domandov

Napoli, city of contrasts! On our last vacation time before we headed home, we ventured to southern Italy. Forewarned that, "...evil lurking at every corner--wenches, gigolos, and confidence men abound!" :) But it was not too sketchy, and a lot of it was very beautiful. Early in the morning, we embarked on the first of two trains to reach our destination. The regional trains are much cheaper, so we took one from Bomarzo to Roma, and then a few hours later from Roma to Napoli stopping frequently on the way. On the train there were some children sitting across the aisle from us. One little boy with an extremely stretchy face made the most crazy expressions. Both kids were kinda pudgy even though their parents were slim and kid with the elastic face was eating smarties, ... read more

It's December in La Rocchetta, and with the olives long gone, we have been focused on a bunch of different jobs to keep busy in between vacations. We spent the first week back from Firenze preparing the winter garden, which took some work as you can see from the before and after photos. Most of the beds were choked with the weeds and old plant debris, as well as the soaker hoses that kept it fed during the summer. We pulled out and repaired the hoses (with duct tape!), which took some doing with only two of us handling the four pronged 60ft. hoses. After that we spent some time going over the beds with spade, hoe, rake and by hand to pull out all the roots, weeds, dead tomatoes, rocks, and green matter we could ... read more

Ciao Ragazzi! Didn't get to post the olive oil factory pictures so here they are! The olive harvest is finished and we have enough oil to last quite a while. :)... read more