In Love with France, At Home In Italy

We try to steer clear of the mal'occhio (the "evil eye" that causes bad things to happen). But the same week of our little bumper mishap, a close friend told us about his own "contretemps." That's a fancy French word for problems that can arise when one is entering a parking lot at the same time when someone is exiting, but when one of you has the sun in his eyes.  One might say to oneself, as he did, "All I can really see right now is "niente," but what are the chances that anyone would approach during the second it will take me to cross this threshold? Well, because our local Lidl grocery store is very popular at that hour, a quasi-invisible someone could indeed be close enough for anyone entering the lot to scrape two of her car doors.  There was a witless eye-witness to this event. To clarify--the door-scraper's wife who had been following behind in another car and also had the sun in her eyes did not yet realize tha

OOPS! Ivy-covered walls in the Italian countryside are picturesque, but not always as innocent as they look. We thought it would be a good idea to hop into our 1999 Renault to take it for a spin. After all, the poor thing had been sitting there for far too long exercising its primary function as a fruit dryer. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that the windshield of this proud French vehicle is the linchpin of our efforts to manage all the fruit we produce. The method goes like this: put the fruit of the moment in a foil-covered IKEA roasting pan on a sunny Umbrian day, and you're good to go. Or rather, you will be going nowhere for a while, while that fruit caramelizes nicely.  The red-lit "STOP OR THIS VEHICLE WILL EXPLODE!" did not deter my optimistic husband in the least. "This car is so old that it often says alarming stuff like that, but doesn't really mean it." But I was not convinc

This is an embarrassed Donatella trying to get back on her horse. Could it be that a year has gone by without postings? How is this possible? The short answer is that Donatella's academic alter ego was writing a book, retired from her beloved university posts of 33 years, and downsized after 35 years from her beautiful home. It has been a year filled with transitions, and you know how much Donatella loves those. But it's time to try to catch up. There has certainly been no lack of misadventures to record. After all, this IS the Umbrian countryside where the returning homeowner is likely to encounter power outages, droughts, busted irrigation systems and garbage disposals and pool pumps, and riding mowers that have gone on the fritz. And that doesn't even include the espresso coffeemaker that gives Donatella's husband reason to live. To resolve each problem requires a certain energy and patience, but the silver lining can be a good story and the cementing (or r

This is the sequel to " Geniuses to the rescue during this day of drama!") It's lunchtime, and Leonardo was really happy to see the back of us! (We reassured him that the other route outa here wasn't half as bad, and when we took it to town later in the day, we were relieved not to find him stuck anywhere. There were, however, plenty of downed branches along the way. Like his namesake, Leonardo had left his mark.) PLEASE IMAGINE THE SHORT VIDEO THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HERE HAD THE CYBER GODS CHOSEN TO SMILE ON ME. As you can see, there's no attachment here. Bummer! I tried to include an 11-second video to illustrate this post, but supposedly it's too big to send. No make-o sense-o. But then again, technology never makes sense to me. By the way, this is being written on a brand new computer. While an improvement like that would bring joy to most people, it merely strikes terror in the heart of a techno-dunce like yours truly. But fortunate