ortiche showing up in the pot of a small bare peach tree which is a bit Charlie Brown Christmas, so every bit of green is welcome these days

…or nettles, are to be found all over the streets of Rome, coming up from any unattended space between stones, they sting (a fact I am sure every Roman child learns early on with a warning from a parent – since it is the first thing that all of my Italian friends say about them: ‘pizzica!’), are known as a sort of peasant food, can be brewed as tea, or cooked with pasta, making a cameo appearance in Pasolini’s ‘Teorema” when the maid refuses to eat anything else – and I am letting them have their way in my garden as they pop up here and there – a pretty green in a winter garden – since they are such a quintessentially Roman street food.