HORSE TROUGH WITH A HISTORY

This is a horse trough full of sorfinias, or cascading petunias. That's pretty obvious but why we have it isn't.

Family history has it that a relative was bustling along the main street in Thurso, Caithness (Scotland) when she saw two men, rubbish truck at hand, wrenching loose the Victorian horse trough.

"Here, here," she said, "what are you doing with that?" Did she wave her furled umbrella at them? We don't know. They said they were taking it to the scrap yard.

The mists of history close in here but the figure of £5 is known. This was a vast sum in those days, a week's wages at the least. At a guess, she paid the men £5 to deliver it to the house out on the moors where she spent her summers. There it sat when I arrived to live at this same, windswept house. It was not used for anything so it sat there lashed by wind and rain. The trough went with us to Perthshire where it sat under a huge maple tree. I tried to grow herbs in it but it was too shaded and nothing grew. It is solid iron and weighs a ton. It isn't a thing you move about on whims.

It arrived in Italy as a rusted ruin. It was highly visible since we don't have the space to hide a thing like that. Italians keep their homesteads tidy and I was embarrassed by it. We had it sand blasted and a professional painter called Lino was commissioned to paint it. We said "black" but Lino is more artistic than that. He did a number on it. Every year now it is festooned with sorfinia, almost always white but this year pink.

It sits at the bottom of our drive, next to the wood pile and under an olive tree. For a better look at the trough itself you can see it here. Full frontal.

It's a good thing I decided to photograph it. It is obvious that it needs some attention.