how to make peace with mother in dalmatia

The best way to make peace with a mother in Dalmatia is deffiniltley not a conversation, she will battle and batter you out of it if not with logic than with calamaty, screams ,cries and bashing of doors. It is the same in most families in particular with daughters as they are used to being matriarchs.

So I arrived to make peace using action, (cleaning the house, baking cakes can do also) at our family estate which with years of no human intervention had become a wonderous savage garden.

Hundreds of citrus plants had expanded into inpenetrable sky high bushes of two inch yellow thorns. The blackberry plants grandfather once cultivated near the well, had spread their tenticles and grew in 10 meter deep thickets, framing a square kilometer of land. Cyprus trees planted at the entrance had fallen in storms and closed entrance to land. It appeared the nature was in unity trying to protect this piece of earth, which has been nurtured by my predecesors for generation and centuries. I wondered if the ghosts had this way protected the land until we where ready to do so ourselfs.

Mother and brothers and dog where beavering away each in their seperate chore of land clearing. Ivo with his ray bans, ipod, miami vice look was sawing away dead cherry tree branches . Antonio was cutting misbihaved clementines, dog was running around unberrying old bones and snakes, whilst matriarch straddelled with some mean machine was slashing at ivy and thorn. I picked up rakes and pulled away the spines, branches the rest had amputated.

By the time sun started to play color catroones in the sky we unburried a cherry orchid, fig and olive trees, vines, oranges, lemons, clementines, apricots, pears, apples, rosemary, aniseed bushes and bay trees, quite a treasure of fruits and spices.

I concluded that we ought to plant english grass beneath the trees , and with a little help of my St Martins girls this could become the perfect setting for a wedding..

We split from the land at dusk and peace with mother was made without a word.