Hello from Italy. The coronavirus numbers are beginning to fall, in the entire country and in our devastated province, but everybody is still under orders to sit tight, and nearly everybody is heartily in agreement with that policy. The situation is improving, though. And it's spring.

We're seeing warm dry weather, drought in the making, but the countryside, clothed in pale greens and with the grayed blues of the sky and the distant hills and mountains, is beautiful. We're under quarantine like everybody else, of course, but in our case that means the acreage of our property, a former farm with its fields and woods, and the garden. For "woods" I nearly wrote "weeds". I've been outside as much as possible lately doing cleanup in some of the wooded areas. This means cutting and pulling brambles, wild clematis, and ivy, and thinning wild plum (blackthorn) and redtwig dogwood, so that the flowering ash, field maples, hophornbeams, laburnums and Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas), and the occasional, welcome, tiny seedling oaks can grow.

The golden torches of the forsythias are blazing here and there in the garden; otherwise, we're in between for most flowers. The lovely forest floor wildflowers, winter hellebores, violets, Cornelian cherry, the garden crocuses, the almonds and plums, are mostly past, while the wisteria and lilacs are showing color but haven't begun opening. Cherries and pears are in flower, it's true, and the mid-spring bulbs, which we don't have a lot of, owing to varmints and heavy soil. 'Old Blush', that wonderful rose, never stopped putting out a few flowers all the winterless winter, while the Teas and other Chinas are magnificently leafed out and setting buds. 'Etoile de Lyon'. It's already opening a few of its plump buds, a match for the plump and stately rose they grow on. The problem with 'Etoile' is that rose chafers absolutely adore it--they prefer pale flowers--and so I rarely get an unblemished bloom. But this year 'Etoile de Lyon' is opening early while the beetles stick to their usual schedule, so that for several days now I've been admiring a flower I cut, the pink-tinged butter-and-cream bud spiraling out and out into the most marvelous display of large, shapely, golden flower. If the bloom is on a too-short stem, or one of a cluster (I can never bring myself to disbud), you can cut it without a stem and float it in a small bowl. One flower is a bouquet.

I do enjoy the Tea foliage, vigorous and yet elegantly clean cut. 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' is showing its aptitude as a climber as it scrambles up onto the rose pergola, while 'Mme. Antoine Mari' justifies--sort of--the claims of those who call it a small Tea, as it's a mere 6' x 6' and shows no disposition to climb. That's all right: its neighbor 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' will climb enough for both of them. 'Archduke Joseph' has also become a full-blown climber, part of it having roamed through the persimmon to reach the pergola extension, where I hope it will eventually reach "Miss Mystery" for which the extension was built. 'Noella Nabonnand' is sending its long lanky canes through the other roses--this is in the yard--and 'Clementina Carbonieri' is wandering through pittosporums and company on the escarpment. Of course I can't go on forever, but I'll just mention another plant of 'Noella Nabonnand' down by the first ditch which has been given a pergola and likes it, and its lovely pergola companion 'Purezza', part scattering bush, part pergola rose, part climber getting up into the large Leyland cypress beside it. I hear a lot about the greediness of Leyland cypresses, but so far 'Purezza' seems to be holding its own.

Bits and pieces of the garden are finally starting to look like a garden: after seventeen years of steady work this is deeply satisfactory. It helps that the eighty-five year old DH mowed it this week, working off his energies now that he can no longer go on his daily ten mile walk. I'm enjoying watching the growth of the herbaceous peonies. Peonies are tough, and now that the plants in the Peony Walk, though many of them are still puny, have held out a couple of years, I think they'll do fine. One particular obsession is my bed of Paeonia officinalis 'Mollis'. This Mediterranean peony of uncertain classification, but a charming single flowered variety, was, I read, sterile. Well, ha, mine seeds enthusiastically, and the seedlings grow on. From my original two plants of 8-10 years ago I counted seventeen yesterday, most of them an inch tall, but they'll grow. I do love it when a good plant gets going on its own.

My best guess is that summer is going to be dreadful, blazing and perhaps with water shortages, so that, after being sequestered in winter and spring by coronavirus, we'll be sequestered in summer by summer. For now, the world is beautiful. Enjoy your gardens, everybody! Love every bit of green you meet.