I may have mentioned once or twice that the weather here in Liguria is, well, stupendous. (We’ll discount the anomalous 2 weeks of nippiness that froze our buns in our poorly-insulated house.) For someone who finds the weather an essential part of the quality of his daily life (just like […]
Nature
36 posts
A few weeks ago, after spending an afternoon getting scratched up by brambles and cursing heavily at baling wire getting wrapped around my brush-cutter, my wife and I stood back and looked with no little satisfaction at the small plot of land that we had rescued from under the encroachment […]
The land that we bought 5 years ago on a ridge high up between Monterosso and Levanto was once carefully cultivated by a kind old man whom I had the opportunity to meet twice. Ernesto had worked this land since before the war, clearly remembering the time that he and […]
On October 11th, I promised that I’d be writing an update on my reading habits as soon as I finished the mammoth Bleak House by Charles Dickens. On that day, I hypothesized that I probably wouldn’t be finishing it anytime before the summer, given my slow-poke reading pace and the […]
A few years ago, while visiting Ireland, we stopped at the home of my wife’s close friend Dave. He’s got an amazing place near the coast in County Sligo, where he lives with his twin daughters. Among his activities, he fishes for food, has started participating in old-fashioned bartering fairs, […]
Much consternation has been expressed by our friends and family members about our black cat Bagheera in her new home in Levanto. Whereas in Parma she was a pampered indoor-outdoor cat, coming and going as she pleased, at all hours of the day or night, often returning for nothing more […]
One of the greatest advantages of living on the Mediterranean coast is that it doesn’t freeze here. Ever. Water pipes are laid carelessly above ground because they will never burst, citrus trees stand full of fruit in mid-December, plants have no need of greenhouses. For all those who say that […]
It’s pruning season here in Levanto, and that means time to get out your shears and get chopping. From where I stood today on my hilltop, I could hear the unmistakeable sounds of one chainsaw, one band saw, and one electric hedge-trimmer all going at the same time. It all […]
If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see the remains of an old construction in the foreground, probably a small stone hut used for storing tools and for getting out of the sun while eating your lunch on hot days. There’s not much left of it now, and […]
My father, a born Doubting Thomas, has always been suspicious of the existence of wild boar (cinghiale in Italian) in Italy. After spending three weeks in Tuscany a few years ago, he calculated that based on the number of restaurants serving wild boar in various forms (stew, steak, sausage, jerky, […]