The story is, you might say, too incredible to be true and to verify this fact, I must tell you that I told the story at a dinner party last night and all the guests fell over laughing.

It happened like this…

Last Christmas I was asked by two friends of mine, Linda and Rafael (who run an Art Centre near where I live in Tuscany), to design for them a small Physic Garden in the grounds of their house.

My idea for it was to build a red brick path along and around which people could walk in a way which allowed them access to all the plants and to walk in a circle which would bring them back to the entrance. The herbs were chosen for both their beauty and their calming properties taking into consideration the dryness of the climate and local soil factors, as of course one always has to do.

The path was finished a week before Easter and I popped over to see it with a friend and to check the look of a sort of metal frame surround which had been put up to support some multi flowering rambling roses.

I knew as I drove into the courtyard that morning that something was wrong although outwardly everything looked the same. All the housedogs were agitated and barking their heads off. My dog, Bessy was doing the same in the car and in my ear.

And true to this atmosphere, everyone in the house as they came out to greet me looked both shocked and excited as they attempted between them to relate to me the happenings of the past twenty-four hours.

At some time in the early hours of the morning the Ginkgo Biloba tree had suddenly burst into flames.

Now this tree had been there for countless years and currently stood some three metres from the entrance of the new Physic Garden. There had been no storms during the night. There were no electricity cables under or above the area. In fact the flames had been so bright that the whole house had been awakened obviously thinking that the building itself was burning.

Strange enough you might say, but listen to this. The next morning having spent ages during the night putting out the fire, the exhausted occupants awoke to find that a lamb had been born and left in the little grass knoll next to the tree. The whitest lamb any of them had ever seen and, sure, it was lambing season and lambs were being born in the barns and fields, but never ever was one born in this area within the house courtyards. And never so white. Spooky eh?

And so, we hung around for a while and took some photographs and the story became lost in the telling after a while, replaced by everyday so to speak. Until yesterday that is, when I went over again to check the condition of the plants.

Linda and Rafael had planted a new Ginkgo Biloba in the very centre of the Physic Garden and on walking over to look at it I was physically stunned by the size of all the plants in the garden. They had been put in small and young in late May and the rainfall since had been minimal but these plants had reached a level of growth in my estimate equivalent to at least two years.

Amazing enough in itself you might say but then Rafael rushes to the library and brings back a book on signs and symbols and tells me that the brick path design that I had used was in fact a Celtic Rune used in ancient times to draw in and collect Cosmic Energies. And believe me, I'd had no conscious idea of this at the time.

That's it. A short story which is absolutely true and now that I've written it I feel easier.

And, if anybody out there can throw any light on these strange happenings, please please do so through our Guestbook.

Mice