Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Kansas City arrives, history of Nascondiglio, cement pond




Our guests from Kansas City have arrived and hopefully will have a nice week here in the Marche! Pete and Lori bought our donated week at the Kansas City Hospice Auction and were kind enough to give a big donation for that wonderful cause!
I met Antonio this week, who was born and raised in our little house. He told me the history of his family's ownership from the 1930's to around 1970. Some of our olive trees are over 70 years old. The field full of our 30000 grapevines used to have 20 diagonal rows of trees which were planted as supports for their grapevines!
18 people lived on the 2nd floor and the children were 6 to a bed and there were four families in total, which pales to the 25 who lived in a house across our road, since demolished.
I continue to hoe every day and feel like we are about 65-70% finished with the 1st pass. My fingers are swollen, and my wrists are sore, but my ipod keeps me going (thanks Laurence and Hal)
The cement pond is coming along with an estimated completion time of 2-3 weeks from now. I will be pleased if all is complete in 4 weeks including walls, new grass, pavement etc.
I have included the before and after pix from the concrete pouring; 3 trucks full.
We are in the middle of our artichoke season and every couple of days, we find another 10 or so to harvest. Wonderful stuff! and to think Raffaele wanted to cut down all our plants (they aren't that beautiful, I agree)
Our roses are getting ready to flower any day, as well.
I promise more colorful pix ahead including grapevines budding.
And finally, another travelbot for finding cheap airfares is airfarewatchdog.com i have recently seen usa flights to rome for under 600 dollars for this summer, flying from boston and nyc.
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