in Lazio

open air flower shop on the side of a church in Orvieto

My camera is recently broken, so I searched through my picture archives to see if anything old would do for a blog post.  Rediscovered pictures bring such funny sensations...there's an upsetting feeling of loss coupled with a kind of disbelieving joy when you see visual proof of things you had entirely forgotten you'd seen and done.  And the sight of it brings it all flying right back out of the picture, vivid and alive, to perch and sing in your heart for a little bit.  But you don't even need pictures for that to happen.  When the seasons change, like they are now, our senses wake up a little bit in response to the change, and there are memory ambushes galore!  ... darker, cooler nights with the crickets in full chorus, the way the air lays on your skin and the sun starts to slant just a little differently, and the way the change in temperature and air quality carry smells can sweep you right out of the here and now and back, back to all sorts of surprise memories snaking their way through all the funny twists and turns in your brain.  Which is refreshing, but also overwhelming.  How can life be SO rich?!

Well anyway, while looking through the old pictures, I was reminded that I was in Italy this time three years ago.  It was on this trip, volunteering on a little farm/bed and breakfast, that I really started getting serious about building a portfolio of watercolors specifically to use to make fabric patterns.  There was plenty of beauty, and a lot of it was edible.  

walnuts and plums i picked

a ripening persimmon

one of the cats - not edible

feather and porcupine quill i found in the woods

a pinecone and its seeds, coming from the tree in the picture below - a maritime pine i think

the picture does nothing to convey the enormous size of this tree... and swinging on that tire was exhilarating... especially because the house is situated on a hill, so in full swing it felt like you might fly right out over the valley

the english walnuts were so good.  I collected and shelled hundreds of them

these weren't grown on the farm where I stayed, but aren't they beautiful?  

not very rotund, but very juicy and flavorful

a pomegranate I picked right off the tree and ate