Pistoia has a long and interesting history, which I will spare you in this blog, but you may be interested to learn why the name Pistoia has a slightly familiar ring to it: Pistoia is the town that gave us the word ‘pistol’. Originally surgical knives were manufactured there, then daggers, and finally in the 16th century pistols. Today it specializes in trains and vivai (plant nurseries), and anyone who has traveled along the A11 autostrada between Pisa or Lucca and Florence will have marveled at the seemingly endless fields of miniature cypresses, olives, pines, and a myriad other ornamental shrubs and flowers. In fact this zone is Italy’s most extensive area of vivai.
Many of the vivai operate on an industrial scale, catering for larger contracts, but some of the smaller ones are open to the general public, and you can pop round to buy a couple of gerani (geraniums), un vaso di basilico o prezzemolo (a pot of basil or parsley), or even perhaps una palma (a palm tree).
If you regularly read my blogs you will know that we are keen gardeners, unfortunately however Lunigiana, the area where we live, isn’t noted for it’s ornamental plants. In fact the local motto could well be “se non lo si puo’ mangiare, non vale la pena coltivarlo” (“if you can’t eat it, it’s not worth growing”). So for us, a day trip to the vivai di Pistoia (the nurseries of Pistoia) was like taking a couple of kids to Disneyland. We do of course have an orto (vegetable garden) which provides us with our fresh pomodori, cipolle, aglio, zucchine, carciofi, bietole, patate, melanzane, e cosi’ via (tomatoes, onions, garlic, courgettes/zucchini, globe artichokes, leaf beat, potatoes, aubergines/egg plants, and so on). But we also have our ‘giardino d’amore’ (garden of love), as our neighbor mockingly likes to call it (ma non c’e’ niente di mangiare!), and in order to develop it, and in particular our custom built ‘block the nosy neighbors’ hedge, we need plants that we can’t get in this neck of the woods.
Not many shopping experiences can give so much pleasure for so little expense. In fact even if we had spent nothing and come away empty handed (apart from a few leaves of sage and mint that just happened to come off in my mother’s hands) we would have been quite content. A warm sunny day spent strolling amongst rows of brightly colored multi-formed plants, bathed in a stream of almost narcotic scents, the pungent flavor of gelsomino, caprifoglio e rose (jasmine honeysuckle and roses), what more could one ask?
So what did we buy? well, three lovely bushes for our ‘anti-neighbor’ hedge: un oleandro (an oleander), un lauro ceraso (a waxed laurel), and un pinco pallino (a flapdoodle, i.e. we can’t remember the name of the last one: in Italian we use the fictitious name ‘pinco pallino’ to mean ‘Joe Blogs’ or someone whose name we can’t remember). We also bought three stunning gerani for the wooden plant trough that my husband made, and elicriso (curry plant). And we still had change from 40 euros!
By the way, if you are interested in finding out about Pistoia, and what it has to offer, have a look at the following web sites for a start, the first is in Italian and the second is English: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistoia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistoia
¼/p>
