Just some pics around town

I've been saving a big collection of photos from various adventures, but mostly of the garden and the local wildflowers and scenery.

Bertie and Henry, chillin'

Kitties.

The hills behind my house. Storm's coming.

Norcia.

First snapdragons. These flowered all summer. 

Garden adventures and experiments.

Poppies, self-seeded from last spring. 

Wild gardening.

Pippy loves to help Mummy in the garden.

He's a real mama's cat. Ever since I rescued him from the fence he got his head stuck in, I think he considers the outside world just a little too scary.

I don't make him wear it. He insists, whenever we're talking about... that stuff... 

Beer, proscuitto and the garden.

Sweet little bladder campions. All finished now, and the seeds spreading for next year. 

Wildflowers everywhere, and I'm recording their progress through the seasons. Later the garden came out all over in little purple harebells, and after that, with wild garlic and white scabious that the butterflies loved.

When I finally managed to make the hired "gardener" stop mowing all my flowers and ruining the soil, these little pink convolvulus spread everywhere. They died off in the really hot dry weather, but are already starting to make a second appearance. 

In Italy, everything more or less dies off in the hottest, driest parts of the summer, and then the autumn rains start and we have our "second spring."

Poppies on my upper slope. Not much soil up there, so now that it's not being mowed, it will take a while to recover. But poppies are self-seeding, so we should have lots more in the spring. 

I kept a careful record of what was growing up there through the spring and summer. We have figs, wild thyme, wild garlic and onions and all manner of beautiful birds and butterflies.

Henry; king of the ninja-cats.

And an oak tree the kitties love.

But Mum! It's already dead! Yes, Henry, but I still don't want it on the carpet. 

Henry loves to bring me his little prizes. I put this one in the garden.

My first roses this spring. The roses had a hard year. Way too much rain in spring gave three of them fungal infections. But this one survived, and is finally producing again. 

My poor roses. I had six, and am down to two. I'll have to do some reading.

Summer truffles. I found three large ones growing in the compost heap. The spores are everywhere around here, and they grow best on oak leaf litter, which was what was mostly in the compost pile. 

The summer truffles have what the Italians call a "delicato" flavour, which to me means nearly totally tasteless. I'm hoping for more in the winter though, which are wonderful.

One of our annual medieval festas. They practice all year and take a great deal of pride in it. 

The ladies.