Think On It

Things you can do in the rain

May 22nd, 2008

This is the second rainiest May I have known here. It’s also pretty cold for May, cold enough to provoke aches and pains not caused by hard gardening work. I’ve made fires in both the stove and the fireplace at different times, something I don’t recall having done before, but then we’ve only had a few days you can dry laundry outside.

So this is a photographic report on what I have been doing. I reassure myself constantly that there will be a payoff starting in just a few weeks. These photos were taken when there was neither sun nor rain. If you click on them they grow, but not many are worth the effort.

Yesterday I worked my right arm into crisis by sawing down most of two trees. After years of saying that I just can’t saw, I decided that sawing is something one can learn to do just like anything else. It’s true, but it isn’t good for you!

The result is that today I will translate recipes Alberta wants to use for the cooking school. I always thought Americans were too wedded to the recipe, but it turns out a lot of Italians are pretty faithful to it as well. “One needs to have the right proportions,” I am told, and that’s true, but sometimes it seems as easy to decide while doing it just how much is enough.

Even in the rain, I take my coffee out under the gazebo and I am grateful that winter is over. Then I prepare warm, wet food for the kittens and sometimes I sit and play with them for a while, but it often makes my pyjamas wet. It took them only a couple of days out of their little “nest” to run to the human, because they’ve been stroked every single day since their birth.

Entry Filed under: Italy, orto