4th of July weekend in Italy

6 Luglio
I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend. While we didn't have any fireworks, we inaugurated the pool this weekend and by chance ended up with a full house as all the hotels in the area were full and we got the overflow. We had folks from Rome, Genova, Milan and Grosseto.
Bacco finally has started to shed (and I was thinking flat coats didn't do that) as it has been nice and warm here. With luck we will put in the rest of the poles for the vineyard this coming week with the cables and tutors for the vines, as well as sod for our yard and ceramic tiles for the patio. And of course, there will always be bugs to work out with the pool.
Here are some views of the infinity pool and some of our 1st pool customers. Bacco hasn't jumped in yet, but after we get the yard in, we plan on putting one of our little grape crushing containers adjacent to the people pool as Bacco's private oasis.
ciao d

Happy 4th of July, USA

4 Luglio
A belated buon compleanno a teresa. Mi dispiace sono in ritardo!
Happy 4th of July to all in America.
The pool is ready to swim in, although there are yet little things to finish.
I hope you can all come and enjoy it someday.
We will be almost full this weekend, but only short stays. Some of the days in August we are already full which is an improvement over last year.
I baked 5 cereal bread today and made 2 sorbets as well as hoed the vineyard, cleaned the rooms and the patio and the yard today.
I think we are ready for guests. I also took my 1st swim today after the vineyard work and it surely was nice!
Have a great weekend!
d

Sad and glad dog stories

30 giugno
Ciao, it is a good news bad news type of day. 1st the bad news and a happy story. A few months before my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, he decided to buy an english setter which my mother said would result in a divorce. It didn't and just 9 months later my dad died and my mom became sole caretaker of muffin, the best possible companion for my mom, a dog who probably added a good 10 years to my mom's life. It was wonderful to watch the 2 of them together. As friends of my mother and I can attest, if you wanted to go somewhere in my mom's car, you road in the back while muffin took shotgun as her hair was too difficult to clean up prior. My mom was known throughout estes park as the owner of muffin, a really sweet, loving , small english setter. Anyway, the sad part is muffin has reached the end of her quality life and thanks a million to my brother and sister-in-law who cared for her after mom died.. Tomorrow she will be in doggie heaven, having spent 15 years adding to our lives here on earth.
The good news is the young pup Bacco who is 2.5 weeks shy of his 1st birthday went swimming on his own today. I was incazzato with the pool construcion guy who is 10 weeks behind schedule, and decided to take Bacco to the sea for a bit of exercise. He excelled at mountain climbing Sunday, so it was time for another type of lesson. I took him once into deep water to become habituated and we then took a 2 km walk. On the return trip, he jumped in the sea to retrieve a big piece of wood (he had 3 to choose from) and swam around a bit before having grand success capturing the big stick. Papa was very proud! I am including some fotos of our climb on Mt Vettore yesterday and the lentils, poppies and wild flowers all in bloom on the plateau of Castelluccio.
Enjoy and I hope you have good memories of all the best dogs in your life as i do of Muffin, Saxon I and II and now Bacco
ds

KC BBQ in italy

29 giugno
Yesterday for our guests we turned on the AC for the 1st time. Wow, was i happy!
Despite the best efforts of the rubs from KC Masterpiece and Gates, the poor quality of my pork ribs overrode the wonderful cooking skills of the chef and the prep from Kansas City. Not to say the ribs weren't "mangiabile" edible, but even with 5,5 hours of slow cooking, the result was not up to standard.
The last spinach from the garden cooked with red onions, garlic and guanciale was good as were my sorbettos with our passito from 2007.
My friend Lorie was just stung on the lip by a bee and is in misery, so in her honor, I am including a bit of our local apiary culture.
Bumble bees on lavender and sunflowers. We coexisted in harmony, so my lips are still too thin.
I must say that Lorie has that hot lips Houlihan look!
Also, I have thrown in a couple of pix of Bacco and I in the newly adorned vineyard.
Tomorrow, after we serve breakfast to our piemontese guests, Bacco and I may take a little walk in the mountains. Fotos to follow as always with my photogenic cane.
dds

A Day at the Beach/Bacco's 1st swimming lesson

28 giugno
Feeling like my major battle with the vineyard weeds had at least yielded a stalemate, it was time to celebrate with a trip to Grottammare and a beginner's swimming lesson for Bacco. He loves water, but is not yet ready to just run in over his head and swim a couple of laps. I accompanied my student wearing my lifeguard t shirt and coerced him into trying a bit of paddling. He got better with every attempt until in the last picture, after the bathing and drying fotos, you see he is now practically an intermediate swimmer.
Around here, we have 2 rooms full with repeat guest returning from Puglia to Piemonte.
I am cooking ribs today with 2 rubs graciously ported across the ocean by Tom and Wanda; one from KC Masterpiece and the other from Gates. You Kansas citians know what i am talking about. They are slow cooking in the oven at low temperature with a bit of beer in the bottom of the pan. I feel like my sorbet skills have improved of late thanks to a tip from a guest who suggested I add a bit of gelatin and a bit of vodka, or other tasteless liquor to my fruit and it is indeed much softer after refreezing. My 2 latest capolavori are wild pear with white tea and our own apricots as the other one.
It has been quite hot here and unfortunately, the pool is not yet finished. In fact the "pool guy" and I mean that to sound like the "cable guy" was too tired to work today.
Our garden continues to turn out enough zucchini to feed half of Offida along with lettuce and just beginning are the tomatoes. The sunflowers are beautiful as well.
Enjoy your weekend!
dds

News from Nascondiglio and Bruce Springsteen

26 June
Here is the latest from here. The pool now looks a little more like one, with water inside and a new border of antique bricks below the waterfall. It is still a mess which needs fixing, but day by day we see a little progress. In the distance now, you see we are putting in the poles for the vineyard so it will start looking a bit more like a vineyard as well. We will have about 4,100 of those when all is said and done. The last picture is of Raffaele's lovebird who is enjoying the heat of outdoors more than I did as I hoed THE LAST 4 ROWS of the vineyard today. Hurrah!! Time to start over.
If you can imagine, I took a bus from Ascoli Piceno to Milan-8 hours arriving at 1630 for a Bruce Springsteen concert which started at 2050. Unfortunately, my friend from London who was supposed to join me ended up in the hospital, so a ticket went wasted. They had more scalpers than buyers and i saw one person sell a ticket for 2 euros! All of my buddies in Milan were out shopping or not at home, so I couldn't meet up with them, spending the almost 5 hours people watching while drinking a beer and eating a sausage sandwich. In the end, though, I saw a really excellent concert. I saw the boss in KC 6 or so years back and he seemed much happier to be playing in San Siro stadium. Both were 3 hours long, but the italians were really into the music the whole time and that infectious energy transferred to the band. It must have been 90 degrees in the stadium which is home to AC Milan and Milan Inter, but on the lawn, they never stopped moving. It is embarrassing when the italians know more of the words to the songs (only the recent ones) than I did. Some of Bruce's songs are practically indecipherable even on disc anyway. I must say, it didn't seem like a Springsteen concert without Born in the USA for an encore, but this wasn't america. Afterwards, we had another 7.5 hour bus ride back arriving at about 730 the next morning. Once in a lifetime only please! But fun and a new experience.
Ciao for now. dds

Lost reservation

23 Giugno
Another reservation lost today because our geniuses building the pool are 2 months late. It is beyond frustrating. At present, we just smoulder and don't say anything and hope for the best.
I took a litltle trip to a wedding ceremony in Umbria this weekend and then visited a couple of wineries. For those in need of a good catering company in Italy check out Cuoco Inamorato. Wow. They made the colloseum out of Grana Padano cheese. Here ia a pic.
Tomorrow, I am heading up to our enologist to talk about the equipment we will need for the winery as the architects are in need of that info to plan the facility.
It is now summer here, whew, hot and almost impossible to work in the vineyard during normal hours, so today I worked after 6 PM. After 3 rows of extirpating our wonderful erba medica perennial, I was ready for another job.
Here are some pix of the pool in its present state. Our ever optimistic engineer thinks we need 3 more days to finish it. I think he is a dreamer.
Hope springs eternal. That's one of our sunflowers in bloom, happy with this sunny, hot weather! Very similar to the one in the previous post, a different angle, forse.
Stay tuned
dds