A Winter Garden
by David A. Ross
Shortly after moving to Corfu I began writing a novel entitled, A Winter Garden. The book was the sequel to a previous novel I'd written in 1994 entitled, Xenos. The title of the second book was derived from the real life experience of growing a large winter garden with my friend Takis.
All during the autumn of my first year on Corfu, I tilled soil and prepared plots, all the while assured by Takis that we could grow a bountiful crop of vegetables on Corfu during winter. "The rain will come in November," he told me. "After three months, we will take many vegetables." Having no
A Winter Garden - Corfu Magazine - Vol. 4, No. 2, December 15, 2008
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My approach to growing a garden, however, was somewhat different than that of my Greek partner. I was inclined to plant seeds along neat rows in well-defined plots. I created furrows to trap the water. I dug out weeds and worked fertilizer into the soil. Takis, on the other hand, scoffed at my approach. "No need for that," he explained as he cast a handful of seeds haphazardly onto the ground. "On Corfu, everything grows," he assured me.
In my carefully laid out rows, I grew carrots and celery, onions and garlic, spinach and lettuce, as well as a variety of other greens recommended by Takis. My friend, on the other hand, grew a crop of potatoes, as well as a bean plant I'd never seen before called Kukia. It was the seeds that produced that bean plant that he'd scattered wildly about the land adjacent to my plots, seeds I never really expected to germinate and produce plants.
Takis was also quite enthusiastic about harvesting wild greens. In Greece, such wild plants are used for salads and as cooked vegetables. The Greek word for these wild plants is Xorta. Takis seemed to know exactly which wild plants were edible, and each day at our winter garden he collected a large bagful of what I came to call Takis' weeds. Back at my apartment, he separated the various plants, cleaned them quite thoroughly, and then boiled them on my cook stove for his lunch. The smell they gave off while cooking was nothing short of rancid, and I only tried his wild vegetable ragout once, which was one time too many.
As the season progressed, the rains came, but not as Takis had hoped. It was a dry autumn on Corfu, and a cold one as well. The seeds we'd planted germinated slowly, and the plants that emerged were stunted from the cold nights. Still, we managed to harvest a few vegetables. The one crop that did well, oddly enough, was the bean that Takis had scattered. The plants grew tall and proud and produced a foot-long bean in abundance. I, too, harvested some of the beans, and when my Greek neighbor Frederiki saw me washing them in my garden, she cautioned me: “The Kukia bean must be boiled twice before eating it, otherwise it was poison.” Feeling a bit skeptical about eating the beans, I told Takis what Frederiki had told me, but he said that that was nonsense, and that he'd been eating them raw his entire life. My skepticism was not assuaged; after all, this was a man who ate weeds for lunch!
In the end, I decided to heed Frederiki's warning, and I did indeed boil the beans twice. They were delicious. Takis, on the other hand, ate them straight out of the garden. (I knew this for a fact, because when I would arrive each morning at the garden to work, I often saw one of the Kukia bushes stripped clean, and I knew that Takis had already been there that morning and taken his breakfast in the raw, so to speak).
By the time spring finally came, and it was time for tourists to begin arriving on Corfu, Takis had been eating the beans for a couple of months. The garden was left for me to tend, as Takis turned his attention to renting out rooms. Each day I went to work in the garden, while Takis went to the port to meet the incoming ships--an easy and carefree arrangement, except for one small problem. Takis had developed a large boil on his upper lip, which was both painful and unsightly. The cause of the malady remained a mystery, even to Takis' doctor. The boil was lanced and a salve was prescribed, one which turned Takis' lips as purple as an eggplant. Still, Takis was dedicated to the treatment, and each day he arrived with swollen purple lips.
"It's the Kukia beans," Frederiki told me when she saw Takis' mouth. "You have to boil them twice!" she maintained. I told Takis about Frederiki's diagnosis, but he scoffed once again. "I've been eating those beans raw my entire life," he reiterated.
The problem grew worse by the day. In time his entire mouth became infected and swollen. As a result of the infection, he was unable to shave, which only added to his increasingly grotesque appearance. "I can't go to the port looking like this!" he groaned. "Perhaps you should stop eating the beans," I suggested. Of course he wouldn't hear of it.
As the spring advanced, and the rain ceased, the winter garden gradually began producing fewer and fewer vegetables. The spinach and the lettuce withered, the roots were finally all harvested, and even the Kukia bean plants finally failed to produce fruits. It was then, and only then, that Takis' mouth infection began to heal. Once again he was able to approach arriving tourists without embarrassment.
For me, the experience of growing a winter garden on Corfu proved not only novel and enjoyable, but profitable as well. (Money was very tight that winter, and often the vegetables harvested in the winter garden went into the soup that graced our table). The harvest I claimed was, however, somewhat different than that of my friend. Besides the sustenance taken from the fruits of my labor, the harvest provided me with the literary metaphor that brought the book I was writing to life. Takis, on the other hand, still carries a scar on his upper lip left by the persistent boil.
These days the plot where we grew the one and only winter garden has gone back to weeds. I've not visited the land lately, but I'm sure that Takis still harvests Xorta there. I, on the other hand, buy my vegetables from the green grocer. No weeds for me, thank you. I prefer to know the consequences of what I put in my mouth before I chew and swallow, because I can't help thinking that what goes in must eventually come out in kind.
other gainful employment on Corfu, I approached the work enthusiastically.
Two Novels by
Corfu Magazine Editor
David A. Ross
Explore the
Greek Experience
Fall in Love
"In each of his works,
David A. Ross explores the conflicts and feelings of those whose lives are balanced upon the fulcrum of change,
and elicits the courage
to confront life's
pivotal choices."
