In Love with France, At Home In Italy

I confess to being a complete soap fanatic. Although I am very selective, I do like a number of different types.     However, the Natural Bohemia products are truly in a class by themselves.     There must be something unique about how they are made because they are FAR longer lasting than any of my other favorites. Their well-designed shapes and sizes make them feel beautiful in the hand, and they also have a clean, fresh, scent of their own that makes them stand out from other so-called natural products. I also love the colors and the simple but elegant packaging. Can you tell that I am a fan?    So the question is “Just how many Natural Bohemia soaps does a person need at once?” The answer can be a little complicated. I have three in my bathroom at the moment, and that doesn’t count the one in the kitchen that I’m trying desperately to save my husband from abusing. These are NOT your regular soaps, and they definitely merit an entire blog piece of their ...

Here comes the promised sequel to “Olives 2020: some details of our 9 th Harvest, and more!” that I posted earlier. That story from last year could not have been more different. It started out like this: On Saturday, November 8, 2020, we harvested 2,119 pounds of our olives —a record weight for us—that made 75 liters of the most delicious oil. And now, here’s the story from this year.     Every olive harvest brings a mix of nostalgia and excitement: memories of our first of ten years ago, and also wonder at Mother Nature’s cycles and at what she will give us this time. But this year was especially fraught because we recently lost our neighbor and friend, Loreto, who with his family, used to help us with every aspect of the harvest.    Further, this was a year of low expectations when due to an ill-timed frost, olives were few or nonexistent on most Umbrian trees. Many people decided there were too few olives to bother to harvest, but we decided to go for it.  ...

In our neck of the woods the typical fall colors tend to be limited to various shades of yellow. But since I was up earlier than usual on this lovely day, I took a tour of our landscape and found surprising bits of other shades. Fall’s arrival used to fill me with gloom. But now I’m changing my tune. 🎶

Could it be that I have never made a post about our olive harvest? With our 10th harvest coming up tomorrow, it’s time to remedy that. I had said earlier that I would be posting “OLIVES 2020: some details of our 9th Harvest” from last year, and here that comes. But I will also include some nostalgic favorite photos from the years when the Galli family so generously gave us the benefit of their experience.  * On Sunday, November 8, 2020 we harvested 2,119 pounds of our olives —a record weight for us—that made 75 liters of the most delicious oil. On Saturday, the day before the main harvest, Jim and I had spent a few glorious hours hand-picking 57 pounds on our own from a few smaller trees.   Our solitary picking ahead of time was my idea because this year we had decided to try a new way to get help with the harvest that was going to involve a team of other people. We weren’t sure to what extent we could participate, so I wanted a chance to commune with some of our trees bef...

It’s fall, and loss is in the air, but also the milestones of new babies and the first fall visit of our granddaughters. Maybe you’ve heard me refer to our neighbor and mentor, Farmer G, before. He died last weekend, leaving us very sad. I have been trying to figure out how to honor him and our special relationship. Here’s my attempt.   Although  Letters to Men of Letters  is my first published book, every year since 2008 when we moved to the Umbrian countryside, I have produced a handmade gift book for Farmer G, who tried to teach us how to live here. Each was loaded with photos documenting that year’s misadventures, as we learned about life in this valley from a master of many generations of wisdom. We were his ungifted students, but he never lost patience with our clumsy, ignorant attempts to find our way.  To watch Farmer G wield his zappa was like being at a ballet. “Zappa” translates as “hoe”: a long-handled tool with a metal blade that is used mainly for weedi...