Che marzo l'è qua

Yesterday was another Fora Febraro night. It seems the explosions have really driven out the winter... or it was only cold here because I had guests? After Vana and Jamie left we suddenly have excellent sunny weather and 14 degrees out. Not bad.

I went to Agrizoo to celebrate and get a nice plant for the office. When I entered though, an unexplainable something came over me and it was all I could do to keep myself back from buying a full aromatic garden complete with spare pots, earth, and then some roses to grow on the balcony. Agrizoo is this shop where you can find most anything to do with plants and small pets. The back resembles a small hangar, full of flowers of all kinds and the twittering of parrots. Today it looked very much like spring and all the boring evergreens were replaced by small roses, primulas and strawberry plants. I do consider myself lucky to have got out with only a rosemary, a dragon tree and a big azalea that will probably burst into full red bloom one of these days.

I looked around in Estonia this winter and it's all off balance: the cut flowers cost half, a third or a quarter of their price here in Italy and it's exactly the opposite with anything growing in a pot. Alright, the man-size rubber trees and that sort of thing cost a lot here too, but you can get young aromatic plants, cacti or spider plants for next to nothing. I wonder where the difference comes from.

I've already potted the rosemary into something bigger than the tiny plastic pot it came in, so this post is written with a significant amount of earth under my fingernails. The urge to pot, prune and water hasn't really subsided yet, so I'm seriously considering getting some basil, a mint and a red pepper plant as well.