Forest For The Trees

It's been virga all day across the Val d'Orcia, rain never reaching the ground. Big mats of cloud scudding along like pewter jellyfish, their tentacles dangling down over this undulant ancient sea bottom as freshets of wind churn the budding trees like corals and seaweeds in strong current.

This is what Giovanni and Arnaldo have spent the last two weeks since the big snow doing, harvesting one meter long logs from the snarl of wild bosco at the bottom of their property, just across from the castle ruin. It needs to be done now so next year's firewood can season all summer. It needs to be done now because the leaves are down and it is easy to see how to thin the stand best for the future.

This is what the managed wood will become in another 20 years. Truffles anyone?

The Double Standard And The Beauty of Also

I live on a slippery slope. This is what our hillside becomes when it is wet with nebbia (fog), piogia (rain), or neve (snow). Which it seems to be often these days. Because of this the terrain itself is teaching me a thing or two as I try to turn a worksite into a home.

Today I am 55, and I have built a house in Tuscany.

Problem solving is the thinking half of getting things done. Do it right and you cut your work in half. As a reader, writer, speaker and listener, I like words and phrases that say more than one thing at a time. I am not talking about efficiency. That is an industrial age term aimed at increasing production over time and orderly accrual of wealth. And I don’t mean practical either. Practical only concerns itself with the doing part of getting things done.

What I'm talking about is the act of satisfying the creative need and the aesthetic need at once. Not dual purpose, but dual result, a double standard of the best sort. The payoff is not instantaneous, but more meditative and accumulative. The quiet everyday Eurekas found in ordinary acts, these are akin to the feeling of inspiration Zen monks, poets, and even military strategists must know.

Today, I have a new rule when it comes to getting things done. After Rule #1, “Avoid solving problems with bigger problems to solve,” Rule #2 is: "Whenever possible, solve for more than one problem at a time." The key is forethought. Here is a short and simple list of some ways I try to achieve this:

Never go anywhere empty handed. When moving from point A, no matter how casually, always take something that belongs to point B and leave it there.

Never go from A to B without considering what is in between. If there is a weed that really needs to be pulled, pull it. Then take a moment to notice the change.

When pruning, gather firewood.

When mowing, gather mulch.

When fencing the garden, trellis peas.

When engaged in physical labor, exercise.

When stopping to rest, heal and gather force.

When removing eyesores and trash, improve safety.

While heating pasta water, cook broccoli, green beans or boiled eggs.

When clearing a field of stones, gather building material.

And while I’m at it, a few do’s and don’ts:

Remove the word "disposable" from my vocabulary. Before discarding anything, assume it has a “next purpose” and reuse or recycle accordingly.

Never pull a weed without knowing its purpose in the ground.

Never do something practical without seeing the aesthetic in it.

Remove all military vocabulary from my landscape. There are no "invasive” weeds. Armies invade. Weeds are more like common citizens, they move into neighborhoods suitable to them. And one does not "battle” pests. Insects want to eat my cabbage as much as I do. But they rarely kill the cabbage and devour it with relish I will.

Fencing 101

In Tuscany, in particular, a fence is a record of invasions by wild boar and porcupines, and of the gardener's intervention. I cannot say how old the fence around my orto (vegetable garden) is, but I can say it is an archive. It is not beautiful. It is rusty and snaggly and patched together with bailing wire. And now, with the first seeds of spring sown, it needs to be replaced, or patched once again. I have chosen to patch it. Patch it where the wild things have burrowed through. Patch it where the diesel dinosaur of the excavator ripped through it to lay our utility lines at the start of construction.

Again I find myself patching, repairing, healing what is crippled, broken, old, abandoned, but not yet dead or useless or done. Like the property itself. Like the old men a women seen doddering up and down the roads here after mealtime.

My initial instinct was to rip out the old fencing and crooked fence posts and replace it with a shiny straight new fence. And I suspect that I eventually will. But not this year. What is left of this old fence, the few places left where it is still intact, is also a record of where the animals have not gotten in. Yet.

The First Step (after many)

It's been a week since the blizzard and I can finally get to the house without leaving the car by the road and walking. Giovanni is down in the woods bucking up downed trees. I will help him stack next year's firewood tomorrow.

This may not look like much, but it's the first step, literally and literally. The first step I've taken to finish the house (and get settled in). The first step from the old love shack (I'm reusing in the new). Everything else has been cleanup after the final flurry of construction and of snow.

Sono Qui! (I Am Here!)

I am back in Tuscany for the next 8 months, to finish what I came here to start.

3 days ago it snowed for 2 days straight. Very strange for our area. This morning I just had to go to the house to check out the situation and satisfy myself that the roof hadn't caved in. On the way, I took a half an hour to get a little stuck. Then I took another half an hour to get a little more stuck. Then I spent most of the morning digging the car out.

But not without walking a long way, carrying a suitcase on my head.

When I first saw the shuttered house across the snowy field, I felt a little like Dr. Zhivago returning to Varyniko after years.

Triage & Vinage

The very next day Russell brought his crew of groundskeeping lifesavers over to save the drowning vineyard. It was a searing hot day and very humid. Russell, Momo, Luciano (Gato), Mateo, Gabor, and I worked from 7:00 a.m till sundown. We got 3 rows of grapevines up and trellised and a lot of smothering weeds and vines whacked down. We also freed the pear, olive and other nearby trees of tree strangling wires and vines.

Many of the vines were sick with rot and mildew and the Italians on the crew wanted to prune them back severely. But I knew we were stressing them just to bend them back upright and expose them fully to the harsh Tuscan sun. Every leaf is a sugar factory and I wanted to let them use every one to recuperate. So we only cut back what was necessary to straighten and untangle them.

We put in some new posts and ran new trellis wire where needed.

And in the end, we had to prop them up with what we had on hand. Very contadino.

It wasn't pretty and it wasn't healthy, but Sally and I now had the start of the vineyard of my dreams.

Second Attempt

Sally and I discussed the minimum items necessary to "camp" cheaply and comfortably at the property. These included: A propane stove and refrigerator, a composting toilet, a solar hot water set-up, a wood stove, a futon, a table and chairs, a water tank, a cell phone, and some kind of transportation. A list that was about to be rendered moot.

May 22. Noon. Back in the notary's office, after asking if we had the cashiers checks, Mr. Kopini read through the deed and transfer papers and permissions to build, etc. Even the black sheep were on good behavior. After the last fiasco, this felt, as Sally said at lunch afterwards, "positively anti-climatic."

Except when Mr. Kopini read the part of the complicated Italian title transfer that said we agreed to begin restoration within one year from the date of signing, and would complete all construction within 3 years from the start date OR WE WOULD FORFEIT THE VOLUMES WE’D JUST ADDED, without which no habitable house could be built on the property. Ever.

Blink. Blink. This was the first Sally, Stefania or I had heard of this. Sally and I stared at each other, but neither of us said "we can't do this." Neither said "the deal is off." Neither said what we were thinking (Is this the beginning of a chain of such add-ons and costs?). We could have ripped the cashiers checks up and walked away. But we didn't. Our sense that we had already accomplished something beyond our dreams wouldn't let us. And our optimism provided a rationale: Possession is nine-tenths the law. We can sort this out later.

And so we walked out into the bright Siena sun, owners of a little piece of Tuscany, willfully oblivious to the fact that we had solved the problem of buying the property with an even bigger problem to solve.