thats amore

I get a chance to work in the vineyard yesterday, weeding and cleaning around the plants. There so many amazing things in nature. They grow salvia (sage) around the grapevines to disinfect them from various fungi. They also grow rosebushes at the top of each row, which happen to be susceptible to a different sort of disease the grapevines are are prone to too - however the rose bushes are more sensitive to it and will show the first signs long before the disease has deeply spread amongst the grapevines. Like a little alarm system.

After this one of their friends took me out to Urbino. I think this is a famous city. It's populated by mainly art school students. We sit in the piazza and have a conversation that is part Italian, part French, part English and part mime. I am told the pizza place we go to is the best in Italy. I have already learned by now that every pizza place is apparently the best place in Italy. After a sip of grappa I head back to the farm. Since the city is so full of students, there is a curfew in place by the abbhored carabineiri, and as we drive away all the lights in the windows are out.

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Today Suzie and I work in the olive trees. For once, I find something I am surprisingly good at. I have to climb up the middle of the trees with a handsaw and prune the branches, starting from the clustered centres and eventually balancing on the outer branches and thinning out the newer sprouting twigs. I took this photo of Suzie gathering the discards while you can kind of see my shadow - that's my foot dangling. Another one of their neighbours came by walking his dog to see if I would like to go for a walk.

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Also I am apparently a muse. This is only one of a series. I sat still for half an hour not expecting to see such remarkable results.

I'm feeling fantastic out here. I can't wait to come back and share all the things I forget to write down. It's been beyond belief how much good it has done to be completely removed from a situation and exist in essentially the entire opposite. I've even stopped mentally adding "TAKE THAT" to the end of every new amazing fact or occurrance or skill I've acquired when taking a mental catalogue.

Another one of their friends is cooking dinner sometime this week for the manager of the men's Italian soccer team and said he would bring me along. (At least this is what I gathered. I pretty much heard the words 'Italian Men's Soccer Team' and started nodding and stopped listening.)

At the same time I love to think, "HOW, SIR, DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES."