Abruzzese BBQ vs KC, vineyard haircut, and plum cakes; also Yeats??

23 Luglio
Sorry about my lazy blog posts. At least my friend Dr. Khan provided a set of bellisime photos of Nascondiglio di Bacco by day and night to fill the gap. It is time to give the vineyard a haircut as we turn the hippy part into conservative clean cut vines. This is to take the hormonal stimulus from the top of the plant away and prevent the vines from becoming too woody and thus harder to train and curve this winter. It is slow work, but nothing backbreaking.
The crew is here to put in the poles for the newest piece of vineyard and then we will be completely finished with the "construction" of the vineyard, notwithstanding the repairs I must make to all the cables I have broken with the tractor.
I have picked the plums from our trees and as those who follow my facebook page can recall, the mirabella plums were used to make sorbet and a filling for a crostata and then yesterday I took the red italian plums to make two plum cakes with diverse recipes.
Today and tomorrow we have a heat front from Africa visiting and then return to normal again Sunday. Raffaele closed the pool yesterday to make a repair of another leak, having tired of the useless attempts by the pool guys. Everyone cross their fingers!
Last night, I was invited by Gina from Georgia (our Georgia) and her english husband Tim, to a reading of Yeats in english and italian with a celtic music group playing background music. Poetry in Carrollton, MO in my era was definitely a sissy thing, kind of like soccer or piano lessons were at the time, so unfortunately, I have missed out on a whole genre of literature, to my loss. Yeats was not so bad! I may even have to buy the book! It made me chuckle to listen to Tim perform the proper english reading, perfect cadence, perfect diction and as I would have read it, if I had his talent. Then it was read in an italian translation by Annalisa with a quiet passion and emotion which maybe we lack in our language and culture (I say "our" as i am a bastardino with at least 50% ancestry from the british isle countries). The poetry was actually made more interesting and effective by the combination of the two. The spettacolo was performed at one of the prettiest villas in the Marche, opened by the owner just once a year for a performance. All in all, it was surprisingly enjoyable for this ignorant small town boy. The director, Cesare, was extremely well versed in literature and european history and gave us all a little biography of Yeats, his country and his times and this too added much to my enjoyment and understanding of the author's prose.
Coming up this time of year are all the festivals in small towns around us for various types of foods (polenta with baccala-yuck), wine tastings, music festivals, etc. You can visit a different one every night in July and August.
That's is about all for now. I will try to stay on the ball and get more posts written.
The pix go along with the text and then there are a couple of photos from the BBQ with a special type of grill these guys made just for their spiedini which were made from castrato lamb meat, marinated and spiced. They were excellent. You might see someone has put the worlds best hamburger and a full chicken breast nearby for a little bbq american style.
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