a slide and one of my professors told them how to handle it. They ignored his advice. He died young, but his advice may have contributed to their later solution of the evolved problem.)

I too believe in intelligent husband selection and although I've lost a few roses to a certain hastiness, by and large he is the weeder and builder of beds. My early on strategy of referring to the garden as "your roses" allows him not only to take more and more credit as the garden becomes more lovely but to be more concerned that it continue to look good. (Watch me withdraw that your the moment one of MY roses is threatened, at the speed of sound if not light.)
We are also having an unseasonal rain guaranteed to at least have the ground green beneath my blossom dropping roses. It is also laying in a good wetness to the clay that feeds the roses during the utter dearth of rain usually from now until November.
Do get one of those simple little Canon point and shoot jobs. They are dead easy although Fuji's may be even simpler. My best pictures are simply the one lucky shot out of a jillion...eventually chimpanzees write Shakespeare given enough chimps and chances.
{{gwi:244457}}
la

Melissa. Your spring does sound like spring in England. Although the same plants flower a few weeks later there.
On the other hand, all the plants you mention,(with the exception of laburnum) also grow here in Crete. Isn't it great that so many plants can have such a wide distribution.

I think I know what you mean about bringing indigenous plants into the garden. Even if it is an informal garden, they immediately take on a more formal look and a different character. Just as beautiful, but perhaps more model girl than milkmaid!

Daisy

Melissa, I agree. A good husband is to be treasured.

You really have gone from one extreme to the other with your water situation. I suppose it is true of all things, that too much is as bad as too little.

Do keep us posted on the latest developments. I always enjoy your letters.

Rosefolly