Thirty years ago Joan Marble and her sculptor husband Robert Cook bought an unpromising piece of land north of Rome. Here they built a house and grew a wonderful garden. At first they encountered blank incomprehension from the locals. "There"s no water, the ground is like cement, it"s too cold in winter and too hot in summer, it never rains, it rains too much, the roads are impassable, the ravines are bottomless--" But Joan and Robert"s enthusiasm for the land, their ignorance of the obstacles that faced them, their downright obstinacy, the unexpected friends who helped them - all served to conquer the intransigent terrain.