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You & I bought il Poggiolo because, I wanted a house in the country. Since we live in Italy, the nearest acceptable country to Genoa, our permanent residence, was the Lunigiana. This little known corner of Northwestern Tuscany is similar to the kind of territory I had known and adored from visiting relatives in The South… predominantly, the Piedmont and Appalachian areas of South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. Destiny did the rest.
The house is large and is divided into three parts. The inhabitants had once lived up in the Appartamento Azzurro. I know this Codiponte family. Many were born in what is now my Bedroom. Every now & then, one comes across their initials etched into stone pavers around il Poggiolo. Then, the last of the children grew up, married and moved out. The parents relocated down to La Casetta which, was given an economical re-do by the owner of il Poggiolo… a woman who had inherited the property and rarely set foot in it. Wonders of wonders, a new, modern AND indoor Bathroom!!! The central house, our la Casa Grande, was a vast hay barn and small workrooms for making salamis, cheeses and wine. The garden wasn’t a garden but, a vineyard. The only remnants of this past are the two tini… wine vats… in a passageway connecting the outdoor courtyard…. l’aia… to the cool room where those fruits of labor were once stored and is now il Poggiolo’s communal Laundry and Bathroom.
We had to completely rebuild il Poggiolo from the foundations to the roof. No foundations with Italian houses of yesteryears. Instead, they were either built… lent would be another verb here… against an existing structure…. in il Poggiolo’s case, the remnants of the perimeter walls of the Castle of Codiponte which, one can see on the aia… courtyard… or, erected upon a rocky mount. Akin to keeping something stationary, thanks to a rocky lump. Seems to have held for the last 800 years. See no need to worry. Now buried or hidden below from our renovations.
When you reconstruct, you are think house, not home. Reinforcing walls, dealing with humidity issues, modern plumbing & electrical plants, new roofs, flooring… ad infinitum. Massive work, lot of moola, time consuming. Of the three, the first… FYI… is contained in all the blog posts at Italian House from 2009 to 2014. Nothing to say about spending money except it was spent. And, as for the last, it took You & I four years to get il Poggiolo up & running as a house.
From restoring, we moved on to Maintenance & Upkeep. Not my favourite category. And, historically, the Italians aren’t much better at it either. Oh, they can certainly design & build glories, but then, those treasures fall into a state the rest of us think is so chic, so charming, glamours, and Italian, though rarely do we mention the word decrepit. You & I have replaced several windows & doors. Terrible the ravages of rain & cold & wind. We have reworked some electrical switches & outlets and added more lights. And, in a few instances we’ve even gone totally LED. Always too bright. New washers and cooktops too. Most recently, we installed two fireboxes to have a modicum of heat nel salotto e nella sala da pranzo… the Living and Dining Rooms… of la Casa Grande. Such dust & disorder. I was forced by night to sleep in my Bedroom up in l’Appartamento Azzurro… with the Dog… normally preferring to sleep in a bed posing as a sofa in the Salotto during the late Spring, Summer and early Fall months… and living by day out on the Loggia and cooking in the Kitchen of la Casa Grande. The Dog has not understood n’er a wit of any of this. Putting the main part of il Poggiolo back into some form of cleanliness & order post-construction, and taking the example of our German friends, who are re-doing their historic abode fai-da-te… or, do-it-yourself, though two amazingly informed persons on construction will one ever be so lucky to meet… You & I re-waxed TWICE!!! the terracotta flooring throughout la Casa Grande, the Laundry & Loggia included. Back breaking, knee ruining, hip crushing work. You was a beast. Brush, brush, brush, he worked. I attempted the same. At one point though, fed up listening to my grunts & groans while brushing each paver with liquid wax, he told me to go walk the Dog. I did. And felt remarkably better and ready to resume the chore. I tried new positions with some success. Taking a pill helped considerably.
You spoke of protection and enriching. I thought… home. The wax left a nice, warm scent of one. A surprising concept… home… for il Poggiolo. it was time. The idea dawned on me while nursing a recuperative white wine in una delle mie poltrone… shot from too many Dogs sleeping in them… before an active fire that, yes, indeed, after all these tweaks… for lack of a better word… actually render our house as a home. Settling in. Finding a happy rhythm of sleeping in our originally assigned BR’s and spending the day nella Casa Grande. A medium of comfort, convenience without causing the house any undue distress in undergoing changes to its infrastructure. One idea on that score was to bash out a wall and put in French Doors nella sala da pranzo. I got a blood curdling… Over my dead body!!!… from You. I suspect the house was actually using him as its spokes-person because, it willingly underwent the construction of the two fireplaces without a hitch. Now, if we can find places for the stuff displaced by the two fireboxes, we really will have a home. A home? Yes, a home.
Home sweet Home...
Archive post May 25, 2019…
Ten years now, You & I have inhabited il Poggiolo. We closed on the house in May of 2009 and here we are heading out of May 2019. In that time, we have survived the emptying of my bank accounts to re-build the place from top to bottom, dealt with the shenanigans of Our berserk-but-bravo Builder who, after encounters using many other local builders, ranks as The Best of the Bunch. No wasted memories on the earthquake back in 2014, a phenomenon I hope never to experience EVER AGAIN!!! And what a nagging pleasure it has been to see the tripling of our real-estate & trash taxes, not forgetting the pummeling we take monthly now at the hands of ENEL electricity, Beyfin gas and Gaia water companies. You avidly pursues accumulating stuff and at an amazing rate too, I might add, yet miraculously, he finds them good homes in our home. While I either let our garden’s plants grow unencumbered or, unwittingly kill them off, because I got knocked in the head by a branch. And finally, The Dogs have taken over… You would say wrecked… any comfortable furniture regardless of location or end-use. No truer mark of a Home.
There IS this nagging thought though that we did not get a few things right with il Poggiolo. It’s a periodic musing. And, blessedly, I don’t have to take tranquilizers to numb the regrets. Nope. I am brave. Fearless, Reflective. Learn from Our Lessons…
April & May’s cold temperatures have reminded me… we did not successfully tackle heating. Cannot calculate the number of discussions You & I had with Our Geometra on how to warm il Poggiolo from November to… this year… June. Our General Reconstruction Concept or, GRC, devised shortly after purchasing Our dilapidated Tuscan Farm-house, was to have a Winter HQ in La Casetta… the Medici-style house below the bulk of il Poggiolo… installing radiators and a gorgeous enclosed fireplace in its Second Floor salotto. The former meant connecting the water heater to a whoppingly expensive gas line. Hard to be conservative with the thermostat when a nameless person is ALWAYS cold, if the outside temps aren’t 90F. The rest of il Poggiolo would be Our heating-less Summer HQ. Who cares about it then? Reflection and the current weather has conjured this meditation… There should be heating throughout.
Che era non sara’…
Our discussions on heating alternatives at what was then the current technology, and now ten years old, lead us to confirm and reinforce Our General Reconstruction Concept. Budget and time issues, mostly. There were always problems with the alternatives and pitted against a heavy gas bill for five to six months each year seemed an acceptable way to beat the odds. Here’s a run-down…
The orientation of il Poggiolo’s roofs did not lend itself to solar panels, Thank God. Ugly things. Expensive too. Even just a couple to heat water turned out to be a No Go. Cost versus productivity thing.
Putting in a huge gas water-heater connected to twenty+ radiators throughout the complex was beyond The Budget. Besides upping the building costs… we were Boys on a Budget… to add the luxury of steam heat, the monthly gas bollette would have been prohibitively expensive, nearing the territory of…Yikes!!!
Back in ‘09, the oncoming fashion to heat was pellets… think crushed wood chips… and their special furnaces. A boom ensued. Back at Our Ranch, You invoked… Over my dead body. I agreed, which forestalled You’s drastic resort.
Our geometra discouraged us from putting in a central furnace with the option of using firewood or pellets to heat water for showers to dish-washing and to make radiators warm throughout. He ruined this alternative for two firm inconveniences… no three. 1) Would require a tone of firewood and how to get it to where you want to put it was iffy at Our House. Il Poggiolo is not easily accessible to tractors though they can arrive at Our Back Door. 2) The wood has to be stacked near to the furnace. Fine. But, Our Geometra said wood and furnaces are a messy lot. Not fine. 3) The darn thing has to be stuffed and primed with firewood or pellets at night when the furnace kicks on to heat as temps dip. Neither You nor I thought we would be up to negotiating 4) all of the above.
So, we are paying the Beyfin gas bollette. You is happy to have 72F degrees. And, we are waiting for Destiny to intercede with Our Geometra and yet another builder to put in two fireplaces in La Casa Grande. A home is not a home without a hearth. We will have four, eventually for Our Home Sweet Home.
Spring improvements...
Archive post April 19, 2019…
Our Spring Home Improvements campaign continues apace…
Our painter, a diminutive & congenial fellow, came and tackled a peeling wall from humidity and/or water infiltration, filled in several cracks never repaired after the earthquake of 2014 in the Salotto of La Casa Grande and one nasty issue of…? Issue of…? An issue of an unhinged paint-job up in the MBR of the Appartamento Azzurro. The first and last are the most annoying:
we have a mystery humidity issue on the wall at the corner of the stairs in La Casetta. I thought water was a trickle down effect. Ronald was wrong and so was I. Apparently not always. The hypothesis of Our Painter for the flaking paint and rippled plaster & paint is caused by a sub-terranean drain pipe, and one not part of il Poggiolo’s drain infrastructure, which passes along and well below the wall of the stairs from our neighbor’s aia… or, courtyard, to the sewers below us all on this side of Codiponte.
I remember, way back in aught-9, while the Builder Guys were re-building Our Collapsed Great Wall at the entrance ramp to il Poggiolo and digging the trench-to-China to isolated the complex from the muggy soil around it, of discovering a vast and layered network of water pipes running below what would eventually become Our Terraced Garden… filled with olive and flowering fruit trees. Sorry. Sounds like an advertisement. It is. The weaving course of pipes looked more complicated than the LA interstates lacing through that city. The painter sanded, chipped, and dug out the disturbed area of wall, administered a sealant, plastered three layers of nylon netting and stucco, followed with You’s adore Sage Green paint color as the finishing touch, once the plaster had set & dried. The next day, a stain of humidity. Better but not best. We are now obligated to watch for further signs before re-addressing this issue. The Official Speak.
The latter is the sad & confirmed result of doing things on the cheap, gainfully aggravated by a collective ignorance and time worries from both myself and an available handyman commissioned to… do… The… Job. What’s the ol’ adage? Beer before wine, you’ll be fine but, wine before beer, and you’re sick for a year? Well, for paint, the admonition is… nothing catchy comes to mind… Don’t EVER mix paint types. The walls were originally covered in a lime-base paint… calce. A near perfect & natural substance which allows i Spiriti e l’Anima delle parete to breath. A fact I did not retain. It was many years ago. In came the handy-man to re-paint the Apt. Azzurro, post-earthquake, with Our Gorgeous Antique Blue in an acrylic-based paint and what happened? The calce rebelled. Like the walls are busting out underneath from suffocation. One entire wall’s paint-job of acrylic is lifting up AND off, for cryin’ out loud. Cannot tell you the embarrassment when I showed Our Painter the situation. Another adage and entertainingly explained by Cher’s pumber father in Moonstruck… You have to spend money to save money. Got that lesson down now. The painter and I have postponed this last Paint & Paste Project until the new windows of the Azzurro Apt. are installed.
Il Poggiolo is missing it eyes! Blue, they are and will be once again. A couple of windows & doors of La Casa Grande and Azzurro Apt., in all directions but, most evident from the aia, are now boarded up with plywood panels awaiting the restoration of their original structures. Two operai came last Monday and carried off the near-death array of windows & doors away… from the effects of wind, rain, cold and searing heat off the aia’s stone in our Summer heat-waves. Il Poggiolo now looks like it’s been in bad fight. The house will have to stay that way until after Easter. It will not be at its best for the On-the-aia Pasquetta Picnic on the Monday after Pasqua. The good news is we will be set up for that Commie Holiday, May 1st. At least that!
Italian house...
Archive post January 10, 2019…
I had completely forgotten…
Far before I had thought to come to Italy to live, my dreams had conjured an Italian house. Running an errand in the SUV a couple of days ago, I happened to take an unexplored road to avoid an accident up ahead. Bet a FIAT had spun-out on an icey strada statale. No idea really. The Carabinieri waved me right well before. Italian drivers never learn, do they? What is the rush to get to Aulla before the stores open? Making the right turn and there on the right was a classic Italian casa colonica… an Italian farm-house. Tuscan. A stone and brick box set back from the unknown road. Stopped to stare. The house nestled by some scraggly olive trees. I was lost in my head. Suddenly I saw what I once remembered of my dream-like mind’s eye. Vision reproduced for days afterwards. Then archived under My Italian house. Might have been the original spur to change direction and come East from the USA to the boot of a peninsula surrounded by sea.
I must confess of some need for a change. Summer spat me out unwillingly into Fall. Hollered but, was no help. No time to brake either to avoid colliding with Christmas. Happened quickly anyway. When in this state, My History provided a move to a new city in a new home. Home is the place to start.
Got two. I have been ruminating selling both…
One I can’t. A certain person would invoke Over My Dead Body. The last time he spoke those hardened words I cringed in his presence for a week. Still nurture scares too. Tone of voice thing. No big stick. You’s point-of-view to his insisted statement of No? DIfficult to beat… anywhere in the world… the nifty happenstance of living only a short block away from where you catch the train for work every work-day.. Views are one of a kind from the 25 foot high windows towards the old port and La Lanterna di Genova. I do love the oft apartment and most of the accumulated stuff inside. Pretty fancy. Provokes Ooo’s & Ahhh’s from those lucky to be show photographs. Am waiting for Voice Search… Find me that photo of the LR, please. No, the other one. Thanks. What grates is I feel trapped in our non-neighborhood. I miss the old apartment in the centre of Genoa. A middle-class tenement. Would walk out and meet a friend or two, three… bunches. Where You & I are now is una landa desolata. The only folk who say Ciao! to me as I am pulled along by two crazed Weimaraners are the recovering drug addicts at the Communita’ San Benedetto. Mostly guys. Friendly. Cute. Girls don’t do drugs to excess? Never see n’er una. The guys sang Jingle Bells to me from the balcony of their retreat at Christmas.
The other, il Poggiolo, is rife with ramps and stairs. Near killers. Bad back and the left hip issues. The bain of old-age or, at least an age heading in that direction. More so with bags of groceries or carry-alls of IKEA glass bottles full of sparkling spring water. I also worry months in advance of the Spring & Fall assaults on the garden though what has been sunk into Mother Earth is maturing as desired and contrary to another’s opinion.
I confided to You my deep yearnings for changing our homes mid-stream in our drive to Milan for New Year’s. Ghastly holiday sabotaged by a wayward friend, a bully and about 350,000 foreign tourist in the city to shop and eat the place to suffocation. Couldn’t even get into a museum!!! I was rewarded with a cautionary admonition of a repeat performance of said famous declaration. Gads.
Maybe it’s just a phase? About every two years for twenty years I would masticate the idea of bagging Italy and going back to America. What tipped the chew was I could not dissolve the conviction: You can’t go back. Still here. Changing homes is the same repetitive beast.
What to do? Projects. Already mentioned. Alerted to my malaise, You encourages reports on my progress to coral a builder to construct and install two fire-boxes, one in the salotto and the other in the sala da pranzo. A gardner… and one of the finest men I have had the honor to know and work with… has promised us by the end of January to erect the infamous Dog Fence. Then, and this will require all the tact my Americanized Anglo-Saxon corpuscles can muster with You-know-who, French doors and a iron balcony with stairs off the same sala da pranzo to our Scenic Overlook. There was some noise from a certain sector that eliminating two… only decorative… beams from the pre-2009 roof might be frowned upon. Frown away. They be gone.
But hey! Wait just a minute. Excitement is building. What am I thinking? Il Poggiolo will reach new heights with these Excuse-our-messes. Never mind. Onwards. Just a phase.
Missing il Poggiolo...
Archive post December 6, 2018…
For two weeks this past November, I was 4,701 miles from il Poggiolo standing amongst the lofty pines of North Carolina. That’s a small lie. Actually, I was mostly inside nursing a severe cold sipping chicken noodle soup and watching Netflix. I hardly gave il Poggiolo a conscious thought. My subconscious could not let it go. This a long held tradition or, an annoying habit. Cannot decide. But consistently repeated twice a year: Thanksgiving and Easter. Smacks of separation anxiety. Only to a point…
Darn subconscious. And when a guy is already down to take advantage of my weary state: sleep patterns thrown to the winds by the annihilating whiz-bang-stop of modern air travel and beyond the reach of the latest tech in somniferous medicines. And, let us not forget the added boon of the 6 hour time differential. Fertile territory for nightmares to infiltrate my dreamworld, menacing my vulnerability with all which could befall my beloved Tuscan farm-house, il Poggiolo. The epitome of completing my misery: floods, fires, torrential rains, unwanted guests, unwanted anyone else, taxes upped, gas burners blazing away 24/7, every light left on to dispel the abandoned darkness 24/7 too… and much like the photos, long since DELETED, taken by a polite yet over-zealous AirBnB photographer sent by The Company to eradicate any unruly shadows or nooks of shade, thus rendering il Poggiolo ridiculously devoid of any charm or hey! Colorfulness. FLASHED to Death!!!… to Escher-esque follies of perpetually climbing up & down the house’s many ramps emulating the Myth of Sisyphus… talk about sweating while trying to sleep. Then, they stopped. Just like that. Not that the new dreams were all blue skies and birds tweeting. No, something better:
Future Poggiolo Projects…
new glass-enclosed fireplaces faced in flea-market marble veneers for La Casa Grande’s LR & DR. I can tell you right now the Dogs are going to love this innovation: beds & blankets fireside. Weimaraners love nothing more than to be WARM!!! Double French-doors in the DR too with a balcony and stairs outside to gracefully descend down to the garden for a Summer’s evening aperitivo or, to say Hello! to Dott. Bacchus standing watch over the wisteria vines and hydrangeas. Imagine hands sliding along the wrought iron railings to store firewood easily below. And, stone stairs to the top-most grassy terraces ample enough to deck them with large terracotta vases full of bromeliads and lavender, ooo-wee! Woke myself up with glee and did so until I reversed course for Italy to come back home… to il Poggiolo. And that is the Moral of the Story!
Closed for the Winter...
Archive post November 21, 2018…
You and I had thought il Poggiolo would be my Summer residence, June to September. You would hit on the weekends, saving people’s eyesight permitting. Other months of the year, our Tuscan farmhouse would be reserved for holiday visits: post-Christmas to New Year’s, Easter, that Commie Holiday in May. Meant closing down the house towards the end of September. Big work. A weird sort of ballet: You would shunt stuff from the garden carrying it down to the un-used space of the esseccatoio… or, chestnut drying shed… while I would de-nude the three refrigerators sanctifying them with vinegar. You then would strip beds of their linens and furiously dust his many objets and I would clip the grass one last time and cut the hedges to streamline their look. The last bits were the elegance of draping sheets over everything and closing off the utilities of water, gas, wi-fi and electricity. This was our program which we managed for a couple of years.
Enter one Weimaraner and followed by the adoption of another and then a puppy to replace the first magnificent dog. All prefered to inhale the invigorating aires of the Lunigiana more than the polluted ones in Genoa. More liberal local leash laws, now a definite thing of the past, encouraged me to spend ever more time at il Poggiolo with the canines. The years brought an expanding role as a bilingual Guardian Angel to friends tackling what You & I had tackled with il Poggiolo from 2009 to 2014. My seasonal sojourn became year-round.
Grumblings were heard, not listened too.
Though early for a New Year’s Resolution, I quietly vowed this Fall to remedy my absence from You’s and my co-habitation in the Genoa loft and from our Genoese friends & family. December to March. Meant returning to the task of closing down the house. A go-it-alone sacrifice this time. I did have help with the expert administrations of a blond-bombshell of a cleaning signora for two days. I had to stand clear. It was easy. I did umpteen loads of laundry, hauled trash to the dumpsters, moved non-resistant-to-the-cold plants inside, shoved and rearranged furniture and even supervised a firewood delivery. Piled the Dogs into the car and headed to Genoa.
I am uneasy. I knew yet was reminded despite the just concluded toil: Il Poggiolo is my Kingdom. My bit of Italian territory. An orientation of stone and wood and garden. My home. I am the missing part, me from it and it from me. I can’t wait for March.
The salotto of la Casa Grande, Sumer HQ, but closed up for the Winter.