Moving Plants

The cardoons/artichokes violetta di Chioggia are looking limp and wretched. I am reminded of a friend’s thesis on 18th century French soldiers who died of the then medically accepted condition, nostalgia. The strain of being up-rooted, homesick and in a strange place to which they couldn't adapt, became too much. They withered and died. More recently, our cricketers have had to come home from tours due to bouts of homesickness. I can't move my plants back to their original spots so find myself cheering them on, willing them to settle and root.

?Cardoons

Decided to move my cardoons which spent the summer leaning over a main path, scratching innocent passers by. For plotholders are well-armed and shoot from the hip, or in this case, chopped off my exquisite cardoons' purple heads. Became clear getting to the root of the probem was a tough job, but undeterred my spade and I heaved and dug and suddenly up one came, then another. Roots torn and broken, but with cans of water and beds of mixed compost, manure and leaf mould they are now rehoused. One new shoot broke right off. A, who knows his plants, told me to cut the outside leaf down to the tip of the heart of the new leaves and pop it in since it had a hint of root. Followed instruction and left it looking perky. Strange to think these prickly giants began as seeds on my window ledge. I call them cardoons because my usually knowledgeable plotmates do, but I thought the seed packet (now lost) was entitled more glamorously, artichoke "violetta di Chioggia". What is the identifiable difference?