THE LAST CHANCE WILD SWEET PEA

I've been reluctant to blip a lot of flowers but she who hesitates can run out of flowers. I have some pics on my camera but they were taken at least a week ago. Now, all the wild flowers are gone until next year.

When I saw a flash of pink when driving home I decided to walk back to see if it might be a wild sweet pea. As I walked down the shaded road I came to a car parked in the middle of it, pointed straight down. There was a couple in the front and the car had NL plates. The woman shot me an anxious look so, in Italian, I asked if I could help. She asked if I could speak English. What luck, I speak it like a native.

She told me her husband was "frosted" to the car. It's cooler today but not that cool. "He has acrophobia," she said. Mama mia, this is not a thing to have on roads like these. He was a large man, by which I mean tall, not fat, and he seemed to fill the car. I asked if she had a cell phone. She did and I summoned Himself.

So there we all were. The man seemed not to hear. Maybe I should have called the Carabinieri. Finally, teetering on the edge, Himself opened the door, put his hand on the man's arm and told him to put his feet out. No dice.

"You're safe with me," Himself said. "Hah!" I thought to myself.

This went on for a long time but finally the man moved, put his feet out (they were very large) and inched his way along the car. Then he wrapped his arms around his wife and I thought she would topple over because she was a tiny thing.

They'd rented a house quite some distance away but had shot straight past it onto our road. Himself drove the car to the crossroads whereupon the wife got into the driver's seat. Her husband elected to walk. She thanked us profusely and then added, "Your English is very good!" I opened my mouth to say it was my native language, thought better of it and said "Thank you." Well, not many people say that to me.

This is where the car was parked. The thick concrete bit is the road and this is where they were. The edge.

The flash of pink was, indeed, a sweet pea. There were also wild scabious, carnations and cow parsley. A little wild flower gold mine.