Hoepoe

Thornton Wildee called Rome the northernmost point in Africa. Tuscany is just a little north of Rome. It, too, is Africa when it comes to birds and summer heat.

For three springs now I've noticed the first feathered inkling of Africa, right around Easter, above the tiny pieve (chapel) marking the turn to the white road that leads to our property, sitting on a telephone wire as it's mate forages on the ground. It is the pushme-pullyou hammerhead of birds. Somewhat woodpeckerish, in low light you can't tell which way it is looking because it seems to sprout beaks from both sides of it's head.

It is a bird of habit and of place and reassuringly returns each year to this same little pocket of Africa at the northernmost edge of its range. It is the bellwether bird. And for 3 Tuscan springs I have known the good weather has arrived when I see the hoepoe perched on the line at the turn-off to Tana Lepre (Hare's Den). This morning, there they were -- the hoepoe and il bel tempo.

Tomorrow the bed arrives and I will nestle in!

Hunger Appetite Famine

It is Pasqua, Easter Sunday, and I am driving in a driving rain up into the hills over Lake Trasemino above the plain where Hannibal's army ambushed and slaughtered a legion in a humiliating defeat that ran the waters of the lake red with Roman blood. So I am thinking of history and food.

Chef and TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver says his big wish is that Americans teach their kids to have a real relationship to food. Real food.

Generalization: Most Italians have a different relationship to food than most Americans. Until sometime in the last 10 years, 80% of all Italians grew some of what they ate.

I remember my first trip to Italy in the mid-90's. On the train from Rome to Venice, I was amused by the little gardens tucked into every centimeter and inch of usable space along the tracks the entire way. In empty lots, in yards, in parking lots, on balconies, in tractor tires... you get the idea. Now you see less of this, but not much. This is not something you see in the States. Not yet.

Try to explain the Easter Bunny to an Italian and he'll smack his lips and dream of stewing it in wine, wild garlic and mushrooms. It's not cute, it's food. Many in our area over the age of 70, and there are many around here over 70, can remember something else few Americans can relate to -- "the famine" of the fascist years.

I've always had a good appetite, and the only true gnawing hunger I've known was as a kid. Once, I was rifling through a dumpster bin at a rest stop in the Sierra Nevada's near Mount Shasta after my car broke down near the end of a cross country trip. I was 17. I hadn't eaten anything but coffee in over 24 hours. I'd found a bread bag with a crust in it, a cereal box with a few corn flakes left, and a peanut butter jar with two finger's worth of goo. I'd caught a crawfish in the little mountain stream burbling behind the parking lot in a coffee can and was contemplating eating it raw like Richard Harris did in the movie A Man Called Horse. And of course this was before sushi had become an American household word.

As I was rifling some more, a girl about 12-years-old tapped me on the shoulder. She was holding a paper plate with a big piece of chocolate cake on it. She had a sandwich bag with a tuna sandwich in it. She had a can of cold orange soda fresh out of the family cooler. She held them out to me with stiff arms. "My mother thought you should have this." I looked over at the picnic table where her family sat. They were gawking, but not impolitely.

I accepted the gifts and sat down at the far end of their picnic table where I devoured them. I showed the girl the crawfish in the can. Then we both let it go. I thanked the mother and the very quiet father and the girl. And I've always remembered how my discomfort -- not just this once, but many times over the years -- was eased by the easy generosity of strangers. What happened for my stomach that day wasn't as profound as what happened for my sense of humanity.

This is how, as I drive through this verdant farmland to Easter supper with friends in Umbria, I contemplate the deeper meaning of today's feast, here in Italy, and in my life. Perhaps it is something we should all do a little more of.

Buona Pasqua and buon apetito!

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.