Umbria, Southern Style: the Bottle Tree Cometh

  
    When the peach tree that shaded our terrace at Yellow House started to die, we thought we'd have to take it out. Poor ole thing had been producing peaches as hard as baseballs for the last five years, it had bunions growing where branches had been trimmed in other generations, and early this spring it developed a terrible case of a wet black fungus that harbored zillions of little black bugs. 


    One sunny spring morning, we decided the old tree had to go. Il Magnifico and I dug around the storerooms #1, 2 and 3, and eventually found a little rusted saw and got to work on the misshapen branches. The flimsy instrument kept catching in the wood, so making any headway was like a trip to the gym -- in about five minutes our tongues were hanging out. Panting like hound dogs, we flopped down on the sofa and a long simmering idea surfaced in my Alabama- bred brain: our peach tree would have a second life, as a bottle tree. At last, I would have a little piece of the American South in my own backyard in Umbria (not counting the Mardi Gras beads strung in the olive trees).


    Il Mag went to the hardware store in Bastardo and brought back the biggest galvanized nails I've ever seen.  I scrounged around among the boxes and debris in the various storerooms for bottles, blue bottles to be exact. I've been following Felder Rushing's gardening show on Mississippi public radio for years, as well as his website (www.felderrushing.net/BottleTreeImagess.htm), so I knew from the hundreds of photos of bottle trees from across Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and other southern states that this was the color I wanted. 


    According to Felder's history, the desire for bottles trees originated in Arabia after glass was invented, spread through central Africa, and was brought to the southern US by slaves as early as the 17th century.  In the South, bottle trees were a way to have something inexpensive and pretty in the front yard--bottles catch the light, shine brightly at dawn when the sun shines through them, glow at sunset. Cobalt blue bottles have been said to capture and banish the bad spirits, keeping them away from the house. I certainly wasn't going to have a bottle tree without blue bottles and I could find just one. That was not going to do.

© Eudora Welty Collection,  

Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1930s

    A call went out for blue bottles. Friends in Mississippi promised to bring us some, my cousin in Alabama passed along an old Milk of Magnesia, and my aunt in Virginia finished off some German wine and passed along the empty. A Brit with no earthly idea what I was talking about dutifully kept her eyes open and found some blue bottles containing water from Wales. I was making progress.
     

Ann and Dale

   Finally, our friends arrived from Oxford, MS, bringing with them a carefully packed box containing six beautiful blue bottles, along with their unmatched expertise on the South. Ann Abadie is associate director of the Center for Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and an authority on all things Southern; her husband, Dale, is a historian. With them were law prof John Robin Bradley and, his wife, artsy Laura Bradley. With this level of Mississippi firepower on our terrace in Italy, we had no doubt our bottle tree would be imbued with a special magic. We each hammered in a nail and placed a blue bottle, with Laura's critical eye determining the perfect spot. 
    
   That was day before yesterday. Since then I've added an antique bottle from Cape Town to crown my tree -- since the idea for bottle trees came to the American South from Africa, I think its pale green glass is a fitting addition. Dale says I should move the bottles around once in awhile, for aesthetic reasons if not to confuse the roaming bad spirits. I might even consider adding red or yellow to the mix if I happen to find any. Any and all contributions will be accepted.

Bottle tree experts come to help

Bottle by bottle

   Fun reading about bottle trees:
http://usads.ms11.net/maxpower.html

http://usads.ms11.net/bottletree2.html
http://thiseclecticlife.com/2010/03/31/bottle-tree-at-last-maybe/
     
     

    

Martedi Grasso, Mardi Gras, Carnevale: It Began in Italy

A Carnevale princess on a street strewn with cordiandoli (paper confetti)

Mobile, Alabama, the town founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1702, was the capital of French Louisiana from 1702-1711. In 1703, the settlers celebrated the first Mardi Gras in the U.S. The symbolic colors of Purple (justice), Green (faith) and Gold (power) became official in 1872. But, it was the Italians who started it all.

For adolescent Mobilians in the mid-twentieth century, Mardi Gras was all about the parades. The shining satin costumes worn by revellers atop mule-drawn floats reflected the flickering lights of the torches carried by the white jacketed muledrivers. Paper confetti and serpentine flew threw the air, landing in our hair, our mouths and the gutters. As children jostled for position among the crowds lining the street, straining for the beat of the marching band and avoiding their mothers' seaching hands, they thought only to go home with a good haul of the Moonpies and glittering cheap necklaces thrown by the masked men or women who rode the floats.

Carnevale in Piazza del Duomo in Milan

Mardi Gras (aka Martedi Grasso, Fat Tuesday), the culmination of Carnevale, was first devised by the Romans, although it is Carnevale in Venice and Viareggio that are famous worldwide. The word Carnevale translates as "go away meat," because during Lent practicing Christians did not eat meat. Much earlier in history, the Roman Saturnalia celebrations began with a parade of floats resembling ships – the carrum navalis. Instead of the colorful costumes we see today, the riders were, in fact, naked men and women dancing with erotic abandon. (And we thought that was a Brazilian idea). Eventually, the more sedate Carnevale celebrations spread to the Catholic countries of Europe and then on to the new world.

These days, Carnevale in Italy, apart from Venice, revolves mostly around children in costumes and food. The King’s Cake may be traditional fare in Mobile and New Orleans, but it is frappe, crespelle, sfingi, castagnole, cenci, nodi, chiacchere, bugie, galani, frittole, berlingaccio, sanguinaccio and tortelli that mark carnival season here.

Carnevale pastries

Children attend parties dressed like princesses or cowboys, while their parents ogle the pastry offerings that appear in the windows of le pasticcerie (bakeries) and clog the aisles of supermarkets. The diets that began on January 1 are forgotten these few weeks before Lent -- no one can resist the crunchy, flaky, sweet delight of a plate of frappe dusted with powdered sugar, and it’s absolutely impossible to eat only one.

In Umbria, Todi produces Carnevalandia, a lively festival packed with costumed children and their smiling parents, and a medieval banquet to localize it all. Other Umbrian towns celebrate with medieval-style flag throwers or Carnevale parties in the piazzas or schools. Costumes are for sale in local shops and i ristoranti decorate their entrances.

The Devil at EMI supermarket

At the supermarket, checkout ladies wear Carnevale hats and pretend to overlook the multiple packages of frappe sailing across their scanners on the way to my grocery bags and our own personal Pastry Saturnalia. And then, too soon, the frappe will be gone and Carnevale will be over until next year.
copyright Sharri Whiting 2011

Reflections on Endless Washing Machine Cycles

Naples laundry...always an inspiration

   

      I am one of those expats living in Italy who has never stopped complaining about how long it takes to wash a load of clothes in my front loading European washing machine. Two hours and fifteen minutes for the cottons cycle is a mind boggling number.  In the US you can wash six loads in the time it takes to wash one load in Europe. What is wrong here? Don't these people understand that time is. . . time?

   Finally, thanks to the Internet, I've been put in my place. Who knew I was such an environmentalist? I was already rather proud of myself to have learned how to separate the paper, plastic, glass and indifferenziato (uncategorized) trash since Via Palombaro was put on the garbage recycling route in January. Now I am feeling even more virtuous with each load of dirty clothes I stuff into my European washer. 

     Here’s what I’ve learned from the websites listed below:

* Up to three times the water is needed for most US top loaders than for European front loaders.

* European front loaders are quieter than top loading machines

* European front loaders have more capacity without that pesky agitator taking up space

* Spin speeds in top loaders are usually slower, resulting in more moisture left in clothing.

* Top loaders that agitate are not as gentle on clothing and linens.

* European front loaders use horizontal-axis, tumbling drum system, which is why they require less than half the water. That's for a pre-wash, main wash and up to five rinses versus only the wash cycle on a top-loader.

* Frontloaders in Europe have internal water heaters, which saves the cost of using your hot water heater at the same time as your washer. This means that you can select temperatures between 30 and 95 degrees Celsius (86-203 F) and the machine will heat the water to that termperature. Rather than using bleach, it's possible to use very hot water on whites such as socks and sheets, thus saving the world from more Clorox in the water system.  Cold water is an option on newer machines and European detergents for cold water are now being sold, as well as good pre-wash stain remover sprays.

* Some models offer spin speeds as high as 1600 rpm compared to the average toploader's less than 1000, resulting in higher water extraction and faster drying clothes.

* The tumbling action of a front loader is much gentler on garments than the an agitator in a top loader.

      So, yes the long wash cycle is a pain. So, here in Umbria we find something to do while waiting the two hours, fifteen minutes for the towels to finish washing:

1) Read a book on my kindle in the bubble bath

2) Have a cup of tea on the terrace and listen to the birds sing

3) Bake a cake. . . from scratch

4) Take a long walk in the country

5) Inventory the pantry and go to the grocery store with an extensive list of staples to buy

6) Make my New Year's resolutions, including a plan to seek the virtue of pazienza (patience)

7) Hang the previous wash load outside on the clothesline to dry in the sun

8) Weed the orto (vegetable garden); toss the snails into the adjacent field

9) Make minestrone, chopping all the fresh vegetables (no cheating with pre-chopped frozen veggies, though they really are quite good)

10) Prune something -- an olive tree, a fig tree, a rose bush

11) Make olive oil infusions with rosemary and sage from the garden or lavender pot pourri

12) Reflect on the fact that living The Slow Life demands some concessions. If I had to choose between my WiFi and a twenty minute wash load, WiFi would win hands down.
Copyright Sharri Whiting 2011

While the towels are washing, the Umbrian countryside beckons

Links:

http://housewares.about.com/lw/Home-Garden/Home-improvement-renovation/Top-Loading-vs-Front-Loading-Washers-Which-is-Better-.htm

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/non_aviation/read.main/65637/

http://www.efficientlivingforum.com/content/189-us-vs-european-front-top-loading-washer-comparison.html

 

Will Work for Food, Provided it's Zero Kilometer Cuisine

    Anyone who's willing to come to Italy to spend a week picking olives the old fashioned way is a someone who appreciates biological, organic, fresh, local food and wine. Taking that step back in the process, from consumption to the actual harvest of something they are eventually going to eat, allows us all to reflect on what we do to our bodies when we hit the fast food counter. Fortunately, here in Umbria, our friends can enjoy what the Italians call "zero kilometer cuisine" -- just about everything they eat while here will have been produced in the region.

No olive left behind

    Yesterday, our ten pickers produced six full crates of olives from about ten trees, 10% of what we need to accomplish this week. Today, after a good dinner and solid night's sleep, we expect to fill many more of those green, red and yellow plastic boxes. We still have  the old wooden olive crates used in the old days, but have turned them into kitchen cabinets -- they are so heavy empty it's hard to imagine moving them full of olives.

La Signora picks the leave from her family's olive harvest

     Since food is an integral part of any Italian experience, especially a culinary trip, we offered a "workers'" lunch of fresh minestrone with parmesan and olive oil, salumeria from Norcia (prosciutto, salami), Stilton cheese brought by a friend from England, mozzarella, and a variety of fresh baked breads. There was the endless flow of Omero's garage wine, of course, and a polenta torta, citrus crostata and mandarini for dessert. After a cup of coffee we hit the trees again to work off lunch; we have to begin thinking of dinner.

      Standing amid the olives at La Casetta Rosa, we could hear our neighbors picking their trees further down in the valley. The rythmic cadence of Umbrian-style Italian conversation drifted up our way on the breeze -- they must have listened to us speaking English with accents tinged with Italian, Dutch, American Southern, English, and Namibian origins. We were all doing the same thing: picking olives while talking about our lives, our children and grandchildren, our gardens. In our group there was also talk of test driving Ferraris, future trips, and the anticipation of eating tonight at Le Noci, our favorite restaurant in Grutti.

     At Le Noci, Il Magnifico wrote down the orders ad La Principessa recited the menu. This is not required of all diners, of course, but since we have the fare memorized, we can cut out minutes from the process by presenting the server with a fait accompli -- in Italian. This ensures appreciation from Danielle and the ladies in the kitchen, who send out food out in some kind of reasonable order.

     Old favorites on the table last night included were fazzoletti (triangular ravioli stuffed with ricotta and topped with panna (cream) and fresh shaven truffles, strongozzi with truffles, gnocchi stuffed with porcini, tagliata (sliced grilled beef steak) topped with fresh arugula and balsamic vinegar, stewed cinghiale (wild boar), capriolo (venison), and veal prime rib. All this was followed by tiramisu, bavarese, creme Portuguese, and fresh baked cookies with Sagrantino Passito.

     It's 6:30 a.m. on Monday now and still dark outside. There is some stirring upstairs, so the pickers must be awake. After a quick cup of coffee, we will be back out in the piantoni (big plants -- local name for olive trees). Their picking sessions will be bookended with a coffee break in the field, a farmer's lunch in the kitchen, and tonight's dinner at Frontini, an agriturismo which, by law, serves a menu made up almost entirely of their own or nearby production.

     Olivistas Arise! Day Two has begun.

Copyright 2010 Sharri Whiting

Olivistas to the Table! Soup's On

If you look closely, you can see the olives silhouetted against the sky

6 am. CET, Via Palombaro, Umbria
      The countdown started 364 days ago when the last pickers left to go home to England, Germany, the US, Namibia and the Netherlands. Tomorrow ten friends from around the world will come for our fourth olive picking house party. We call them the Olivistas.

     We've spent this week in preparation. Since I am dealing with a demonic case of jetlag, having arrived from the States three days ago, I have been in the kitchen by five every morning, chopping onions for a soffritto that will form the base of one of the five soups we will have for lunch during the harvest. I am partially cooking each one before freezing it; mixed aromas emanate from various pots, wafting warm jetstreams of onions, rosemary, sage, and porcini throughout the house. There is also the scent of fig bread baking in the oven, making for a confusing cinnamon/onion olfactory experience.
    The Olivistas provide the manual labor to pick our 120 trees and we want them to be glad they came.  Even if it's a chance to get away from the daily routine of office/patients/computers/grocery store, picking olives is hard work. When the sun shines across the valleys, highlighting the autumn red Sagrantino vines stretching across the fields, it can be glorious. If it's damp and misty, it can be romantic (sort of), provided one is dressed for it. But, if it rains, it's just awful.
     This is when a steaming boil of farro, lentil, ceci (chickpea) or minestrone soup can provide the inspiration to get us back in the trees. We sit around the kitchen table, warmed by the fireplace, the soup, Omero's wine (sold by the liter from a kind of gas pump), and the conversation of friends who come back year after year to help us get in the harvest.
     Il Magnifico's job as host is to be the supreme organizer. He makes sure there are enough crates, baskets, nets, and hand rakes -- we pick our olives the old fashioned way. He books the restaurants for dinner (the promise of a traditional Umbrian meal gets us all through the day), makes the grocery runs and the emergency trips to Omero to replenish the vital red liquid. Of course, he has reserved our slot at the frantoio, where we will gather next Friday morning to turn our harvest into "Olivista Olive Oil," extra virgin, first cold press.
     But, now we are watching the stove and the sky. We try to organize everything, but are powerless to affect the weather. Yesterday started with sun, then turned to rain and hail, then recovered itself with a spectacular rainbow. The meteorologists say it will be sunny through Monday and then will rain Tuesday and Wednesday. We need at least three full days to pick, so rain on those two days will be a problem. I keep checking the iPhone weather app for those little sunny yellow symbols. Our guests are here for the week, so if necessary they will pick on Thursday and we will go wine tasting, sightseeing or shopping if it rains on a picking day. Or, we might even enjoy the delights of dolce far niente, the "sweet doing nothing," in the Umbrian countryside.

A wide angle wasn't wide enough

     The last pot of soup is on the boil and the slowly dissolving stars promise a sunny day. The birds are singing as the sky starts to lighten. The olives hang dark on the trees, waiting for tomorrow.
Copyright 2010 Sharri Whiting

Stalking the Wild Asparagus, not just reading about it

The late Euell Gibbons, probably the original locavore writer, wrote a book in 1962 called Stalking the Wild Asparagus. It was a folksy, humorous take on the recognition, gathering, preparation and use of the natural health foods that grow wild in almost every area. I found the title hilarious and it has stayed with me all my life.

Fast forward a lot of years to Spring 2010. We are living in Umbria. We know there are asparagi growing out there in the woods because here and there we think we can see the ferny/thorny looking plants which produce the thin succulent shoots we want to harvest. The hardware stores are full of long forceps-like tools, which both snip and hold the tender spears until they make it into your bag.

I'm not sure what to do or where to look, but I am determined that this will be the spring when I stalk the wild asparagus. Fidelma, my Irish friend, calls to invite me over for an asparagus hunt -- she has been given a gathering lesson by her giardiniere. We put on boots (in case the snakes are waking up from their winter hibernation) and gloves (to protect us from thorns), sling grocery bags over our shoulders, take up our "sticks" and we're off to her 5-acre backyard.

A veteran asparagus picker (this is her second time), Fidelma spots the almost invisible shoots immediately. I stand there squinting into the dappled shade of the underbrush,  trying to decide if this is a pursuit that requires sunglasses or not. I don't see a single thing that looks like an asparagus spear.

Fidelma looks over my shoulder and cries,"There's one! Get it!" I take off my sunglasses and get down on all fours, bottom in the air, and peer toward the ground. Finally, I see a very slender, dark green-purple stalk. I have found my first asparagus. I have become a hunter/gatherer.

We rummage around in the bushes for another hour or so, catching our hair in tree limbs, stumbling over roots, gradually filling up our Sidis bags with wild asparagus. Finally we each have enough to make asparagus pasta for dinner. We stand up and survey the landscape, which stretches in undulating green waves to Todi and, beyond, to Orvieto. Hilltop castles and medieval villages are silhouetted against the sky, where they have stood guard for centuries. No doubt their occupants enjoyed a plate or two of asparagus pasta in the springs of 1210 or 1610, just as we will in 2010. To us, being locavores doesn't only mean eating what's available locally in season. It also allows us to join hands with a tradition that goes back to the beginning of time in these ancient hills.

We emerge from the woods with muddy boots, dirty jackets, and with treasure. That night, we both cooked asparagus pasta like this:

Use your favorite pasta: spaghetti, tagliatelle, penne, rigatoni.

While the pasta cooks in salted boiling water,

wash and snap off the ends of the asparagus where they break naturally.

Cut or break the remainder of the asparagus into pieces, reserving the tips.

Make a soffritto of olive oil, a little peperoncino (crushed red pepper) and garlic (some people use onion, while others add a bit of chopped bacon); add some white wine.

Add the pieces of asparagus, leaving the tips until the last five minutes, as they cook faster.

Simmer the sauce for about ten minutes or until the pasta is cooked.

Put a few chunks of butter in the bottom of the pasta bowl.

Drain and put the cooked pasta in the bowl.

Pour the asparagus mixture over the pasta and mix together. Add more olive oil if necessary.

Serve.

Eat.

Copyright 2010 Sharri Whiting

Life's overarching moments

  

     There is an overarching theme to life here at Yellow House: someday, Lord willing, we will finish restoring this casa colonica. As we did for a decade down the road at La Casetta Rosa, we pick one project to do every year. We are unwilling to experience the unabated nightmare of construction for longer than six weeks at time. After that, it won't matter how long it takes because we will no longer be living at Yellow House: we will be moved into the closest asylum.

    This year we chose to work on what we had euphemistically called "the laundry room" for the past three years. You may see it to the right. Beautiful, isn't it? Since it shared a wall with our too-small living room, the idea was to join the two, creating more space for living and entertaining. We called Lucio, the geometra who is our ever-ready project leader. Lucio called Donatello. Piero and I met with them amid the junk piles. We decided that what we needed was an arch. 


    The arch. Don't take it for granted.

     According to Wikipedia, an arch is a structure that spans a space while supporting weight (e.g. a doorway in a stone wall). Arches appeared as early as the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamian brick architecture, but it was the Ancient Romans who began systemically using arches in their buildings. 

    Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi; c. 1386 – December 13, 1466) was a famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. His sculpture of David in the Bargello Museum in Florence is considered almost as important as the David by Michelangelo. 

    With the Romans and a namesake Florentine sculptor as his inspiration, Donatello of Umbria set to work. This is a man who is a muratore (stonemason) and plumber, but when faced with the prospect of creating an arch he turned into an artiste.

     First Donatello prepared the support beams, inserting six steel bars into the wall above where the arch would be. To skip this step would mean our 200-year-old two-story house would most likely fall down in a heap of rubble. Next, he began tearing out the stone, piece by piece, of what turned out to be a solid wall almost a meter thick. The pile of stones outside grew...and grew.

     The air was heavy with summer and yellow jackets were swarming everywhere. Our living room furniture at one point was moved outside, along with boxes of liqueurs and aperitifs taken from the bar. At one point, there was so much heat that a bottle of homemade plum wine simply exploded all over the terrace and every bee on our strada bianca was there in seconds to have a drink. (Afterwards, they fell in drugged stupors on the lawn furniture).

    One day the men arrived with an "arch form" they had made. We had an artistic conference, to discuss how the aged bricks would work with the stone in the arch. Donatello was a man possessed; was he embodied by the spirit of the great Florentine sculptor? We chose to go with his design of two bricks turned sideways intersected with a row of bricks set on their narrow ends. How in the world would they put this together without it all falling down on their heads? Aha! They inserted the form into the space and somehow, some way, managed to install the bricks by blindly arranging them on top. Amazing.

    After two days' drying time, Donatello removed the form and voila! we had an extraordinary arch. There was much more work to be done, but this was the centerpiece, the creative experience, the moment of supreme satisfaction. Che bello!

99 and 44/100ths Percent Pure on Via Palombaro

It’s that season of the year in Italy, when virginity and purity are top of mind in all the churches (December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception and it goes on from there). Piero says the teen aged girls in his time had a prayer, “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who conceived without sin, help me sin without conceiving,” but that’s a conversation for another day.

Then there was the message from those Ivory Soap ads from the 1960s (1950s?): “it's 99 and 44/100ths percent pure.” All the post-war mothers rushed out to buy pure white Ivory and the “almost-pure” concept took off.

Then, somehow, the concepts of virginity and almost-pure were merged and came out as extra-virgin. I have no idea how. I do not set the standards here, but I’m sure there are millions of young women in conservative societies who would embrace the idea that just a little fooling around could still buy them the label of extra virgin bride.

My brother, the preacher, says he thought the extra virgins were the ones who didn't make the cut for the sacrifice-down-the-volcano selection in ancient times, kind of like those who don't get in the Top Ten in a beauty pageant, but I think he is mixing up his pagan rites with his hopes for his beautiful teen-aged daughter.

This is all to prepare you for the announcement that the olive oil from Yellow House and La Casetta Rosa, plucked from our motley assortment of a hundred or so trees by ten good friends, was tested and found to have an acidity of only 0.032%. To meet the standards of extra virgin, the acidity can be no more than 0.06%. So, you see, our gorgeous green oil is not only extra virgin, it surely must be extra extra virgin. Our oil is more virtuous than Ivory and the taste is infinitely better.

This was one of those banner years in the very short history of Olive Week at our place. The trees were just groaning with fruit, twice as much as in 2007. Our friends arrived from the South (Battle’s Wharf and Tampa), Tulsa (oil, yes; extra virgin, no) and Cape Cod, plus Namibia, England, and down the road in Todi. The days were long and sunny, so we managed to get more than 700 kilos of those little black nuggets off the trees and into the baskets, while exchanging gossip, arguing philosophy, falling off ladders, listening to Swedish folk songs (next year, Bjorn, think about the Beatles, in English, or opera, in Italian), and contemplating both the view and the zillions of olives hanging on the next tree over. Of course, there was much conversation about the American election, including numerous toasts to Obama with Omero’s garage red.



Our pickers were fueled with truffles, porcini mushrooms, pasta, hand cut prosciutto, home made farro soup, fresh bread, vino, and a wee drop of the plum wine made over the summer from a tree that unexpectedly rained fruit to prove it wasn't dead. Of course, we hit the local ristoranti circuit pretty hard and also managed to get to chocolate school.

Even now, weeks later, the pickers' hands are surely still twitching in their sleep; not unlike a dozing dog chasing an imaginary rabbit, they “milk” those endless olive trees. But, what an achievement! Ah, to have been acolytes in the grand ceremony of producing something extra extra virgin, the fruit of the land, green and organic, sustainably environmentally correct; with the dark moist earth of Umbria encrusting your boots, leaves in your hair, olives in your bra, proudly wearing scars from face-scratching branches to dinner parties across the globe. (See great opportunity below).PS.
A note to our pickers (you know who you are): In order to convince you to come back next year, we are naming a tree after each one of you, which will be pruned and fertilized with sheep dung. We will ask Bjorn to come over from Todi and sing your choice of tune to your tree, preferably when we are far away from home. You will receive photos of your tree during the year, so that you may see its progress, from buds in the spring to tiny olives to full, ripe, juicy olives ready to be picked -- by you. Va bene?

The Danger of Exercise

On a sunny Sunday afternoon a year ago today, feeling stir crazy and bored, I decided to go for a walk down our lane. I attribute this madness to it being January, only three weeks after New Year's Resolutions about dieting took effect. I am known as a rather sedentary person, who would rather spend Sunday afternoon reading the New York Times online than actually lifting my derriere off the sofa. Piero? No one has ever mistaken him for an athlete, except the time he was goalie when the ambassadors played the parliamentarians in Namibia, so he was lolling around watching Roma work out on the soccer field.

I unraveled the wires of my i-pod from discarded summer necklaces in my top drawer, as I have heard that taking a walk while listening to music on an i-pod is the thing to do. I surely wanted to be hip as I strolled down Via Palombaro -- to impress the sheep, I guess. Gloves, hat, scarf, jacket, pocket camera, sunglasses and I was ready to walk the half kilometer. Layered up, I got choked on the i-pod earbud wires, took off my gloves, put the earbuds in the right way, found the Irma Thomas music, put my gloves back on and, already sweaty inside my coat, set off.

It was a glorious winter day, slanting bars of sunlight highlighting the sprouting wheat in the fields, olive trees glistening sage against the carpet of pea green. I could see the medieval silhouettes of Saragano, Gualdo Cattaneo, and Collezzone cresting the hilltops across the curving valleys. Irma was singing "Time on my Side" and I was unabashedly singing along with her, walking to the beat of the music, as I passed through groves of olive trees. I looked up to see my neighbor, working on Sunday like the farmer he is, standing in front of the big yellow house where his family had lived for several generations. A few years ago they renovated much of the house for the two women who had inherited it, but by the time the project was finished, the old ladies decided they preferred living with their daughters. So, it was standing empty and he used the storage sheds for fodder and fertilizer.

I turned off Irma when I saw him and walked over. "Buona sera!" He stopped what he was doing and we chatted about olive trees for a few minutes. I call him the Professor of Olives because he answers all my questions. We discussed the essentials of maintaining well- producing trees and, hence, having plenty of oil: sheep manure (he has a dozen scraggly sheep for that purpose), proper pruning, and something crystaline that he sprinkles under the trees in May. The subject (and my Italian) exhausted, I ended the conversation with what should have been a throwaway line, "So, what are you going to do about this house?"

His answer? "We've decided to sell it. The real estate agents are coming tomorrow."

Poor Piero, he never saw it coming. I walked back up Via Palombaro, where I found him basking in Roma's victory. 'Honey, you know the yellow house down the road? They've decided to sell it and I would really like for you to take a look."

A year later, I write from Yellow House, named for the place Van Gogh lived when he painted the sunflowers. I can't see flowers now through the winter mist, but they will be ablaze again this summer. Last spring we discovered seven fig trees, half a dozen apples, three plum trees, apricots and cherries, grape vines and blackberries. This fall we picked more than sixty big olive trees. My husband has been a very good sport about it all, though buying another property was the last thing on his list of things to do.

Irma was right, time was on my side. Piero is also right when he says it's dangerous for me to exercise.
Copyright Sharri Whiting Umbria Bella 2008