To my question, you probably answered:

"This oak tree is at least eighty or a hundred years old."

The photograph you see was taken the year I was planted in this garden, and that little man next to me is Giulio, and he had just spent one hundred thousand lire to bring me home.

This has been my home since 1996, and our story was just beginning. 

This photograph was taken in 2004.

I'm behind Giulio, and in just eight years, I had already grown a lot. Perhaps even more than one would have expected from a young oak tree.

At the time, no one paid much attention to my growth.

No one knew that my roots had found special soil.

In the 1960s, right where the garden stands today, there was a small manure heap. At that time, in the Mantua countryside, every farming family had a stable, a pigsty, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, and a space to collect manure. But above all, they respected nature's cycle, and nothing was wasted: what nourished the animals returned to the land that nourished it.

Over the years, the farm changed. The main house was built, and that portion of land was incorporated into the garden.

In 1996, fate decreed that I was planted exactly there.

Sometimes we don't see and reap our fortune because we forget to look beneath our feet.