Our garden!

August 1, 2009--Wow, it's August already. I knew that Christmas was just around the corner, but this is ridiculous! Someone I know will be 59 soon and someone else will be 60! I can remember when I thought that was ancient! How did we get so old so fast?

Anyway--here are some photos of our vegetable garden (orto). We hope to get a rototiller soon with plans of having a much nicer garden next year.


If you look closely you will see the beginning of a jalapeno! Our friends from Oceanside sent us the seeds and we have four plants. The plants got a late start so I wasn't sure if we would even get one pepper!








This is from the 11th of July.

















And this one is from yesterday (31st of July)!! We probably have about 20 peppers now.




These are the first two carrots we have pulled. Actually, these are the only two carrots we've pulled!

We only planted a few zucchini plants because we are smarter than the average bears! I say that only because we don't need to go knocking on doors begging people to take our extra zucchini!























This is the first one we harvested.












We planted onions and garlic, too. Some of the garlic didn't look too good, but Larry says the onions are great. This is our first garlic.






















We also planted Juliet tomatoes with seeds that our friend Kathi gave us. We have about 8 plants, but these are the ones that are doing the best. This was taken 2 weeks ago.





















And these are the ones I picked yesterday!
























Our peach trees were not supposed to get peaches this year because we had some kind of cancer that made the leaves all shrivel up. After we sprayed the tree the new leaves were okay and we had about 12 peaches on each tree. These were the sweetest peaches I have ever tasted! I'm not kidding. They were the kind of peaches you would never have bought because they were so small, but your mouth actually tasted the sweetness long after you had finished the peach!




























We have 4 olive trees, but only one had olives this year. The tree only has about 20 olives on it, but it's a start! The first picture was taken a few weeks ago.


















This was taken today.




















We also planted strawberries, boysenberries, and raspberries. I imported the boysenberries and raspberries from England. We planted 3 of each, but only two of the boysenberries had fruit on them and none of the raspberries. Two of the berries were very yummy and the rest were not quite as good!




The strawberries are beginning to spread!




















Isn't this a colorful picture?










Now on to our giardino (flower garden). Here you will see our roses and the geraniums in pots on the ground.






















Aren't these yellow roses beautiful?











I hope that next year our gardenias will produce bigger and better flowers--not to mention more of them!






















I know, I know. You are probably thinking to yourself that our garden isn't different from any other garden, but there you are wrong! Our garden is an Italian garden, planted in Italian soil around our house in Italy!!

This has nothing to do with our garden--but look at this cool picture of a glo-worm! We saw it while walking back to our car Sunday night.

Miss Kitty

June 24, 2009--I promised Miss Kitty her own blog so here it is.




Please note the size of the Spider plant next to Miss Kitty.















She was really trying to get into the Christmas spirit by sleeping with the Christmas decorations last year.
























She is one smart cat! She always finds the warmest spot to be during the winter and the coolest place during the summer.














Remember that Spider plant? Well, after months of me almost succeeding in killing it off, Miss Kitty finished the job by sitting on it!

Pizza Time!

June 22, 2009--I know, I know. It has been a long time since my last blog. If you only knew how long it takes to upload the pictures you would be much more understanding! We are in Siena right now and our hotel offers Wi-Fi and it is sooooooooooooo much faster than our connection at home that I am taking advantage of it.

As I mentioned in the last blog we finally were able to make pizza in our oven! Sadly, it is also the last time we made pizza in our oven!! It is a lot of work and a lot of fun, but it really isn't something you do for just a few people. You need lots of wood and lots of time.

Primo came over about 2:30 in the afternoon to teach me how to make the pizza dough. He has the dough down to a science. Do you know that if you are making pizzas in the winter you use more yeast and more salt than in the summer? Or maybe it's the other way around! Oh well, I have the recipe at home!



















At around 4:30 Larry started a fire in the oven.

















Primo came back over to help supervise the fire!

















Primo also showed us how to weigh out the dough in order to make equal size balls so the pizzas will come out about the same.

















Paolo joined the fun and showed me how to make the sauce, roll out the dough, and finish the pizzas.

















Using canned tomatoes Paolo uses a wooden spoon to get all of the juice out, but without pushing through the tomatoes.
















Here Paolo is showing me how to use your hands to spread the dough flat and round.















It doesn't take much sauce and you don't spread it all the way to the edges.
















I didn't do much up until now, but I did cube the cheese!















Paolo adds a few pieces of raw sausage to the pizza.
















This seems like it should be easy, but you need to push and pull to get the pizza on the paddle and not over the edge of the table!

















The first pizza is in the oven!
















Larry learns how to pick up the pizza and put it on the pizza paddle while Primo is ready to open the door!




















I'm trying my hand at spreading the pizza dough with my hands. Paolo had a hard time keeping his hands to himself when I couldn't manage to stretch it enough.





















Here we are enjoying the pizza together.















Everyone is busy eating!


















We had a great time together. Primo, Paolo, and Carlo brought everything! They brought wood for the fire; the recipe and ingredients for making the dough; all of the toppings for the pizza; and the wine to drink! We provided the pizza oven, plates, and soda for the boys! It was a wonderful experience and we hope that we will now be able to do it on our own!

BTW, I finished this blog in London, but two of the pictures looked funny so I needed to delete them and upload them again! Those 2 pictures took more than 35 minutes!

It's a Work in Progress--Part 3

March 2, 2009--Okay, here it is. The final installment on "It's a Work in Progress." That is not to say that the house is finished because there will be things to do here for our lifetime and probably the lifetime of our kids and grandkids!

We left off at the pizza oven. I'll give you a hint about the next blog--we had a pizza party--with friends and everything!!

OK, let's go into the house. But wait...........


Our friend, Nello, who is from Sicily showed Larry how to make sausages and also salame. Here Larry is holding up the salame he brought home. He thought it was pretty good and that the sausages tasted the way he remembered his grandpa's tasting. They just made another

batch last week. He brought home so much we had to plug in the other refrigerator so we could put the sausage in the freezer!

This is our finished kitchen. You can see the nice work that Larry did on the tile above the sink and stove.

This view shows our table and looking toward a small cupboard that matches the kitchen.

Here is our pantry as Larry is putting the shelves in and as a finished product.

This is our woodburning "stufa." We use it to make coffee, hot chocolate, and, of course, to help heat the house.

This is the first time we tried actually cooking in our stufa. I say "we" as if I actually participated! My job was to document the event with photos and, of course, to eat the meal. It was very tasty and the chicken turned out nice and brown and juicy!

Doesn't that look scrumptious?

And here's our table ready for us to sit down and eat.

I think that we are ready to tour the rest of the upstairs. This is looking into the dining room/living room from the kitchen. You can see one of our new plants and Miss Kitty's new scratching post. She was too tall for her other one!

I am now standing in the corner by the plant looking across the room. I want to mention that in addition to being a dining/living room it is also my indoor track! I walk around this room and through the kitchen and back when I choose not to walk outside. A little walking music and I am good to go!

And this is taken from the opposite side of the room.

Here is a nice photo of our fireplace.

This is one of the two rocks they found in our walls (and our first rock house!)

Here is the other rock they found. We also found another one in the pile of rocks that Larry went through--it is bigger than the two of these put together.

Here is a close up of our new (used) desk.

Now we will take a stroll down the hallway. You might be able to make out 3 doors.

On the left you have the backside of our pantry which will be a typical hall closet with places for coats, sheets, towels, and the vacuum! Further down on the left is our small guest bathroom which has no lights at this time which is fine for now as Miss Kitty uses it for her bathroom and she doesn't need them! On the right (out of view)is our bedroom which you saw in the blog from last May. So, we will just head down to our big bathroom.

This is the best bathtub ever! I'm not kidding. It is so wide that when I sit in it and read I can hold my arms next to my side and be comfortable. That is really important when you take hour long baths!

We found this corner unit at a used furniture place in Pesaro. In fact, with the exception of our bedroom set that we bought from our friends, every piece of furniture came from there!

I think our shower is very unique. We left one wall the original stone and sealed it well so that it doesn't absorb any water.

This is looking down the hallway from the bathroom. Pretty cool, huh?

We finally had our handrail for the stairs leading to the bottom floor installed. We ordered them before my fall in August, but they only arrived in February! Ma, siamo in Italia!

ODDS AND ENDS These are things I don't want you to miss, but don't really want to devote an entire blog to them either. Hope you will enjoy!

This is a shot of the house showing two of the "chiave" we had made for the house. Originally they were made to help hold the house together with a bar that runs through the floors and out either side of the house. We have the bar, too, but the keys are purely decorative. In case you are wondering the keys are the X's on the side of the house!





On February 18th we had a lot of snow. Larry had to go out in it to take care of a friend's dog so he got some nice pictures.


This was taken from our house--you can see the castle and the church.











Looking back at our house.












Might as well get another shot of the castle!









Almost every morning Larry is able to see deer in the field across from our house. I rarely see them because I sleep in until about 7:30 most days. One day they were on our hill where Larry planted our fruit trees--but he was already outside before he saw them and didn't have the camera with him. If you double click on the picture you will be able to see them better.


We had our second load of wood for this winter delivered. This is about 10 quintali worth. That is 10 x 100 kg. We are getting low again so unless spring plans to spring soon we will be ordering more.


















Larry was asked if he wanted to get some of the wine that they had at the Honey Festival. He was happy because he had been looking for it everywhere. The man asked if he had a demijohn and Larry told him he didn't. That was no problem as the man said he would let Larry borrow one. Here he is with the wine! We're pretty sure it is going to last awhile!!





Creepy Crawler Alert!!!





When we are digging in the back we often come across these totally gross worms. They look almost like an earth worm, but they are huge!







I wouldn't even hold it in my gloved hand.

Right after this disgusting shot, Larry threw the worm down and we noticed that the head was almost decapitated! I would have been sick for a week if it had have fallened into his mouth!