Tag: #italianlife

Few things are as iconic of the Italian landscape as the cypress tree.  This is especially true in Tuscany, where you see them lining curving drives and punctuating even the most humble vistas.  Their neat, columnar shape make them ideal for wedging into a garden to provide vertical structure. ...

It’s grape harvest time here.  We’re really not in wine country, but everywhere you look you see rows of grapes.  We even have some in our backyard.  Ours are white grapes and are very sweet.  Almost like a muscadine. I don’t know grape varieties, but would like to learn...

Birthdays roll around every year to remind us that as much as we don’t like to think so, we are getting older by the minute.  They provide us with the framework we need to mark time.  I can watch other people age, but I live my life not through...

We’re meeting Tim and Julie in Orvieto, then on to Rome.  So we’ll be gone for four days.  We’re letting our food supply diminish so we don’t have to throw anything out, so that means it’s slim pickings for meals these days.  After a carved together lunch yesterday, we...

I’ve spent many Saturday nights in small Southern towns.  My formative years were full of them.  But nothing beats Saturday night in a small Italian town.  Steve and I went to our favorite bar, the Bar della Sport (we call it the sports bar) on Friday for our happy...

I used to walk every morning before work in Atlanta.  I took the same route and walked the same pace.  On the weekends, Steve and I would walk Millie together.  Sometimes we would go on parts of my morning walk, but in the opposite direction.  It was always amazing...

When we decided to take this fantastic journey, one of the things we were looking forward to was sharing it with friends and family.  So we took on the apartment upstairs to use for visitors.  After seven weeks of preparing, organizing, and planning, we hosted our first guests.  Tim...

We thought we were moving here to simplify our lives.  No more (real) work, no more schedules, no more responsibilities.  Just carefree days of doing what we want when we want where we want.  While that’s largely true, our dream of simplicity is a little complicated. We have no...

We’ve been a little housebound for the past few weeks due to various issues and situations.  We had expected to take many day trips while we’re here and we’ve really been itching to get out.  We finally got out recently and took two trips.  One to Deruta and one...

Most of you know that Italy got hit pretty hard early in the pandemic.  I think because of that, they are very cautious about how they proceed.  Almost everyone wears a mask and you can’t go into stores, offices, or restaurants without one.  They still limit the number of...