There is an idiomatic expression in Italian – “pollice verde”, which literally means “green thumb”. That’s what they say about a man with the talent and flair of a gardener. He sort of poked his thumb into the ground, stuck a dry branch into the resulting hole, and it took root, bloomed and began to wobble. I’ve always admired such people. I’m not a gardener myself. I only grow things that can grow on their own. For example, peonies. They seem to like the soil, or the lighting, or something else. In any case, a “peony garden” of almost 20 bushes of different varieties has been formed around the house.
There is even a “Golden Peony” – a mysterious plant bought in a fit of unbridled passion at some fair. It has also caught on, but only its petals have the color of yesterday’s salmon, and the flower itself emits a distinct fish smell. My friends didn’t take my word for it, they came, sniffed, and scratched their heads in confusion. Then they asked, “How is this possible?” Once it’s caught on, let it be, but, of course, the traditional white or crimson options are better. There is even a beautiful Silver Frost, bought out of pity: someone rejected a terrible spine at the checkout, and I decided to shelter him like a homeless orphan. And now we are admiring the luxurious delicate pink flowers with a border. Peonies in a vase are beautiful, but they tend to crumble suddenly and completely. Falling into the soup at the same time. That’s why I rarely cut them, they bloom violently along the paths and, as they say, drop their petals on the sand.
“What a decadence!” my son exclaimed when he saw our white cat dozing on a scarlet peony fall. By the way, my son graduated from the university’s Faculty of Biology, but he prefers to admire gardens and parks only as an onlooker or tells all sorts of incredible stories about them. For example, that they had a teacher at the faculty named Zhuk. He was a wonderful man and an expert, but both of his eyes were squinting. This created problems for cheating students, because the direction of the teacher’s gaze was very difficult to determine. One day, another course of the Beetle successfully defended its diplomas. It was celebrated in a friendly way in the laboratory located in the historic building of 12 colleges on the Neva embankment. It was a wonderful bright June, and the professor decided to walk through the Summer Garden. But it was there that he dropped something important, either a mobile phone or keys, and began to fumble in the grass, kneeling down. The guards saw that someone was swarming under the shade of the lilac, and harshly addressed the intruder.: “Who are you?”
–A bug,– our hero replied, stammering slightly, without getting up from his knees.
“What kind of bug?” The guards were indignant and looked at the unfortunate man’s face.
The biologist’s squinting eyes finally agitated the law enforcement officers, and they dragged the Beetle to the department. On the way, he was indignant, called himself a university professor and thereby discredited himself completely. However, at the security point they were presented with an official identification card with a photo and an official stamp. A silent scene. To the teacher’s credit, he told this story himself in every detail, plucking flowers of delight from the student audience.
Another, no less romantic case connects me with the Summer Garden. I’m not a biologist, but I also studied at the university and, like everyone else, sometimes skipped classes. On that March day, I ran away from some kind of “labor protection”, and my feet led me into a Summer Garden – black and white, wet, touching. Moreover, it is absolutely deserted: it is not the season for tourists, even more so for locals. I wandered along familiar alleys past vertical sculpture cases and tried to remember where and which of the marble gods were hidden. And then Grandpa appeared. He was cheerful, but very old, with a completely gray beard, and was wearing a good-quality black half coat. Who started the conversation first? It’s probably him. He introduced himself as a gardener, the caretaker of the Summer Garden. He said that he would soon turn 90 and that his father was also a gardener in the Summer Garden. Grandpa took me around the garden, showing me the oak that Daddy planted in honor of his birth. So now I know what a 90-year-old oak tree looks like: a tall tree with a trunk diameter of more than half a meter. I also learned how to grow an oak tree: in autumn, they choose a large, even acorn, and then stratify it, that is, they keep it in the refrigerator for a couple of months – let the plant think that this is such a winter. Then the acorn is planted in a pot, and when it grows to two leaves, it is planted in the ground and all the grass is carefully weeded out so as not to interfere with the future handsome man. Grandpa used to show me all sorts of gardening tricks.: “Do you see the curved branch here? It turned out the letter “H”! It was my dad who specially worked with wood to make an oak tree in honor of Chekhov, whom he loved very much. And then I planted the lime trees after the blockade. They stand with the letter “M”, repeating the pattern of the constellation Cassiopeia – my wife and I loved to find it in the night sky…”My shoes were completely soaked, I was cold, but it was impossible to leave – I wanted to memorize the whole garden to the last tree. Ironically, I remembered almost everything except my grandfather’s name. But on the other hand, what kind of old gardeners could we be talking about if my classmate Eugene had just invited me to the premiere of the unknown film “Mimino”?
My husband also has his own “summer garden” story. When he was a student, he and his friends climbed into the garden, which was already closed at night. They got there through the famous corner with a semicircular grid, the photo of which can be seen on every second calendar. What for? And to verify the claim that the marble Two-faced Janus looks exactly like the famous rock musician in one of his profiles. We found a bust, and we were convinced – yes, it looks like it. Then the guards came and began to find out what the uninvited guests were doing here. The guests talked about Janus, similarities and musical preferences. The guards examined the marble deity, shrugged their shoulders, for some reason agreed and peacefully threw the “students” out.
Of course, the Summer Garden is small and “postcard-like”. But it hides an unobvious “apothecary’s garden” – a corner of the garden, where since Peter’s time they have been growing all sorts of cute things like medicinal hyssop, ordinary parsley and unusual cabbage. Unusual means decorative. According to the passport, this is the same cruciferous family, but it doesn’t always look like you’d believe that the closest relatives of these round “bouquets on a stem” are salted with cranberries or horseradish for the winter. Once, out of fierce pity, I bought half-dead and very discounted seedlings of decorative beet-colored cabbage in a construction hypermarket. I put it somewhere between the tulips in the flower bed and forgot. As a result, the maroon bushes of the palm tree system grew to a meter high, and the flower bed acquired a breathtaking appearance: all sorts of mini pumpkins and nasturtiums are spreading on the ground, and purple giants with carved leaves reign over them!
I also have a rocambol. It’s a pretty name, isn’t it? It seems to be something romantic and heroic, with a touch of mystery and a perfumed mustache. That’s what the French writer Ponson du Terrail thought back in 1857. He had just conceived a series of criminal adventure novels, “Parisian Dramas” (not to be confused with Eugene Sue’s “Parisian Mysteries”), but he did not know what to call the character. And then he confessed that in anguish he leafed through the gardener’s handbook lying at hand, and there was such a charm as “rocambol”. As a result, one of the famous French superheroes was born, who was once more popular than Arsene Lupin. This plant also has more mundane names: “elephant garlic”, “goose onion”. This “garlic onion” does not cause any trouble, and in the early cold spring its bright leaves and thick stem cause delight: hooray, fresh greens! However, it does not smell of perfumes and mists, but of garlic, especially in a frying pan. But unlike ordinary garlic, it does not pollute the breath of those who have eaten it. It is limited only to a short-term aromatization of the room.
If you look at it, it doesn’t matter what color your thumb is and what exactly grows on you, peony or cabbage, rockambol or oak … The main thing is to understand who feels good with you and not interfere with his blooming and smelling!
