 Without further ado, let's dive right in to Hours in the Garden by Herman Hessa. Toward seven o'clock every morning, I leave my study and step out on the bright terrace. The sun already burns with splendent between the shadows of the fig tree, makes the low wall of coarse granite warm to the touch. Here my tools lie ready and waiting. Each one an intimate, an ally, the round basket for weeds, the zipeta, the small hoe with a short haft. Taking the advice of a clever old man of Ticino, I've put a strip of shoe leather between the wood and the iron, and I keep the tool in a damp place so the wood won't split. You need it all the time. There's a rake here as well, and at times a mattock and a spade, or two watering cans filled with water, warmed by the sun with my basket and small hoe in hand. Facing the sun, I go out for my morning walk, passing the withered and spent roses up to my forest of blooms by the staircase. All kinds of flowers wind round the tendrils of the rambling roses that climb up the granite, tingling themselves in each other, not a few gladioli and bleeding heart and chasmin. Nadalina's gift, Arabis and sunflowers, the wind threatens them all. Each stormy day, every day, the phone blows, they worry me, and yet I planted them because they are dear to me, and I find them here most of the time. Until sometime last year, a stranger to these rural parts, a mighty cactus stood near the staircase, about as tall as a ten-year-old boy. For several years it held out and grew strong, with armored hands that kept all society at a distance. But below, at its foot, a brownish dwarf-like clover settled in, almost unnoticed, which it tolerated, and with whose companionship the cactus was visibly content. But last winter, a heavy load of snow burdened many of its fleshy branches, broke them. Putrefaction pressed slowly from the wounds, eating its way inside. Today, smaller plants fill the mournful hole, and where that armored stranger once struck root, tentatively I planted a columbine, and I hope there won't be too much sun for it here, because its home is the forest floor. Not in. I walk by, but after a few steps, I must stoop down again, in front of the house in the broad gravel bed. Two or three young weeds sprout up around them, already yellowing by early fallen leaves of the fig and mulberry, which I clear away. For feeling will have its way. The garden must be kept as tidy as possible, especially around the outside of the house. For in the gravel bed, the rose beds, the box tree, the house lives, the house lives on. Only beyond the box tree does the garden proper begin. My straw hat low on my brow, I go down the grassy vine covered slope. Mount the beautiful sloping stone stairs, step after step, already the house has vanished. I see the clipped boxwood tower rigid in the glowing sky, and the garden takes me. The steep vineyard slope receives me. At once my thoughts are far from the house, from breakfast, books, mail, and the paper. For a moment more, the distant blue amiably lures my eyes across the glistening lake over onto the mountains, which against the morning light stand softly, step-like. When the sun nears zenith, they become more solid, more massive, more real. Toward evening, flooded in a warm light, they disclose themselves colorful and deceptive proximity, proffering their crags and woods and villages in the golden light. Now in the morning, only the strong lines of the ridges and summits are visible. Those in front, blue-gray, those behind, luminous, always brighter and thinner, more silver, but my eyes soon turn from the dazzling sight in the east, and as soon start their day's work on the ground, masters and keepers of the garden. In the strawberry patch, they detect a young tangle of runners, or here and there, a weed about to bloom, which at best can be pulled up before the flower has had time to develop, and broadcast its innumerable seeds. The narrow footpath cut into the hill in a zigzag sometimes requires attention, wakes care or brings joy, depending on how it weathered the last downpour. If it bravely let the waters into the grass through the lateral channels, or if, and this I've seen more often, out of fear, it surrendered the vulnerable slopes to a sudden downpour, so that rubble and sand pile, a pile up in the grass, while the little path, deeply cleft, cares open and jagged, drift, rifts. In the meagre terrace close by, besides grapevines, little is planted. It's too steep and too far from the water, and gets too much shade from the vines. Nonetheless, one still tries to win a little something from this difficult land. Beans that grow close to the ground, strawberries, cabbage, or peas. Here too, on the best and broadest terrace, Natalina plants. Most worthy Natalina, for many years, a loyal servant, who, since retiring, no longer takes charge of the kitchen. Faithfully, she tools the soil in small tin pales, drags rabbit droppings and ashes from maneuvering the ground. But over there, where at times the path approaches the beds, each year we let out a few flowers, we let a few flowers grow, because we take that steep path quite often, in fact every day. And when the beans and the peas and the cabbage are already brown and scorched, at the edge of the path a few flowers still get their water. Red violet zinnias, or snapdragons, and nasturtians. Past them, whose freshness brightens the languishing slope I walk, all the way down to the stable, it no longer serves that function, but it once did, and still bears that name. Its depths seldom unsealed, house boxes and bottles and all kinds of clutter. Above, in the ary attic, the wood supply is kept. Firewood for the stove, stakes and poles for the garden. A nearby shed shelters Lorenzo's various tools. He tends the vines, cuts and binds them in spring. Waters and sprays them with sulfur in summer and late autumn and winter. He fertilizes them with cow manure. The stable is the center around which the garden revolves. Here, a broad tract of level ground stretches unusually, unusually good in such steep terrain, where every time, every vine in the terrace of the slope wins its station through cunning, artifice, and cajolery. But for us, this strip of level ground, albeit small and narrow, is a godsend. We grow our vegetables here, far from the house, hidden in verdure. Here, we spend man and wife, a portion of our days, truly no little merit and gain accumulated here. This perception is not vouched safe to all. Though the stranger can scarcely see why, we dearly love this strip of arable land, knowing its importance, and we prize it with thanks. 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