A Miscellany

The "pretty" kitty came to visit our patio yesterday. We often see her near our front door but rarely at the back of the house. She was very curious but did not want to get too close to us. For a long time she sat in the middle of the field and watched us. This photo makes it look like she was "up close and personal." However, she was probably still 10-15 ft. away. Zoom close-up is a wonderful feature on the camera.



Fall is here even in Italy. Our temperatures might still be around 70 during the day but it is nice and cool at night. The leaves on the grapevines are the most colorful around. This vine sits on the slope above our patio all by itself. At one time there was probably a long row extending out away from the house. Now this is one of two still living on the edge of the terrace. The grapevines are incredibly tenacious. There are probably 15-20 spots where there has not been a standing vine for many years. However, every fall we come back and find clumps of new growth extending out from these spots. These clumps are quite large this year with vines extending 6-8 ft.




Our vines produced a lot of grapes this year. We won't be making wine because it is more work than it is worth. Actually, we have a lot of wine made from 2006 and 2007--none of it worth talking about. The grapes do make good eating in spite of lots of seeds. The tomatoes, red and yellow, come from our friend Erina's garden. They have harvested what they wanted to can so she said take what we like. I especially like the little yellow pear tomatoes that you can just see a the bottom of the bowl. I had them for lunch yesterday with fresh mozzarella cheese, our own olive oil, salt, pepper and shredded basil.





I am still trying to get the patio planters tidied up. There are lots of weeds in with the shrub roses at the top of the wall. Almost everything I planted in the spring died because of the extended hot, dry weather. There are a still a few scraggly geraniums and, in the big pot in the foreground, my strawberry plants are still producing berries. I wish I knew what the variety is as I would love to have the same thing on Whidbey Island.





I tried to cut the grass near the house with the cutter bar mower. It did not work very well so Dom is going to finish it up with the weed whacker. We spent a couple of hours yesterday cutting grass. I ran the cutter bar around on the flats while Dom worked on the banks and around the trees and vines. We still have about three quarters of the job done but Dom needs another couple days (2-3 hours each time) to get the "edging" done. Unfortunately, it has been rather wet. On nice days there is drenching dew and on bad days it rains. Rain is predicted for over the weekend so we probably will not finish up until after we get back from Capri on October 16th.