Flowers a fragrant symbol of a beautiful life
Ottawa woman uses gardening to bring joy, happiness, food and company
Eulalia D’Urbano paused in her garden as her son Nevio took a photo of her to send to her brother Antonino, in Switzerland.
“Tell him I’m not alone,” said Eulalia, 89. “I have my flowers.” “Digli che non sono solo. Ho i miei fiori.”
Eulalia has been tending her spectacular flower and vegetable garden in her west-end backyard since the early 1980s. She grows a variety of vegetables including tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, and various types of lettuce, parsley and basil. She eats what she can, and also gives away produce to her friends and family.
“To her, the garden is a living thing,” said Nevio. “Her garden keeps her company. She loves to watch her garden evolve and produce food, bringing her joy and happiness. It keeps the wind in her sails, and it gives her something to look forward to every day. To be patient and watch it grow.”
The D’Urbano family emigrated from Italy to Ottawa in August 1966, coming here from the town of Roccamontepiano, near Chieti, east of Rome and near the Adriatic Sea.
“She grew up in rural Italy and to survive, they did everything,” said Nevio. “She was also a seamstress, and worked in Ottawa as a seamstress as well. We got here on a weekend and she started work right away on Monday.”
After working in a few different locations, she joined her daughter Maria who opened Maria’s Tailor Shop at Carlingwood Mall and the two worked there until Eulalia retired at 78 to look after her husband Vito, who was suffering from dementia. He passed away Oct. 22, 2014.
Each year, Eulalia saves her garden seeds in the fall and re-plants them for tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and peppers. Her geraniums are also decades old. She brings the plants in for the winter and in spring, they go back out.
She lives alone in the same house where she started her current garden in the 1980s, and she has already started her inside seedlings in pots by the window, awaiting this year’s bounty.
The proud mother of four children, grandmother of eight, and great-grandmother of one is “passionate about everything that needs to be done in life,” said Nevio, “and cooking is included in that. My mom makes the most of every day. In a society that sometimes disregards the little things in life, she doesn’t. She looks at and cherishes the small things that bring her happiness. It makes her a very strong lady and a very loving one.”