La Dolce Vita

Sweetpea cools off in her fort, while English hubby peruses a book in the grass, ignoring all available comfortable seating.

Since the rain and lightning strikes at the weekend, it has turned hot. The door-slamming breezes keep things comfortable. The ciccadas, which at home hum and buzz in the heat, here seem to shout indignantly at top volume from the trees all around the house.

I'm struggling with a cold today, but with no agenda have been able to move from bed to couch to lounge chair with a book. I've been reading A Year in the World, which is a perfect book to be immersed in while away from home. But I find it somehow disconcerting that Frances Mayes writes as "we" more than "I", compared to her earlier books before she re-married.

The pace of life here allows for recovery - eat and drink when you like.

Me, recuperating.

Food is simplicity. In the mornings, people drift into the kitchen one by one, fixing themselves bowls of cereal or a plate of Italian bread with bracing coffee (me) or tea (my English in-laws).

Sweetpea and English daddy breaking their fast.

Lunch can be a hunk of bread with a slice of mozzarella and drizzled with olive oil grown from the olive trees right here on the property, or maybe spread with ricotta, and some cherries. Dinners have mostly been prepared by my sister-in-law, with the rest of us acting as sous-chef. Pasta with bursting-with-flavour tomatoes, grilled peppers and egglant, mushroom risotto topped with fresh chopped parsley and thyme from the edge of the loggia outside the kitchen. It makes me feel the slightest bit homesick for my garden at home, overgrown without me to keep it pruned. We've only had one meal out, which was without much to distinguish it, but tonight we're heading to somewhere hopefully more memorable in a local town.

We've spent our days thus far swimming in the morning before it gets too hot, and then heading out to explore and look at houses with my mother-in-law and her significant other. The houses range from completely restored, to total ruins with pig stalls and rusted farm equipment on the ground floor from long ago days when they were still farmhouses with the farmer's family living upstairs.

My MIL and R, with Kevin the agent, whose gesticulating arm out the car window ahead of us kept us entertained.

After afternoons picking our way through long grass with nettles and keeping our eyes out for snakes, we generally stop in whatever ancient hill town is closest to taste their gelato, take in the view, and find a shady spot in their parks where Sweetpea tries all the climbing structures and makes us go on the huge log see-saws with her. It's surprisingly good exercise for the thighs, I've discovered.

The view from San Ginesio.

Auntie C follows the bossy instructions of her niece.

Sweetpea makes friends with her tenth kitten of the day.

And then back to our peaceful home away from home to fold the laundry, have a glass of wine, and prepare the evening meal.

The laundry, bleaching in the sun, to be folded later with the scent of the lavender growing beneath the laundry lines.