Tanti Auguri
Ho Ho Ho.
Here’s wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season, however and whatever you may be celebrating. May 2012 bring light, warmth, and plenty of laughter your way.
Tanti Auguri (best wishes) from us in Italy!
Recent Sketches
In case you were wondering …
how I’ve been spending my time – other than picking olives, and eating bruschetta drenched in green oil; I do sit down at my table to draw/paint/collage on a daily basis. Some pieces are purely invented, some are of actual places, and then there are those that fall somewhere in-between what exists in my head and what lies out in the streets below.
Italy continues to both inspire and confound me with all it’s chaos and contradictions. For example, though Christmas has become equally as commercial here as in the U.S. they still celebrate the immaculate conception of Mary with a national holiday. Who knew Jesus wasn’t the only one to be immaculately conceived?
Harvesting Olives
A weekend spent working outside, harvesting olives
This is how friends hang out together in Italy. When it’s time to harvest the olives on your property, you call all your friends, and out they come to climb trees, rake olives, and spend the day in conversation under the fog or sun. Saturday started out foggy and cold, but by mid-day the sun was out, same deal on Sunday. By the end of the day yesterday, we had filled 30 crates.
I think the crew, of as many as a dozen or so people (coming and going), stripped about 80 trees of their olives over the weekend. What I want to know, is how the Italians make feeding a crowd look so easy. Because needless to say we took a break in the early afternoon for a true pranzo (local wine included). On Sunday, la nonna and il nonno were even there to help. The sweetest thing was finding il nonno sitting in a little patch of sun after lunch – there’s a picture of it, as well as several others on the olive harvest page (click that bold olive harvest page type, or find it anytime on the sidebar on the right).
The next step happens tonight when the olives are brought to il molino to be pressed into oil. Evidently at this time of year, the mills operate 24/7. November in Italy!