A time in Italy (2)

Although we had days of sunshine and rain during our month in Italy and on our last day the weather was almost like a Summer's day, it did seem as if Autumn was on the way with chillier evenings. We didn't need the log stove and central heating on except for a couple of days, but it's always good to run the system and it's a comfort in an evening.

Our neighbours were beginning to take advantage of some dry weather to make a start on picking up the olives, something we've never cultivated ourselves, as well as gathering produce on their vegetable plots, especially the tomatoes.

We took a break from gardening and housework to take our grandson no 5 who had come with his father to spend some time with us out and about. There's plenty of interest to see locally and on the day trip to Rome we travelled into the city by train. On that day our grandson L measured on an app that we'd walked 12 kilometres around some of the historic centre.

Grandson in the local abbey gardens

Here are a set of photos of our time out and about in the local small towns:-

sweet chestnuts

Isola del Liri - On a rainy day it was time for a coffee and a hot chocolate drink.

Some relatives came over in an evening and we also

went to their home in the old village where

the houses have been converted into cozy, comfortable homes.

A time in Italy (1)

Regular readers of this blog know that we go over to Italy several times a year where we soon get into our usual way of life in our Italian home. 

Here are some photos to illustrate our time away this season:-

The grapes for making wine were gathered

 and processed and some table grapes were left for eating

during our time there. 

In between the rain showers we gathered the apples, 

the hazel and walnuts. We cleaned off the outer skins, left the nuts

 to dry a little in the sunshine and gave most of them to family members.

The new graft of a branch from a nectarine tree onto

a peach tree that produces late season peaches has done well.

Hopefully we should get two seasons of  different fruit

from the same tree when it matures.

 (growth upwards from the X)

  

One of my sisters-in-law gathered the peaches

and pears from our fruit trees during that season. She bottled some

  and gave me a couple of bottles to try.

I have several sisters-in-law and they gave us produce.

Our neighbour grows vegetables on the land below our

terrace and gave us a cauliflower.

Life slows down so there's time to notice 

who goes up and down the lane....

and observe the creatures in the garden.

 The praying mantis was the latest

one to entertain me although he did crawl

very slowly into some places where he

could have got squashed i.e. onto the front door

mat and onto one of the car tyres.

It was intriguing to see that it

didn't like smooth surfaces, but

preferred to crawl over rough ones.

Sunset...

and sunrise.  

Next time I'll share some more of times when we were out and about in the local area and Rome