While I was away...

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I went to Rome. Five days. Two and a half with You, and another two and a half with an old American friend. A recent widow. Plays bridge. Played a lot on the cruise ship she left to meet up with us in the Eternal City. If you are a fan of History, you probably know that Rome has been invaded, sacked, and despoiled a number of times. Visigoths to Charles VII of France to those creeps from the last World War. A long & wide arch. The latest is Mass Tourism. A voracious river of folk. You can’t or, wouldn’t want to image what Rome is like today. Happily, the city still stands… eternal. Meanwhile, back at our Genoese ranch, the Dogs were left with a substitute filling-in for our usual dog-sitters. The two brothers went to Spain for a cousin’s wedding.

Two unexpected things occurred at il Poggiolo during my absence: it got hot and it rained. I had mowed the lawns and weed-whacked where the mower cannot go at some point prior to my departure on a Freccia Bianca train… the Italian TGV… and in preparation of our gardener re-seeding the terraces he had re-built last year. Winter, its dead leaves, lack of water and the drying winds from Siberia… Thank You, Mr Putin?… had ravaged our grassy landscape. Mowed and whacked, everything looked clipped and orderly. Hopeful.

However, I have came back to this…

Forgot to mention the 10-Day Weather Forecast: rain, thunderstorms and, occasionally, heavy stuff until the middle of the last week of May. It’s the Moon’s fault, if you follow the Phases of the Moon.

Bumper crop of grass, I’d say. Weeds, pretty little wild flowers hovering over leafy and equally wild stalks and massive clumps of an insidious cow grass, intermittently graced by what we really want in the category of Grass: Zoysia. We may never get it. A combo or climate change, my occasional bouts of laziness and let me throw in Madam Moon too.

I was amazed. So green, so tall, so abundant. Wish my bank account were so. Power of Mother Nature, when heat & rain are mixed. In our case, suddenly. The welcoming scene alarms my sense of that phrase, clipped and orderly. However, deep down inside me, there is a rebel and having grass shoot up nearly 15 cm in the space of a long weekend has brought it out. I’ll have enough time to enjoy, perhaps even contemplate the transformation for the next 10 days. I have forewarned You. Due in at any moment. Oh! And it’s raining now. Pazienza.

Our weather in May...

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Archive post May 21, 2019…

We have had the most boring weather this month…

Days of heavy grey clouds. One would have thought rain or, a thunderstorm might erupt. Mostly just spray. Left the garden unworkable and the streets slidey slick. I can count two days when it actually did poor down water. One of them was last Sunday. Spent it curled up in bed with a good book. Nice ambition. T’was ruined periodically by two cabin-fevered Weimaraners. They hounded me to go out. Once out, they hounded me to come back in. The humidity has been exceptional. And lingers still.

Unexpected cold hit too. Not only low-low temps in the early morn, a couple of notches above 32F. Freezing. But at mid-day? There were a few mid-week days when the thermometer struggle to even reach 50F, at 2PM!

Winds blew in and stayed. In all directions. From the mountains and from the sea. Did you know the Italians have a unique name for each wind direction? Yessiree. None use the name, Mariah. And, Thank God. What blew our way bent trees at 45 degrees to the horizontal with huge gale-like gasps. Explosions, comes to mind. Trees would gently sway with a benign breeze and then, suddenly, rip and tear at themselves and each other from the violence of a lengthy gust. Some tall leafy giants did come out of the ground. The Dogs & I saw a few on Our Morning Walks in Nature.

The Loggia of La Casa Grande is a fairly protected space… warm too… and a nifty one to watch Mother Nature do her thing, caused by or despite Global Warming, while not suffer any untidy consequences. The show beyond was often way more interesting… also slightly disturbing… than the Internet.

Not so inside La Casa Grande. Historically, at Easter-time, I transfer myself with the canines in tow from La Casetta, Our Heated Winter HQ, and set up Summer Base Camp in La Casa Grande. 2019 was no exception. The Bunny Holiday has often been the kick-off for warm Tuscan and Spring-like weather. Blue skies, big puffy clouds, birds tweeting, bees buzzing, You sunbathing out on the aia. I think after 10 years of this seasonal re-location, I may use the word historically rather than say, habitually. Both would apply, however. Oh, My Lord… I came so very close to chucking the interior high temp of 50F and returning below to La Casetta. 65F is ideal. I could see my breath. The Creosus-person would have been ecstatic had I done so. He slept under wool blankets or my feather comforter. Absorbing my body heat underneath with him. Nina-beena curled into a tight ball in one of the ratty poltrone to gather a modicum of h-e-a-t. It’s been tough. But we are toughing it out.

Hurtling towards Easter...

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Archive post April 12, 2019…

Two thing are heading for a collision in these late days of April. One is Easter, which lands on our 2019 calendar’s doorstep on Sunday, the 21st of April. Rather late. It’s a problem.

The weather gets weird around Easter. Always has and always will and no matter the date. The contadini here in Codiponte do fret over the late planting of their orto’s. Avid calendar watchers. They and everyone else also fear a sudden and severe Easter cold snap. Worse still, rain could happen. Keep in mind, Italians are not keen on sudden, cold, snap, and rain. They are for Easter. It was once the top on the Christian religious charts. It’s been displaced by overwhelming commercial interests promoting instead Christmas. Spirit & mystery against the almighty dollar/euro/peso/other. A sad commentary.

Lot of days to muck-up too for the long Easter weekend. Il Venerdi Santo on Friday, Saturday to scamper to the grocery store to load up, Pasqua Sunday for Mass and un pranzo con agnello coordinated with dishes full of artichokes, peas and potatoes, and finally, La Pasquetta, on the Monday after Easter, for a picnic outdoors. What a boon. A Monday off. Doesn’t happen in Italy unless Christmas falls on a Monday. The day after Easter is the most problematic day of the long weekend holiday. The gents here want sunshine & warmth to eat un panino con prosciutto crudo, lay around in an lounge chair soaking up the beneficial rays from Sig. Sole and be left in Peace… outside. A sudden or even consistent rain shower would ruin la loro pace pasqualina. The later for sure.

The other is the developing 10 day weather report. The first is unavoidable. The second is a product of prediction which, as my Mother always said, is a false art. False art or not, the current forecast does seem a bit uncertain. Mildly said. Pretty shitty, in others words. It depends on your interpretation and import you’d give to the little icons running down the screen of your iPhone. I have a weather.com app which tells me the weather for the day and for the next 7 wherever I am to be found. Don’t you love to be surveilled? Or caught? And by a gadget? Numbers run down the blue screen and are matched by the dates of those 7 days. Not good. 90% of the icons are puffy white clouds with slanted blue lines… meaning rain, how cute!… shooting down from underneath for today through Easter. The 10% is for today’s weather. The sun was only out in the first hours of our day today. Here is the later story…

What to do? I don’t have pop-corn OR, a good movie to watch. HATE my books too. You’s coming to Codiponte for an extraordinary 13 day It’s-Easter holiday. Days off slung between the bridge of the two weekends. Those slugn holidays are Liberation Day from the Nazi’s and Commie Holiday of May 1st. You may already know the grim news. I ain’t telling him. But, if it’s crummy outside, I won’t be able to endrenture him to yard work. He’ll just have to settle for putting in order the La Casa Grande or other locations, like his Kingdom. His BR is a mess. Then, guests are due in too. Why didn’t they book Sharem el Sheik? So terribly inviting to say… how about if we just hang out?

Fall's Big Storm...

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Archive post November 1, 2018…

I don’t trust the Italian weather-people on TV. Some, from Mars, supposedly, wear uniforms. Aeronautical. Others, still from Mars or thereabouts, wear blue jackets way too short. They never button them either. So ignorant of THE LAW to don a jacket standing before the public. Untrustworthy. As for those persons from Venus, either the do their weather-map ballet in way too skimpy & tight dresses in TEAL or turn & twist in blown away looking nylon blouses matched with a straight skirt and clunky flats. I do rather like one weather-Venus on Canale 5 who sashays in short tight dark jeans with precipitously high heels. Nice flanks when she turns to look at the monitor. No marks for any of their prognostications.

I regularly surf three weather Internet sites here in Italy: meteo.it, meteoapuane.it and meteowebcam.it. Mid-stream though last week, just when You said he was goin ’to com’ on down to Codiponte, I checked the weather report. One showed end-of-world rain the entire weekend and then some. Cannot recall which. Another’s map was full of multi-drop rain icons for Sunday night, Monday morning. The rest rain would be basically AWOL. The last gave a midland probability of much needed… desperately… needed H2O but spotty coverage. Typical expose’. On the day of You’s arrival, I gave another look-see. All three had gotten onto the same program. Dire rain from now until the following weekend. RED & ORANGE ALARMS from the authorities over at the Italian Civil Defence facilities. Wow. You and I and the dogs can nap the entire weekend. Maybe.

Took all of Saturday for the storm to get cranking. Went out to dinner with You to a local cooking/styling conclave in a light rain but buxom winds. The later was a hint. Got home with the help of the gathering winds… tail-winds are always appreciated… packed everyone and the dogs off to bed and promptly conked out from too much American accented Italian cooking. Heavy Chevy. Right about 2:30AM… KA-KA-KABOOM kracked over-head and it did until an hour past the Fall back sunrise. Got up and made myself a caffe’. The dogs ate and then wanted to immediately go out. But, it’s RAINING, animals!!! Can’t you hold it? No. Their rain jackets fluttered & flapped. The two were drenched in 17 seconds flat. Unhappy. You dashed from his unattached BR and into the Kitchen only to growl… semi-politely… that he did not get much sleep during the tempest. None of these personalities asked how my night was. They only wanted to be consoled and to commiserate on a very adverse Sunday morning.

You went back to Genoa post-haste. The dogs moved from club-chair to sofa to the floor, showing no interest to go bounce with the liquid Mother Nature outside. I read and then watched Robin Hood for the nth time. Got fed up with King John… that over-sexed creep… so, I went back to slog through a book published by Edith Wharton in 1903 about Italian Villas and Gardens. She admitted to an error in the order of the title because, in her opinion, gardens make the villa and not the other way around. The classic Italian gardens also did not need the quantities of water like those later laid out in The English Fashion. With grass. Seemed an appropriate tome to consume… or, at least calming… whilst it truly began to storm outside. I had to put the book down. Could not concentrate what with all the whistling, crashing, screeching noises of the winds propelling the rain horizontally against trees, houses, windows, doors. I found myself the physical and moral support of two extremely worried Weimaraners on one single bed width sofa in the Casa Grande’s main salotto. The gale howled for a couple more hours in between rapid fire lightning flashed overhead and thunder rocked our ears below, huddled as we were. At some point during the 5th hour, the electricity blinked, blinked again, blinked a third time and then went out. Damn. The flashlight? Found that after bumping parts of my body from waist -ine down to retrieve it out on the Loggia. Candles? Oh, yes, You’s Reserve DOC of IKEA lanterns and bulky candles in the Stanza dei Tini. Matches? Matches?? MATCHES??? Found a small cache in a spinster-esque porcelain jar in You’s BR. What does he do with them? One of his flea-market treasures. Small as in 3 dinky matches. Being weak-minded in Emergencies, I am amazed at the presence of mind I showed to light first a candle and then light the others from one measly candle. NORMALLY, I would have gone on and used up what at the critical time was A Very Vital Resource!!!

Then True Storm & Disaster Danger struck. Laptop exhausted from its video labors. Ditto… damn-it… for the beleaguered iPhone. Could have thought about that before I sent those 521 Whatsapp messages to loved ones in distant and out-of-danger lands. No lights to read by. And the worse was the flashlight shut-down and only to be resurrected after 3 hours of being re-charged, if the electricity would deign to return to do its appointed job. No way man. Not until 2PM the following day would it be restored. I was out with the dogs surveying damage in the garden when I heard an alarm sound. Spied from my heights that the Scuzzy bar had lights, the antipatica signora in the Swiss chalet house had a light… could it be? Yes, it could. ELECTRICITY!!! Praise the Heavens. Not those which launch wind and some horizontal rain but, he who governs all. The weather-persons, not.