45 days to Tuscany!

Casale Rosanna details

Just paid the balance on the villa in Tuscany for September!

Poking around with some online Italian lessons, the one from the BBC is fun and interactive.

Also reading Every Day In Tuscany, by Frances Mayes.  I love it so much I will likely pick up the other titles:  Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany.  The memoir is a great slice of life with lots of details about food, gardens & wine.

My copy is all dog-eared:

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• I'd like to stand up and quote Cesare Pavese:  "A gulp of my drink," he wrote, "and my body can taste the life/ of plants and of rivers." (p. 31)
• The brilliant yellow lemons rival the beauty of the dangling orange persimmons, kaki, in many gardens,  Before the first hard freeze of November, back the pots go into the limonaia... I learned to mend my vase...   I thought it was the ultimate in thrift when I saw huge lemon trees in pots held together by wire.  Even small geraniums on steps would often be wired (p.60).
• I miss the balcony when the jasmine, lemon, and tigli, linden, scents collide and seem to emanate from the moon. (p.61)
• I don't need a celestial paradise; I'll take my immortality here. (p.62)