Parched Earth...
Archive post June 20, 2019…
I’m going to be up-front with you all… that faucet in the left-hand photo is illegal. Possibly, not really. Maybe, yes. Perhaps, unlikely. Hey! We’re in Italy. World of greys.
Gaia, the infamous Water Company in these parts, turns a blind eye to such breaches. And good that they do. Risk of a rebellion. High quotient of vegetable gardens needing watering in the Lunigiana. And the flower garden dear to one lone American over in the corner.
The other photos demonstrate the current state of Mother’s Earth at the garden of il Poggiolo… if it had more water, it would mature all the better… and of her precious Plant Life. Grass and trees. A fledgling cherry tree planted three years ago tragically bit the dust just days after someone BIG, and unidentified, found the switch to turn up the Daily Max Temperatures three weeks ago. Poor thing had not grown its roots down to where the wet is. Meters below, these days. We have about a yard of what appears to be soil posing as cement. Severe Drought Phase Numero Uno. We have not had a regular, consistent and deep soaking rainfall since 2014. Yep. I am a believer. It’s Global Warming. Access to any source of water is of dire importance… for all of us.
I paid good Euro’s for that faucet and the water connection from it to the stream below a next-door neighbor’s house. That same neighbor… she lives in the G*d-awful yellow house which glows at night it’s so yellow… invited us to join along with the other select members to have access to the semi-illegal aqueduct. Not sure money was exchanged between the others since, they are all family. That’s Italy.
Weirdly, the same stream provides the water Gaia accesses and then charges us their astronomical prices for H2O. We don’t drink Gaia’s water. And, we don’t water our plants with it either. Showers… military showers only!!!… and the dishwasher. Why? Ain’t safe. The stream water is shoddily filtered in a large concrete tank up stream a ways. When it rains, water out of our taps is brown. Not my favourite colour. Just to tell you. The spill-over flows right on over the open top of the tank and into the stream. A very minute amount runs into the tube for which I paid a mighty sum. Got it? Easy Math. Up ahead, it becomes really difficult for someone.
The arrangement at the moment of passing Euro’s into the hands of the neighbor was: She waters at night, We by day. OK. Fine. No problem. You & I know how to follow rules, treaties, agreements, etc. Another, apparently not. The neighbor used to barrel through a breach in our prickly hedge to turn off our faucet, so she could water her Plant Life… at 8 in the morning!!! That stunt irritated You no end. Since one the custom is acquired, never is it relinquished. And that is the Law!!! No kidding. Possession is 9/10th’s the Law. When the Dog Fence was installed last Fall, she had her cute, cute, cute boy-toy builder son install a Master Faucet. Now, she just conveniently turns off the communal water at the Main, steps from her front door. I discovered this little convenience when we met on the ramp to the Medieval Bridge two days ago…
by the way, work on restoring the Medieval Bridge has been suspended by the Culture Police. Uncertainty as to what to do next. I know but was not at all consulted. You is furious. He wasn’t consulted either. But that is not why he’s mad. Says the C.P.’s are idiots. I have an opinion on that assessment too but, it would not be helpful. Barely a bridge remains until.
Kindly enquiring of the neighbor why we have had no water from our faucet, the woman said we had been watering too much. Not good. We must water less. We have to conserve! What? But, Dear Signora, if the over-flow runs out of the tank and into the stream… and only a minute amount flows into our collective tube… and the rest… THE LARGER PART!!!… flows into a river, and another river, and still yet another river, to then flow into the Mediterranean Sea, how does one conserve… water? Her reply? We water too much. Basta! And she continued on to wherever. Am I crazy here? I think not. There is No Debate.
What will happen… a someone BIG will intercede… is the stream, as it does traditionally every Summer, will dry-up. There! Conservation done. For us and for everyone else too. A strange sort of vindication. And that folks is Italy too!
Our weather in May...
Archive post May 21, 2019…
We have had the most boring weather this month…
Days of heavy grey clouds. One would have thought rain or, a thunderstorm might erupt. Mostly just spray. Left the garden unworkable and the streets slidey slick. I can count two days when it actually did poor down water. One of them was last Sunday. Spent it curled up in bed with a good book. Nice ambition. T’was ruined periodically by two cabin-fevered Weimaraners. They hounded me to go out. Once out, they hounded me to come back in. The humidity has been exceptional. And lingers still.
Unexpected cold hit too. Not only low-low temps in the early morn, a couple of notches above 32F. Freezing. But at mid-day? There were a few mid-week days when the thermometer struggle to even reach 50F, at 2PM!
Winds blew in and stayed. In all directions. From the mountains and from the sea. Did you know the Italians have a unique name for each wind direction? Yessiree. None use the name, Mariah. And, Thank God. What blew our way bent trees at 45 degrees to the horizontal with huge gale-like gasps. Explosions, comes to mind. Trees would gently sway with a benign breeze and then, suddenly, rip and tear at themselves and each other from the violence of a lengthy gust. Some tall leafy giants did come out of the ground. The Dogs & I saw a few on Our Morning Walks in Nature.
The Loggia of La Casa Grande is a fairly protected space… warm too… and a nifty one to watch Mother Nature do her thing, caused by or despite Global Warming, while not suffer any untidy consequences. The show beyond was often way more interesting… also slightly disturbing… than the Internet.
Not so inside La Casa Grande. Historically, at Easter-time, I transfer myself with the canines in tow from La Casetta, Our Heated Winter HQ, and set up Summer Base Camp in La Casa Grande. 2019 was no exception. The Bunny Holiday has often been the kick-off for warm Tuscan and Spring-like weather. Blue skies, big puffy clouds, birds tweeting, bees buzzing, You sunbathing out on the aia. I think after 10 years of this seasonal re-location, I may use the word historically rather than say, habitually. Both would apply, however. Oh, My Lord… I came so very close to chucking the interior high temp of 50F and returning below to La Casetta. 65F is ideal. I could see my breath. The Creosus-person would have been ecstatic had I done so. He slept under wool blankets or my feather comforter. Absorbing my body heat underneath with him. Nina-beena curled into a tight ball in one of the ratty poltrone to gather a modicum of h-e-a-t. It’s been tough. But we are toughing it out.
Hurtling towards Easter...
Archive post April 12, 2019…
Two thing are heading for a collision in these late days of April. One is Easter, which lands on our 2019 calendar’s doorstep on Sunday, the 21st of April. Rather late. It’s a problem.
The weather gets weird around Easter. Always has and always will and no matter the date. The contadini here in Codiponte do fret over the late planting of their orto’s. Avid calendar watchers. They and everyone else also fear a sudden and severe Easter cold snap. Worse still, rain could happen. Keep in mind, Italians are not keen on sudden, cold, snap, and rain. They are for Easter. It was once the top on the Christian religious charts. It’s been displaced by overwhelming commercial interests promoting instead Christmas. Spirit & mystery against the almighty dollar/euro/peso/other. A sad commentary.
Lot of days to muck-up too for the long Easter weekend. Il Venerdi Santo on Friday, Saturday to scamper to the grocery store to load up, Pasqua Sunday for Mass and un pranzo con agnello coordinated with dishes full of artichokes, peas and potatoes, and finally, La Pasquetta, on the Monday after Easter, for a picnic outdoors. What a boon. A Monday off. Doesn’t happen in Italy unless Christmas falls on a Monday. The day after Easter is the most problematic day of the long weekend holiday. The gents here want sunshine & warmth to eat un panino con prosciutto crudo, lay around in an lounge chair soaking up the beneficial rays from Sig. Sole and be left in Peace… outside. A sudden or even consistent rain shower would ruin la loro pace pasqualina. The later for sure.
The other is the developing 10 day weather report. The first is unavoidable. The second is a product of prediction which, as my Mother always said, is a false art. False art or not, the current forecast does seem a bit uncertain. Mildly said. Pretty shitty, in others words. It depends on your interpretation and import you’d give to the little icons running down the screen of your iPhone. I have a weather.com app which tells me the weather for the day and for the next 7 wherever I am to be found. Don’t you love to be surveilled? Or caught? And by a gadget? Numbers run down the blue screen and are matched by the dates of those 7 days. Not good. 90% of the icons are puffy white clouds with slanted blue lines… meaning rain, how cute!… shooting down from underneath for today through Easter. The 10% is for today’s weather. The sun was only out in the first hours of our day today. Here is the later story…
What to do? I don’t have pop-corn OR, a good movie to watch. HATE my books too. You’s coming to Codiponte for an extraordinary 13 day It’s-Easter holiday. Days off slung between the bridge of the two weekends. Those slugn holidays are Liberation Day from the Nazi’s and Commie Holiday of May 1st. You may already know the grim news. I ain’t telling him. But, if it’s crummy outside, I won’t be able to endrenture him to yard work. He’ll just have to settle for putting in order the La Casa Grande or other locations, like his Kingdom. His BR is a mess. Then, guests are due in too. Why didn’t they book Sharem el Sheik? So terribly inviting to say… how about if we just hang out?
Fall's Big Storm...
Archive post November 1, 2018…
I don’t trust the Italian weather-people on TV. Some, from Mars, supposedly, wear uniforms. Aeronautical. Others, still from Mars or thereabouts, wear blue jackets way too short. They never button them either. So ignorant of THE LAW to don a jacket standing before the public. Untrustworthy. As for those persons from Venus, either the do their weather-map ballet in way too skimpy & tight dresses in TEAL or turn & twist in blown away looking nylon blouses matched with a straight skirt and clunky flats. I do rather like one weather-Venus on Canale 5 who sashays in short tight dark jeans with precipitously high heels. Nice flanks when she turns to look at the monitor. No marks for any of their prognostications.
I regularly surf three weather Internet sites here in Italy: meteo.it, meteoapuane.it and meteowebcam.it. Mid-stream though last week, just when You said he was goin ’to com’ on down to Codiponte, I checked the weather report. One showed end-of-world rain the entire weekend and then some. Cannot recall which. Another’s map was full of multi-drop rain icons for Sunday night, Monday morning. The rest rain would be basically AWOL. The last gave a midland probability of much needed… desperately… needed H2O but spotty coverage. Typical expose’. On the day of You’s arrival, I gave another look-see. All three had gotten onto the same program. Dire rain from now until the following weekend. RED & ORANGE ALARMS from the authorities over at the Italian Civil Defence facilities. Wow. You and I and the dogs can nap the entire weekend. Maybe.
Took all of Saturday for the storm to get cranking. Went out to dinner with You to a local cooking/styling conclave in a light rain but buxom winds. The later was a hint. Got home with the help of the gathering winds… tail-winds are always appreciated… packed everyone and the dogs off to bed and promptly conked out from too much American accented Italian cooking. Heavy Chevy. Right about 2:30AM… KA-KA-KABOOM kracked over-head and it did until an hour past the Fall back sunrise. Got up and made myself a caffe’. The dogs ate and then wanted to immediately go out. But, it’s RAINING, animals!!! Can’t you hold it? No. Their rain jackets fluttered & flapped. The two were drenched in 17 seconds flat. Unhappy. You dashed from his unattached BR and into the Kitchen only to growl… semi-politely… that he did not get much sleep during the tempest. None of these personalities asked how my night was. They only wanted to be consoled and to commiserate on a very adverse Sunday morning.
You went back to Genoa post-haste. The dogs moved from club-chair to sofa to the floor, showing no interest to go bounce with the liquid Mother Nature outside. I read and then watched Robin Hood for the nth time. Got fed up with King John… that over-sexed creep… so, I went back to slog through a book published by Edith Wharton in 1903 about Italian Villas and Gardens. She admitted to an error in the order of the title because, in her opinion, gardens make the villa and not the other way around. The classic Italian gardens also did not need the quantities of water like those later laid out in The English Fashion. With grass. Seemed an appropriate tome to consume… or, at least calming… whilst it truly began to storm outside. I had to put the book down. Could not concentrate what with all the whistling, crashing, screeching noises of the winds propelling the rain horizontally against trees, houses, windows, doors. I found myself the physical and moral support of two extremely worried Weimaraners on one single bed width sofa in the Casa Grande’s main salotto. The gale howled for a couple more hours in between rapid fire lightning flashed overhead and thunder rocked our ears below, huddled as we were. At some point during the 5th hour, the electricity blinked, blinked again, blinked a third time and then went out. Damn. The flashlight? Found that after bumping parts of my body from waist -ine down to retrieve it out on the Loggia. Candles? Oh, yes, You’s Reserve DOC of IKEA lanterns and bulky candles in the Stanza dei Tini. Matches? Matches?? MATCHES??? Found a small cache in a spinster-esque porcelain jar in You’s BR. What does he do with them? One of his flea-market treasures. Small as in 3 dinky matches. Being weak-minded in Emergencies, I am amazed at the presence of mind I showed to light first a candle and then light the others from one measly candle. NORMALLY, I would have gone on and used up what at the critical time was A Very Vital Resource!!!
Then True Storm & Disaster Danger struck. Laptop exhausted from its video labors. Ditto… damn-it… for the beleaguered iPhone. Could have thought about that before I sent those 521 Whatsapp messages to loved ones in distant and out-of-danger lands. No lights to read by. And the worse was the flashlight shut-down and only to be resurrected after 3 hours of being re-charged, if the electricity would deign to return to do its appointed job. No way man. Not until 2PM the following day would it be restored. I was out with the dogs surveying damage in the garden when I heard an alarm sound. Spied from my heights that the Scuzzy bar had lights, the antipatica signora in the Swiss chalet house had a light… could it be? Yes, it could. ELECTRICITY!!! Praise the Heavens. Not those which launch wind and some horizontal rain but, he who governs all. The weather-persons, not.