Halfway Over the Hill

 Part 2 - Cherry Lost ( Reading time  - 2  book pages of text ~ 900 words ) Friday 18 June (Heat is here to stay. Insect explosion) The cherries I really want are the amarena cherries - not ripe yet, surprisingly. I have a couple of small trees. It's like eating the essence of dark velvety purple and the final tart tickle on your tongue hmm - it's a symphony of deliciousness. The people here don't like 'sour' cherries but they like sour tomatoes and not the sweet ones. Odd, but more on their oddness at a later date. Another odd thing, I just tasted one or two dark-looking amarenas, they had the same hue as a very ripe and sweet regular cherry and they tasted horribly bitter. Maybe that's why people don't cultivate them here? They haven't waited for the right moment? Perhaps they need to become a dark red indigo before they become a gourmet delicacy. (Or it's just not a local fruit. And they like things local here. League of peasants! Th

( Reading time  - 2  book pages of text ~ 900 words ) Cherry Glut, Cherry Smut and Cherry Gut Part 1 - Cherry Found 13 June 2021 Can you get sick of cherry breakfasts under the cherry trees - from branch to mouth? Apparently so. You can have one figurative bowl too many. It seems a pity, however, to leave them in this succulent state to the birds who have plenty else to eat. Nature obviously intended cherries to be picked when they're perfectly ripe. With minimal pressure those pearls of delight slip off the stems into your hand like a gift received and  the spat out seeds holds the promise of germination in the vicinity of the mother tree. Human and tree mutually benefit from the giving and taking. When they're overripe and beginning to ferment, they come off with a barely a touch but unlike the ripe ones the seed too is left behind on the tree. The tree seems reluctant, however, to give up its stems; it's a fiddly chore but cherries with stems are best for conserva

Belated blog from the Italian Jungle (denoted as such by a friend from the sophisticated North)  Seven years on.... from first being parachuted into the green wilderness of Abruzzo, hoping to be redeemed by the solace of nature... Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,  mi ritrovai per una città oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.*. ‐----------‐------------- Shooting Sunday Mid-June 2021 - It's the start of my second summer in my hillside home. I'm sitting on my favourite spot between the great oak  and the cherry trees.   I have a niche view of hill and valley. Spread before me is a perfect picture of rustic charm, artfully lit by the the Italian sun. Exquisite  birdsong. A caressing 23 degrees. Everything looks, sounds and feels right.     I can even breathe,  which I couldn't in the city. And then... I have taken refuge inside the house because I heard some muted shooting. For a while, we were plagued by constant shooting at the weekend and even Monday from the outd