Remove to increase

In the silence of winter the earth rests and prepares to offer its fruits. It seems that everything is dead and then everything is revived again, this is a mystery inscribed in creation. Manure is overturned at the foot of the trees, the waste is a precious fertilizer that fertilizes.

This is pruning time: for the plants to grow in the best way, we proceed with decisive cuts of all the dry and the old but not only, even branches apparently in good condition give way to others. It seems strange that taking away we can increase: another paradox we learn from nature. However, you have to pay close attention to how to prune, it is not enough to remove it at random, it is a difficult art to practice with experts. Luisa teaches us how to treat the flowers by always cutting the branch obliquely so that rainwater does not stagnate creating mold, it is still a small wound caused to the plant, it must be done with tact. There are branches to be eliminated at the root, some others only need to be reinvigorated and here too there is a little attention to be paid: do you want to grow leaves, fruits or flowers? According to your choice, so you have to do the pruning.
It is a school of life.

In life you always have to choose.
With some disabled children we started to catalog all the flowers that can be admired upon entering the hermitage ... we are only at the beginning of the work, however, because there are so many! Last year for the first time we tried to keep track of the entire harvest from our garden: we have a variety of vegetables of thirty different types for over 1,600 kg of harvest. In one day we have 228 kg of potatoes, in a few days 326 kg of pumpkins, some small and a nice bright orange, others a little more lumpy and bigger, with the 277 kg of peaches we have prepared delicious ice cream and even the surplus courgettes gave us the opportunity to try it out and create the zucchini jam.


Maria Claudia Brunello
NP March 2022