Yeah, ok. Lesson learned. Actually several lessons were learned today:

1. I can't build a trellis in one day, at least not one that looks as good as the one in my head.

2. I need a motozappa.

3. Sticking a 6 foot tall piece of cane in rock-hard ground deep enough so it is stable is very difficult, one might even say impossible.

4. Don't photograph beautiful socks on a dirty dog rag towel.



5. Don't make good "before" pictures....not if you want the "after" pictures to look good.

before:



after:



6. Make sure you've turned the water heater on BEFORE starting to build a trellis in rock-hard ground without a motozappa because a HOT bath is obligatory immediately upon completion.

And, yeah yeah yeah,

7. Don't put off a big project to the last day, not if you want to finish it properly.


Having said all that, it is still fun to look out the bedroom window on some stray grapevines climbing

crossed

So I'm standing at the front door, looking out the window and taking to David on the phone. The dogs are romping around in the rain on the patio. One of the old guys with land up above drives by and the dogs, as they do with all cars, begin to bark and chase their tails and go momentarily insane. Just as the guy goes by the house I notice him cross himself. You know forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder - father, son and the holy spirit...that kind of thing. The only time I've ever seen people do that is when they pass a cemetery or if a hearse drives by.

Lynn (the dog-paranoid non Catholic) says: Oh no! The old guy in the white Panda just drove by and crossed himself when the dogs started barking. I wonder if he knows something we don't know about our dogs!

David (the relaxed, former Catholic) says: Lynn, there is a Madonna shrine across from the house.



Phewwww!

As you may have guessed, this little vignette comes to you in place of the photos of my new grapevine trellis...which I haven't started yet. No problem! I still have another day ...

forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder.

Slacker

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Week 4 of the 20/20 project is going to have to bleed into week 5. What a drag to have to admit to you all that I didn't get my homework done this week. Drag. Here's my list of excuses:

1. The dog ate my orto.

2. There was a strike so all trains to my orto were cancelled.

3. I was bedridden with that 72 hour malaria bug that was going around.

4. I sprained my belly-button which made bending extremely painful.

5. There was a volcano in Iceland.

6. I accidentally flushed my hoe down the toilet.

7. I over slept Sunday night and woke up on Friday.

8. My nail polish was wet.

9. Granny smack.

Truth is, it wasn't my fault. Coming off my enthusiasm for having the orto tilled last week(thanks Earle-in-Denver, a motozappa is a roto-tiller), first thing Monday morning I was elbow deep in the dirt. I worked all morning making perfect little rows for my tomatoes and peppers, leaving little walkways between. Beautiful. See...





And then the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped. It rained for the next five days (good) and it was cold, very very cold (bad).

All I could do was sit on the couch with my smack and hope that what I (prematurely) planted will survive.



My excuse for not finishing that is ... I'm in Italy. I ran out of yarn at midnight on Friday and there are no 24-hour yarn shops in this country.

Well, let's not dwell on the past. Week 5's project is to construct an arch of sorts to support this stray grape vine behind the house (and finish the orto, of course).



I haven't a clue how I'm going to do this, by the way. But how cool will that be?! Look! It even has grapes already.



Knitting projects will include plugging away at the blanket I started last week (assuming I can get more yarn) and some of these socks. I love them and they will look so cute tromping through the orto.

Head pictures

Ya know, when you have a picture of a project in your mind before you do it, well, sometimes they turn out just as beautifully as you had imagined...

Giardino 2010...











And then sometimes when you do something you're imagining in your head, it comes out WAY BETTER than you imagined....



And then, well, there're always the projects that don't turn out quite as beautifully as your head picture...



Damn bell curve. Oh well, new week new projects!

Week 4 house project is the ORTO!!! That big beautiful brown pool of earth needs some veggies. It also needs a watering system and some sort of protection from wild boar (and wild dogs).

Week 4 knitting project is ... granny smack. I couldn't stay away too long.

It's a war

No. Not a war at all. Just a battle, of sorts.

So that one day that I was chatting with pals Augusto and Lina about my orto/giardino, you know the day, when Augusto called me to task about planting a vegetable garden. Yeah, that day. Well, I happened to mention in that same conversation that I didn't know how I would water the vegetables if I did put them in the ground on our land.

Just a note here...in case you are confused. Our land is not contiguous to the land our house is on. It's a strange reality of properties being inherited by children and children of children and children's children's children that one day an american couple comes to italy to buy a house on a mountain and gets some land with it that is several generations removed from the land the house is standing on.

So I mentioned to Augusto and Lina that other day that there is water on the land, in fact, the water that comes into the house is stored in our vasca...which sits on our land...not contiguous to our house. Stay with me here.

Augusto and Lina have a difficult time understanding what I was saying, as I'm sure you are now. "there's no water up there?" they ask.

Me: "yeah of course there's water up there. I just told you that our vasca is right there."

A and L: "e allora?????" (I love those two words. They mean, "and so...". There's a certain, "so what the f$%^ is the problem?!" in one's tone when they use those words)

Me: "Well, I don't know how to get the water out of the vasca and onto any prospective vegetables I might plant. Short of climbing up to the vasca with a bucket, that is."

A and L: "just connect a tube."

Me: "yeah...e allora?????" (it also means..."and then what?!". These are very useful words)

A: "I'll come up some day and see if I can help you."

So yesterday, always good to his word, Augusto came up to look at the potential orto land. Then he explained to me how to put a hose into the open pool of the vasca, suck on the end of the tube that is not in the water, thus, creating a siphon. That technique, of course, being the exact same one I taught my kindergartners when I showed them how to empty the water table. Same same. I sometimes seem to have a problem transferring knowledge.

Then Aususto looked at the land...

And said, very slowly and softly, "you're going to have to clean that a little".



Maybe you all are wondering, at this point, where that battle is that I mentioned in the opening sentence. Well, here it starts...

To say thanks to Augusto for taking the time to come up to the house to give me his advice about siphoning and cleaning the land, I bought him a case of beer. I dropped it off at his campagna yesterday afternoon, he told me I was crazy and that I didn't have to give him anything, and that was that.

This morning at 8am I was out walking the dogs when neighbor Giuseppe yelled down to me, "OOOOH! Lina! Augusto is here."

I don't always understand Giuseppe when he speaks, so I yelled back, "yes, Augusto came up to see me yesterday."

"NO! He's here now."

Sure enough. Augusto was standing by the house with his three wheeled truck loaded with his weed whacker and the motozappa (I'm sorry, I have no idea what a motozappa is called in English...in the dictionary it's called a "powered cultivator" but I don't think that's right. It looks like a big push lawnmower but with a horizontal screw shaped blade. It digs and churns the earth.)

Yep. Paybacks for the case of beer.

First he weed whacked his way from the road, through other people's land,

up to ours. Then he whacked ours.

Then he got the motozappa...



And worked that bit of land until it surrendered to the big-push-mower-with-the-horizontal-screw-blade. And let me tell you, that was some HARD HARD earth to break. It took Augusto 3 hours, a little blood, a lot of sweat, and 3 beers.



Then he planted some onions for me.



I watered them myself...with two liter bottles of water I carried up to the land from the house because I was too busy this afternoon to buy a hose. Instead of buying the hose I need, which is where this whole bloody story started, I was buying Augusto a lemon tree.

Call it what it is!

In Italian there are two words for garden. There is giardino, which is (usually) a fenced in space in which one relaxes amidst flowers and fruit trees with friends and family, food and wine (usually). An orto is the place where you grow your vegetables. An orto is an orto and a giardino is a giardino - different functions, different crops, different things.

A giardino is also usually attached to your house and an orto is in campagna (in the country). Most people around here live in villages and keep a campagna. Our house was some one's campagna before it was our house (technically it was 14 people's campagna since that's how many people we had to buy it from, but that's a story for a different post...). A campagna is actually an Italian man's clubhouse. The men keep the campagna. There's usually some kind of house structure on some land that they plant, some stalls for keeping animals, and a fridge for beer. Usually there is also a couch of some sort for naps.

Here is Campagna Cornwell, before it became Giardino Cornwell



We added the table. The previous owners used this space for storing things like...



discarded appliances, empty tomato sauce jars, and brother-in-laws...oh wait, no, we brought him with us.

Anyway, at lunch with pals Augusto and Lina the other day in a discussion about planting my veggies this year I was asked, rather directly, "do you HAVE land?"

L: "well, of course we have land. You know we have land. Why?"
A: "then why are you planting onions in your giardino where your dogs will piss on them?"
L: "ummm..."

That Augusto, he sure can make a point.

Week 3's 20/20 house project: the giardino.



(are you guys getting sick of seeing that shot yet? I gotta get better photos, or at least stand in a different spot every once and a while. Sorry about that)

Since we moved in we've called this patio space our outdoor living room since that's how we use it 3 seasons of the year. We sit out here to relax, and be with friends and family, and to share wine and food. It's a giardino for God's sake! This year I'll treat it as such and plant accordingly. The onions and zucchini, melanzane and tomatoes - they're going in the orto! Which I guess will be Project 20/20's week 4 endeavour.

This week's knitting project is: a scarf. I know, I know. You've all heard me rant about how I hate knitting scarves. But this one is fun. I was looking through my trusty and well-loved Weekend Knitting book for inspiration when I saw this...



There is no pattern for it in the book because, well, it doesn't need a freakin' pattern. It's just a random collection of yarns, colors, and stitches knit into a long, straight piece of fabric...that can be wrapped around one's neck, like a scarf. I'm hoping to make it this long...



And yes, I do plan to don it whilst riding my bike along the seaside. Fantastic. I think I'll look just smashing! 'Specially when it gets tangled in the spokes.

right on schedule...

sort of.

Painted, anti-fungied pantry -- DONE.





I really love this little room. It's had so many reincarnations in the six years that we've lived here. When we bought the place it was the kitchen.



Then when we discovered we wanted an indoor bathroom we took half the space for a toilet and a bath.

In case you were wondering, at that time we used this as a kitchen...



Yeah, that's the side of the house. Yeah, that's an old bathroom sink I found somewhere on the property, set on a wine barrel (empty) and strung the garden hose through it for running water. The fridge actually worked. And it really tied the room together.

Then, when we still had exposed stone in the now-studio area upstairs(read: major exposure to the elements and all varieties of 4, 6, and 8 legged creatures) this little room behind the new bathroom became the "winter bedroom" - it happens to be just big enough for a double bed...and nothing more. For a while it was the guest bedroom. Then, with the transformation of the window into a stairwell, it came into its present state as a pantry.

Actually, truth be told...I've really hated this room until today. It has no windows, it's always cold and wet and dark and it collects, well, everything that cold, wet, and dark spaces collect.

There's still no window and no heat source but, at least for today, it's clean, and white and organized, it's stocked and has flowers.



Right on schedule, or maybe 6 years late.

On the hat front...



4 DONE...



And one more to be completed tonight...



Thanks for the pattern, Lois. It's really great.

Tomorrow begins week 3 of the 20/20 project. I'm starting to question my scheduling of this whole thing -- why am I always begining these things on the weekend?