Figs

I've learned that we are living and gardening in Zone 9. This has helped a great deal in working out what sort of things to plant, when to harvest etc.

But some things are pretty obvious. The big fig tree on my patch - at least 50 years old - is fruiting quite abundantly.

You can tell easily when it's time to pick them because they turn quite dramatically from green to dark purple, and are ready when they've started to soften and droop downwards.


I asked Annamaria for advice on picking, and instead of lending me a ladder she showed me her trick for making a fig-picker.

























You cut the bulbous top part off a water bottle and stick it on the end of a broom pole.

It can be a bit tricky to get the knack of it, but you sort of use the sharp edge of the plastic cup part to cut through the stem, and the little blob of goodness plops down into the bowl.

The first big fig harvest a couple of weeks ago.

Found the wasp nests in the rosemary bushes under the fig tree. They must only use them for rasing their young because just a couple of weeks before this I'd seen them full of wasps, all snoozing in the mid-day heat. Just a short time later the nests are empty and abandoned.

I'm extra proud of this zucca. It's starting to turn orange now and has quite a hard shell. Must weigh at least 15 lbs. I go out and give it a friendly pat every day to encourage it.

I transplanted the seedlings after they just sprouted up spontaneously from one of the pots we rescued from the garden in Norcia. I started them from seeds I saved from a bit of zucca I bought in the produce shop there. So this is the second generation. Now the plants are enormous, covering ten meters of ground. It produced a few fruits, but this one is the best.

The weather finally broke last week and the temps are down to a more seasonally normal 80 F. or so. We haven't had the promised rain though. The forecast is for more tomorrow. Keeping up the prayers for an end to the drought, and still saving dish water for the terrace pots.

Some of the pumpkins and a young version of the big zucca. Very sweet and dense flesh, and of course very good for you. The pumpkins turned out well but all quite small because of the heat.

In the background you can see the two pots of sweet potatoes - that likes it as hot and sunny as possible, and the basil that also likes a sunny spot.

The flowers and herbs on the terrace are doing OK, but the heat has been very hard on the flowering plants. The rose - the last survivor of the six I had in  Norcia - produced three flowers that immediately dried up.

I found an acanthus spinosus, a beautiful flowering plant that I've always wanted in the garden, but they like cooler temps and shade, so it produced a beautiful flower spike which was lovely, but after the heat got started in earnest it more or less gave up. I've cut off the dead stuff now and am happy that it seems to be bouncing back. But it's getting moved into a shady spot in the garden proper when we've turned it over and finished preparing the beds.

The morning glories are doing much better now that the heat is going down a bit,



and the passion flowers - another survivor of the quakes that I started from seed - have begun to produce more buds that I hope will flower soon.

Lots of vines and quite a few buds, but a lot of them just dried up in the terrible heat and never opened, no matter how much I watered the pot.






























In other news, I was very happy to be able to join the Italian SSPX's annual pilgrimage for the feast of St. Pius X. They walk every year from Bevagna to Assisi, with an overnight stop in Foligno and a Mass in beautiful Spello on the way. It was the first time I got to meet the nice sisters from Narni face to face, and we got on famously. They reiterated their invitation to come down to stay over on Saturday evenings to attend the Mass on Sundays. This will be much more doable now that the bus and train service out of San Martino has started again.

This is the Mass on Sunday morning in the church of San Andrea in Spello. I took the train down to Foligno and stayed over in a B&B and joined the pilgrimage to walk between Foligno and Spello, but that was as far as I was going to make it. The group all carried on to Assisi, but I had to go home and rest.

This church has a Pinturicchio altarpiece in the right hand transept. I tried to get a few photos, but the picture is so huge and the space so small you can't get it all in, and the light reflects onto the surface no matter where you stand. It's a pity because this photo from Wiki does absolutely no justice to it whatever.

Having discovered Pinturicchio recently on a trip to Spello with a friend in June, I think I've found my new favourite Italian painter. Even greater than Filippino Lippi, in my opinion. And it's just sitting there, above a neglected transept altar, usually in the dark, in an all but abandoned church in one of those hill towns that has been turned almost entirely into a theme park. As soon as the Mass was over and everyone gone off to the next leg of the pilgrimage, it lapsed instantly back into being a rather shabby and neglected little museum where a few tired tourists wandered now and then. But I think maybe this winter I'll go do a little art-pilgrimage of my own and just go and look at it for a while.


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The figs reminded a friend of mine about this little meditation from the late great Cardinal Bacci, one of the few at V-2 who tried to stop the train going over the cliff.

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
1. Today’s subject for meditation is the parable of the barren fig tree in the Gospel of St. Luke. “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit thereon and found none. And he said to the vine-dresser, ‘Behold, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down, therefore; why does it still encumber the ground?’ But he answered him and said, ‘Sir, let it alone this year too, till I dig around it and manure it. Perhaps it may bear fruit, but if not, then afterwards thou shalt cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

Perhaps Jesus has come many times to us also looking for the fruit of our good works, and has found none. Perhaps He has continued to bestow favours and blessings upon us, and perhaps He has waited many years for us to correspond with His grace by performing acts of penance and of expiation.

We may have made good resolutions many times; but what became of them? Temptations of various kinds may have caused us to neglect these resolutions, which remained like branches without any fruit. We must remember that although God is infinitely good and merciful, He is also infinitely just. The day could come when He might say: “Cut it down. Why does it still encumber the ground?” In that case what would become of us?

An episode described in the Gospel of St. Mark should induce serious reflection. Jesus was walking from Bethany to Jerusalem and grew hungry on the way. He saw a fig tree beside the road but on inspection found that it was barren. “And He said to it ‘May no fruit ever come from thee henceforth forever!’ “And immediately the fig tree withered up.” His disciples, we are told, were amazed when they saw this happening. (Cf. Mt. 21:18-20)
How terrible if God should ever pronounce this severe condemnation upon us.

2. One morning after they had fished in vain throughout the night, the Apostles saw Jesus appear on the shore of the lake. “He said to them, ‘Cast your nets to the right of the boat.’” (Cf. John 21:6-11) They obeyed and caught so many fish that the net was in danger of breaking.

While the Apostles were working without the help of Jesus, they caught nothing. When they worked under the direction of Our Lord they caught a miraculous draught of fishes. In the Garden of Gethsemane, however, the Apostles could not summon the strength to watch and pray with Jesus for even an hour. As a result, they abandoned and denied Him.

For love of gain the Apostles worked throughout the entire night; for love of Jesus, however, they were not able to watch and pray for even an hour, and so they fell miserably.

3. We should learn two lessons from this meditation. We should work always for Jesus and with Jesus. If we stray away from Him Who is the way, the truth and the life, we shall get lost, and our efforts will have no value for eternity. Without Jesus, our spiritual life will grow dry. As long as we are with Jesus, everything will be good and holy, even humiliation and sorrow, and all our actions will gain merit for us in Heaven. Furthermore, we must take care not to make the same mistake as the Apostles, who spent the whole night working for material gain but could not watch and pray for even one hour with Jesus. We should consider it our most important obligation in life to work always with Jesus and for Jesus. Only in this way shall we find contentment in this life and happiness in the next.

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Adjusting

Well, the kitties are really loving the outdoor life. For the first week or so they refused to leave the terrace, and would look through the rails very dubiously at the wide vista of farms and fields. But now there's no stopping them.

Pippy and Farm Cat: So, you wanna fight? Nah. 

I was a little worried they would just be terrified of the farm cats but so far there really haven't been any conflicts that I've noticed. I was also vaguely concerned about all the dogs that mostly roam around, but they seem to not be bothered by cats much.

All the time we were in Norcia I was worried about them on that scary road that went right in front of the house. It wasn't very busy, but people really drove way too fast on it, and in the two years I was there I saw three dead cats on it, one of which was a feral that was almost friendly and whom I was quite sad to lose. I put bamboo screens over the fences and gates because when he was still a kitten, Pippy used to like to just shoot right through them onto the road without pausing.

Here we also have a road but it's half a kilometer away on the far end of the wheat field, and the Crew tends to like the back 40 better, where there are lots of bushes and things to climb around in and little creatures to kill. One of the first things Pippin did after he got here was come dashing in with a shrieking starling in his mouth! One night I woke up about one am and realized Bertie hadn't come in for his dinner, which he usually wants very promptly at nine; you can set your watch by his unfailing sense of dinnertime. So, being a crazy cat lady, I got up and put a cardie and slippers on and went out with a flashlight to see if he was around, and the glow of the flashlight caught him looking very wild indeed, running along with a mouse in his jaws.

So we have finally left off our kittenhood discipline of being kept indoors at night. They're grownup cats now, and have to get on with their important cat-work.

Enricus Rex, Chieftain of the Tribe of the Gattini-Doofii, killer of snakes, catcher of mice and other foul vermine, protector of the people... known to be fond of his mum. 

Henry started this early - being by nature the Alpha-King and a hunter - he really couldn't be kept in by the time he was a year old.

But the twins always seemed to like being in their room at night, and would even trot in there on their own at ten pm or so if I stayed up a bit later. They would have a bit of a romp around the room and then just cuddle up and go to sleep. We have a kitty room here, and I kept it up for the first week, but it was soon clear that they had reached the point of no return on their outdoor activities, so now they all just come and go as they please through the kitchen window that I leave ajar for them.

New rule: fold up a corner of the kitchen tablecloth at night. 

Henry has taken to sleeping way up on the top of the wardrobe in my room on top of a pile of spare bedding after his night patrol. Bertie still likes his spot on the sofa, and they're both usually around early in the morning when I get up. Pippin, however, has consistently not shown up in the mornings for his breakfast in the last few days, and of course he was the first one to vanish for a day and a half. They've all turned into wanderers and adventurers and this is a good thing, because this is cat-life. It's what they're designed to do, and it's more or less how I hoped we'd end up living in Norcia.

It's a different sort of life here, for all of us, and though I'm inclined always to think Change is Bad, maybe for all of us this life here is going to end up being more of a fulfillment of our respective natures.

Hope so. But I do wish Pippy would come in and have his breakfast and stop worrying mummy.



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Coming back to life

First day of classes today. All classes in the mornings, and it's rather gruelling. Ten to two, with a ten minute break at the end of each hour. By the middle of the fourth hour I had had enough. But apart from that, it's pretty doable. Perhaps the weirdest thing is being a student again, even if only in a small way.

Pretty good for the first day. Woke up at ten to six this morning: fed kitties, sang Laudes, made and drank coffee, got to the bus in the village bang on time. Was up to the centro 25 minutes later. Popped into the Duomo on the way to make a visit. Classes were fun and not scary, and I more or less understood everything the instructor said.

Mostly finished setting things up in the house this weekend, except for the big pile of stuff on the work bench, which is mostly sewing projects. The art supply cupboard is organized and ready. Got all the books done on Sunday afternoon, and the oratory is as set up as it's going to be. I'll be on the lookout for a few things for it, but it's usable. Finished the day with Compieta last night.

Here are a few pics I took the other night, Saturday I think. I've never lived on such a flat surface before - though of course the Tiber Valley isn't exactly Saskatchewan-flat - and I am sort of enjoying the storms. We get these HUUUUge storm fronts rolling down on top of us from the Appenines. Dramatic skies!

Another big one this afternoon, complete with brilliant forks of lightning against the charcoal grey sky!

(Photo quality from my tricorder camera not as good as I'd hoped. I'll switch back to the normal Canon, as soon as I find the battery charger.)

The village of Torgiano, glowing in the evening light as the setting sun peeks under the big black clouds. 

A little further off is the village of Deruta, famous for its ceramics. 

A bit of the little orchard on my patch. 

The country road leading to the house. Not paved, and very pot-holey. 

Pippin on the patch that will be a flower garden. I'm planning to do round raised beds around the trees, and lay down a clover ground cover in between. 

The road between the village and the house. And the beginning of the storm front. 

The old well. The house is quite old, but has been renovated into three flats, two of which are occupied. But the well still works and it is the main irrigation source for the gardens.

Henry, sizing things up. He's doing better than I expected, and I found Bertie out late one night with a mouse in his jaws! Good job Bertram!

Our nearest neighbours on the north side: the church of San Andrea, whose bells I hear throughout the day. 

Dramatic skies!

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Shaping up...

Pics are coming. For now, Bertie and Pippy cuddling during their nap time the other day. 

Well, life in the tiny Umbrian farm village is coming together. The minute I find the camera's computer cable, I'll be able to post some pics. Had a lovely long bike ride - first since the quake - the other day, and found a spot near the Tiber where elder and robinia are blooming, and wild mint is all over. Every morning the smell of the blossoms wafts through my window, along with the birds that start around five in the morning these days, including at least one pheasant I can hear making its weird croak from the trees. 

Internet is being a pain, and I've finally resigned myself to getting the guy to the house to fix me up with full time fixed wifi. I hate having it in the house, but since the paying work has been piling up all this time it's going to have to be done. For now, I've just found the bar in the village that makes quite a good pot of tea (in an actual pot!) and has wifi. Also found the bike shop and made friends with the bike-fixing lady. Got all the little things that needed doing to the bike done, everything tightened that needed tightening, and one part replaced that was developing an alarming rattle. The house is about a five minute bike ride from the village, which makes it nice. Quiet around home, but close enough not to be isolated. 

My nice landlady took me to the garden centre today and I got some tomatoes, cukes, hot peppers, and rhubarb (!). The other garden centre, closer to home, has some very lovely roses that have quite a good fragrance. (Can't understand the point of roses without fragrance... just another Modernian horror.) Going to put it all in the ground and in the pots on the terrace tomorrow after Mass. I've got a whole raft of seeds to start, a bit late, but better than never. Tomorrow after Mass the afternoon will be dedicated to the garden. 

Making plans for the big patch in front of the house. The soil has not been worked for a long time, so it's not to do a lot right away. But there are lots of bricks and bits and pieces lying around, so I'm going to build flower beds around the base of the ten fruit trees, build up the soil a bit, and lay down some soil-recovering, nitrogen-fixing, moisture-retaining clover as a ground cover in between. It's been raining on and off quite a bit so the soil has lost its brick-like texture and should be easier to dig into. On the whole, it's good soil though, and everything around about is very green. There's a large patch of wild chamomile at the bottom of the garden too. I've got half a dozen bunches hanging up drying in the kitchen already.

In the house I've got the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom finished completely (except for hanging pictures) and a little oasis of civilisation in the workroom/sitting room that you can sit in and read or have a tea, and gaze out at the beautiful countryside. The work area itself is still a box-heap, but it's getting to be an organized box-heap. After that, I've only got to get the books on the shelves, and set up the oratory, and the house is done. Probably by the end of next week.

The big news is that I'll be starting the Italian course on Monday. It felt a bit strange to have a student card again after all this time. The last time, Madonna was still hot, my hair looked like Cyndi Lauper's and they hadn't invented the internet, so everyone still believed everything the news told us! The classes run from 8 or 9 am to noon, five days a week, so I'll have the afternoons. And a good thing since a bunch of paid work has just fallen into my lap, so I'm going to need the structure to the days as well as the time.

San Martino in Campo is a charming little place. It's not fancy. It's not very ancient (and all its medieval stuff is more or less unrecognizable as such) but it's quiet, family-oriented, friendly, and full of the kind of people who I got used to being around in Norcia - country people who aren't in a hurry. The other day I needed to find the other supermarket, the big one. I asked an older gent who was also on a bike, and he just said "Follow me" so we pedaled through the village together. It's like that here.

By contrast Perugia is... busy. Not my sort of place at all anymore. I guess I'm officially old.

Internet time is limited for a few more days, so just this little update for now. 

More next week after I finally cave and get full time internet at home. Work... (Urgh!) 

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New stomping ground

Well, little Pippin had an adventure this weekend. Since he seemed to be the one most adjusting to our new life, I let him out for a run-around on Saturday afternoon, and he got lost. Stayed out all night while I was beside myself and sleepless with worry. I had gone out looking for him until midnight, and again as soon as it was light. Spent the day alternately staking out the kitchen in hopes he would show up, and wandering the countryside whistling his special whistle and calling his name. He finally came home at about 8:45 last night, and a joyous reunion - lessons learned all round - was had by all.

In the meantime, one of the positive results of the Pippin crisis was that I have now got to know, at least to be introduced to, most of my neighbours. And with all the walking around I did, I've learned where the principle blackberry, nettle, rose, robinia and elder patches are, and discovered that my own garden is currently blooming mightily with wild chamomile and mint, with a whole patch of very healthy looking nettles down by the irrigation canal.

I shall be out with my collecting bag very soon, I can assure you. The robinia is at its height and the elder is just coming to it, and I don't think another season should go by without at least one batch of liqueur. We'll see what we can do about elderflower champagne, and perhaps some non-alcoholic cordials for our abstaining friends - that turned out surprisingly well last year.

I went for a long bike ride the other day and discovered the elder starting to bloom along the banks of the Tiber, which is not far away and a very beautiful place to spend an afternoon.

Elder is a little harder to find here than in Norcia, (where it is a veritable forest of elder) but I've just found this recipe for Robinia liqueur.



The Robinia pseudoacacia, that we call Black Locust, is in full flower right now, and there is acres of it right outside the windows. It's leaves and roots are toxic, but the flowers are edible and are now heavily fragranced. Apparently the tradition in France in the pubs is to dip them in a light tempura-like batter and deep fry them. But I have learned to love flower-scented liqueurs and cordials.

So I think I'm going to give it a go.

Robinia liqueur

200 g acacia flowers
500 g granulated sugar
1 litre pure alcohol
2 tbsp acacia honey
1 litre water

Clean the flowers with a dry cloth, or soft brush. Put alternate layers of the flowers and sugar in a large glass bowl. Cover and leave to infuse for 48 hours. Then add the alcohol and honey. Leave the infusion until you can see that the sugar has totally dissolved. (Approximately one month.) Add the water and stir gently. Strain the liquid well and bottle.



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Buona terza Domenica dopo la Pasqua

Yesterday I just felt not very well. I think I was having a bad reaction to the supplements I take. (It's a post-chemo thing.) I forget sometimes that they can irritate if you take them on an empty stomach. Anyway, yuck. Bad morning, followed by a day-long headache, so I decided that being horizontal on the sofa was a better idea than tramping into Perugia on the bus for the afternoon Mass. That made this the Sunday for attending the local parish, ad experimentum. I'm happy to report that the parish in San Martino in Campo is quite a flourishing one, as Italian rural parishes go. People seem to go because they want to, which is good (better than Norcia where you get the impression that no male over the age of six darkens the door of a church if he isn't being carried in by six of his friends and relations.) They've got a good group of Adorers every Thursday in a little chapel that has been rather nicely renovated for the purpose. And the church of San Martino itself is quite lovely. And it really is a good feeling to join the local community for the main Mass. Just going to church, like a normal person, in a normal way, in a normal parish has a lot to be said for it.

The village of San Martino is quite a nice little place, actually. Doing a bit of reading around the internet to discover that it is relatively new. The valley of the Tiber has created a fertile flood plain that is now used as abundantly productive farm land. But until the tenth century it was considered swampy and malarial, and was mostly uninhabited.

"Of fundamental importance for the birth of towns along the Tiber valley, then, was the Benedictine reclamation implemented by the monks of San Pietro in Perugia since the tenth century. It was not until 1163 when Emperor Henry IV received under his protection the bishop Giovanni and Perugia Church, that we will find in a document for the first time of the existence of the church of San Martino in Campo. The small rectory there already belonged to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and as evidenced by the title of parish was equipped with the baptismal font, and it had a small land ownership and had the right to demand tithes."

The current church, however, is not so venerable. Though it is very pretty, having been completely rebuilt from 1815 by Giovanni Perugia Cerrini. Originally there was only a little chapel here, suffragan to the older parish in San Martino in Colle ("in the hills," which is the twin village to ours about five minutes away by car). It was built to provide religious services for agricultural workers, and archaeologists think that was some time between the 8th and 10th century. There was certainly a defensive castle in S. Martino in Campo perhaps as early as the 11th century, and I'm guessing this is on the site of a rather posh hotel that takes up the main part of the exact centre of the village, today. The earliest record of the church here being an independent parish is 1382.

This makes San Martino in Campo very new place indeed. (Compare with Norcia, that was settled in the late Neolithic, possibly by refugees from either warfare or natural disasters from Sicily.)

But I'm starting to become fond of it. After a rather harrowing trip home on the last bus last Saturday, I was more glad than I could say to get back to the quiet little village, pick up my bicycle from the bar where I left it that afternoon, and pedal slowly home (in the absolute pitch dark... from now on, I'm going to be taking my reflectors and helmet for evening rides around here... no street lights at all in the country, and lots of potholes!) City life just ain't for me anymore.

One little note about the church: this is true. The local people have a real devotion to their lovely medieval fresco, apparently a survivor from the original church...

"The fresco depicting the Madonna and Child popularly called "Madonna della Scala." Today [it is above] the main altar of the parish church of San Martino in Campo and still revered by the population, it was found on 10 January 1701 during the renovation works carried out in church that demanded the removal of a staircase leading to the house parish, hence the name by which it is known today. This unexpected discovery was the origin of a vast movement of popular devotion, which attracted crowds of pilgrims from surrounding countryside."

And indeed, there it is above the taberncle at the peak of the lovely high altar. And the local devotion continues. At the back of the church, there is a little table and someone has made little wooden folding diptych sort of things with a little reproduction of the icon on one side and a devotional prayer on the other. Small enough to fit in a pocket or handbag. And there's a book. But more people were buying the little wooden diptych things. I'll have to get one.

Here is my "review" of this morning's Mass.

Plus:

- It seems like a nice crowd, and obviously wanted to be there.
- Good mix of young and old, men and women.
- Very pretty church, and nicely kept up and not at all badly novusordoed. Hardly noticed it.
- Beautiful statues and stained glass (19th century, I think, but top quality)
- Blessed Sacrament reserved in the original tabernacle on the high altar
- Adoration chapel (newly refurbished) and used at least once a week for adoration

Minus:

- Guitar "choir" that never once gave us an instant of peace, populated by young persons with no musical training...the usual horrifying screeching (though still less screechy than the Cat Stranglers at San Giuseppe in S. Mar.) and has apparently been instructed to ensure that they "cover" every moment the priest isn't actually talking. (No one in the congregation sang along, of course.)
- Pretty sure the priest (nice African guy, spoke Italian with no discernible accent) said something along the lines of "without the community there is no word of God..." aaahhhh, yeah... So from now on I guess I'll just read the Matins homily from the D. Office.
- the usual Italian thing of the "presider's chair" placed in the centre behind the altar and in front of the tabernacle (do they really not understand what message that gives? Is it on purpose? "Pay no attention to that God behind the curtain! Look at meeeee!!!!")
- nearly everyone received standing and in the hand
- Young person serving Mass in a t-shirt and jeans, also doled out Holy Communion with his grubby, unconsecrated paws all over the Sacred Species
- Exactly zero time for quiet prayer after. At the end, everyone jumped up out of their pews and started talking as loudly as possible.

Conclusion:

Bearable for those times when I didn't get into Perugia for the MOAT the evening before, as long as I sit in the back and read the readings and get out before the yammering starts.

~

I've come to treat the novus ordo as a place you go strictly in absolute necessity. A kind of quasi-protestant gathering that barely fulfills the canonical requirements of the Sunday obligation, but at which one does not dare receive Communion for fear of participating in sacrilege, conscious or unconscious.

What a lovely time this is in the church! When you sit in the Mass, rather desperately admiring the pre-revolutionary architecture and art, in hopes of mentally drowning out the cacophony of abuses, heresies and outrages against the Sacred, doing everything you can to resist the urge to stick your fingers in your ears and start humming Palestrina.



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