nikolausi.....

today is the 4th of december and my brothers b-day. he wanted to visit us with his sun Moritz 2 weeks ago and after 200 km he lost the control of his car and rolled off the road. gottseidank only some minor cuts and bruises. life can change in just a short piece of a second. he is well and happy!

i got back from the mammogram i was so scared of the result and in just 2 seconds: "everything is normal" i felt easy and happy again. i promised myself to not get angry and disappointed any more. i wanna keep this feeling of lightness.
i remembered how i felt when i came back from the confession at the church (before i discovered that sex is a wonderful thing) i felt light, easy, like an angel. nothing bad sitting heavy on my shoulders - life was bright and beautiful. let's keep that.

Molly when she stopped being activ.

we lost another duck: Molly. she was always the slowest one, always behind. her posture was somehow not well balances. and than she fell again and again. she had a short but very good life. her friends were with her all the time. so sweet.

but we got chicken. the neighbor stopped and had a box with 3! chicken in it.

this is Äuglein, she closes 1 eye all the time, but she is the nicest one.

we ordered 2 from her, so i thought we might find a use for the 3rd egg. just a few days later the other neighbor came by and had a box for us: 2 chicken, they gave us these for a regalo and this is so nice - we have 5 now, all very friendly, i can touch them, pick each one up and feed them out of the hand. really nice girls "they are all not laying - so far - but if they do i have to come up with some egg-heavy recipes. 1 know already: "brutto ma buono" means: ugly but good. boy and they are G O O D!! 36 Euro a kilo at the bakery......

glorious

cutting wood in the curve of our road

we are getting ready for the winter, at least our wood-supply is getting ready. Jon cut a lot of dead and bad trees at the end of last winter. but we had to cut them in pieces and get them closer to our stove.

we can easily see why yoga is good for making firewood

our fantastic car went to the woods and got filled with fire-wood. the only problem we will have with the car now: there is no 3rd seat for Dan, who is coming to visit over christmas. so we have to rent a car, that will be fun too, driving together in a clean! car through the towns with their hot wine and markets and christmas scenes.
just had! to put these pictures in - another first timer for me strawberries in december and chickorie flowering on the roadside, that is italia!

friday the 13th of november

today was our 3rd wedding anniversary. we took the day off. locked the ducks in their house and took hit south toward a sunny, natural beach. we found one after some searching. just some dog-owners and joggers shared the whole beach with us. i like it much more without the sunbather.

the sun was coming back in le marche (still no frost!)and did actually get my island poppies growing - i cut the 2nd one for the vase to have it full enjoyable, this is maybe my favorite flower... :-) ok,ok one of all my favorite flowerS.

the zucca harvest is big and beautiful. Jon's way to prepare is baking them in the oven, i just did the soup with (a lot) cream. since we are kinda off dairy products, this is not really an option. when our neighbor told us about the marchigiana way to make rice with squash, i tried it right away and it was delicious; here with some baked fish and the most wonderful Jon-bread.

when we were in germany last year we got 2 wood-burning stoves, the price was right and enough place in the car. Jon figured he can make the stove more efficient and cleaner to use and because he loves to work with metal, he just redid the airflow inside. that took some major metal cuttings and welding.

may be i can use this for a christmas card.....

we were at some castania festivals. i never liked the heissen maronis /roasted chestnuts. they were always mealy/tasteless. but i tried and was very surprised of the nutty and sweet taste. delicious, hot, char-coaled- yes you get black fingers- and just fun to eat while strolling through that little, smoke filled town with free, new, red wine in the other hand.

the progress on our little old house: we got the cement floor in, quiet a while ago, with help of the neighbors. than we were waiting for our neighbor to come with the backhoe to dig up the place in front of the house for the future patio. Jon want to pore the concrete there as soon as possible. we were waiting ..... Jon just started, dug up more and more HUGE rocks, finally the backhoe came and in 3 hours all the work was done. but do we have now a lot of rocks?! they were all put in to stable the ground - we guess. what a lot of work these people did with their bare hands.

so - this was the summer?

the midst of october, and we are heating, firewood cut last spring is warming the house. there is not enough with the winter already starting. i was still growing seeds and my luffas need more SUN!WARMTH! to get big. here is a europe wide cold weather front. so there is hope that this will end and some sun comes back.
october also brings back the hunter (sadly - also the bird-shooter) and the dogs barking through the forests. we had a huge tomato harvest - all frozen in the new BIG freezer and many peppers. so these vitamins are taken care off. i have a lot of very diverse jams in the cupboard: elderberry with vino cotto; plum with cinnamon; wine with christmas-spices.....
my projects in the big house are slow accomplishing, some very slow... in how many obstacles can you run in to get the doorknobs on the newly painted doors?
*the old ones were not usable - all different sizes
*the new knobs have a square steel rod, too big to get through the hardware in the door
*i needed resizer (yes - available in old hardware-stores, just have to find them) for the old steel-rod to fit the new doorknobs
*i needed a 2-piece replacement - length between rod and key whole is different on each door
*the round cover of the 2-piece are wider and the door (actually 1) cannot be closed
*the hardware in that door has to be moved further into the door ...
this is where i am right now, i started that project in spring, will see when i have it all done.

when my brother announced he would like to come for a visit, i took finally the time to check our abandoned storage/guest room and was very surprised about the pets accumulated between the window and the outside shutter. i would love to have a school class seeing this, it is also to me fascinating:

at the beginning it was a relatively small nest, but i guess this here is a perfect nest situation - they are multiplying and the nest is now tremendous. there was the thought about killing them, but they do not really do harm - so far - and in germany they are protected by law. so i thought why not watch a hornet life cycle. i read a lot about them, but nobody told, that they use the open underneath as a bathroom and they pee/poop a lot! so i have a cat-sandbox underneath and have to change it too.

we were finally at the beach, researched this one online - found it and we were thrilled: very calm just some last sunbather, warm sun and water - we were both in it, Jon even with his snorkel. 1,5 hours away from us!

another place we explored when Dietmar was here, was the devils gorge and a famous hermit living above it. the place was all ours no-one on this 2 hour hike, the trail went through the rough cut between the mountains, the peaks sticking in the clouds, through this most beautiful beech-forest with a carpet of cyclamen on the ground.

but the most remarkable place is where Padre Pedro is working on his life fullfilling project: he is building a church, by hand, one stone after the other cut, shaped and placed. pure meditation. he calls himself God's contractor.

he is one of the most happiest person i have seen. Jon said he will see the work on our place different after watching him, living by himself in the mountains, built his vegetable gardens in the steep sites with natural stone walls (piled all by himself) to hold the soil. he started this project 1971! he is far in his 80's and still going every possible minute.

vino cotto: cooked wine. a marchigianic specialty. we were witnessing and even helping in the process. after the grape harvest, the juice, just dripping out of crashed grapes comes in this copper pot and get heated up with an oak wood fire. through reducing the amount and keeping it from over-boiling - constant watching and pouring new cold juice on top, it will after 6-8 hours be concentrated enough. it comes in a barrel and ripens to a sweet and strong cherry like wine.

our Princess is gone

the last input in this blog was about our 2 white ducks. this one is about the duck we lost. the little one: Princess is lost to nature. i wanted her to be happy and her favorite thing was to wander around and find fresh grasshoppers and flies. she did go the wooded trail toward the river (where she was not suppose to go) and something got her. Jon did find her and buried her. i know it would have been a perfect roasted duck, but that is one reason why i am a vegetarian.
she was the closest to me of all the ducks. she let me pick her up and ate out of my hand. she was very relaxed and not afraid about anything, that's why she is gone, i guess.
the new duck situation is now: they are fenced in around their little house and if i let them out i am around them. the other white duck was lonely and got upset with the other once. so i made an extra cage for her to be at night.

their newest home improvement is a duck swimming pool, (just another old thing what found a good use: an old bathtub). i dug a hole got the tub in, put natural flagstone around and an old board to get in and out.

i got myself in place to see/take pics how they will be in a pool the 1. time in their lives. there are still no pictures. and the tub is in the ground since 10 days. what's wrong? they do not go in the water, at least not by themselves. the runners think probably i wanna drown them when i finally got one of them in the fresh water, totally scared. the queeny got

a special treatment. every morning i picked her up, brought her to the tub and hold her like a child when you teach it to swim. she is patience with me, but as soon i let her really go she splashes her wings 10 times and out! ...

but Molley is sitting on 2 eggs. we candled them... and it looks there is something growing. another 10 days and we might have 2 tiny little duckies. i will make sure that they are not afraid about me - thought i will take them in a box and be the duck-mommy, will see.

the next post will be about our new/old house renovation.

tomatoes-pomodori-tomaten, squash-zucca-kürbis

all our working and preparing is rewarded: the tomatoes are ripe and in abundance. Jon tried several kind and we are testing them everyday. tomatoes on bread, in soup and sauce, fried and boiled and many already in the freezer. we could not find any ziploc-bags. and got some ordered in germany - actually 3000, they come in 1000, and we had to order for 100 euro and than we thought some smaller ones would be nice too. seems we might have enough for this life for freezing tomatoes.

than there was the time of plums. our direct neighbor came and got as much they could use off the trees and we could have the rest of them - that was a LOT. these took the last ziplocs we had left from usa. and i made several plum cake or original name: zwetschgendatschi. seems a perfect recipe, everybody liked it.

it is also the time of harvesting the grain and we saw how they do it on this steep land. knowing how the harvest looks alike in iowa - this is really a different way of working. the complete machine levels out to the ground in every direction, and this is very steep terrain.

our first squashes are getting ready and that means we have to get them before they turn in baseball bats, (zucchini) somehow they like to be that way and hide, until they are huge.

we are now over a year in italy and lived through all the different seasons and states of nature. but it is so different than last july when we arrived. the soil is still moist and Jon even thinks to till one more time. our Alfredo said it was extremely rainy this winter, spring, the grain suffered a lot through the humidity. the birds like it, a couple started a new nest just 3 days ago, so they think they will have enough food for their babies. hope that comes true.
we found some little eggs under stones in the soil and put them in bucket to see what is coming out and we saw the birth of a tiny little lizard. they are soooo cute. no picture so far...here it is:

this is a later editing: i forgot completely to talk about the 2 white ducks. when we showed our runner ducks (in italian: "pinguini") to our dear farmer neighbors, they were astonished about them and that they will not fly away. ( they do not fly away, but for sure they walk away, especially if it rained. than they can find water and do not have to come home to get a drink. several times i saw just the tiny head of our male duck "Udo" lurking far away, out of the tall grass, close to the woods and the potential preditors. long talk--- Vera said she has a present for us - 2 ducks - i said i do not really want any more ducks, i was already very busy with my shy little friends. but she said, she is tired of pulling the duck-feathers, chicken feathers are so much easier. i looked in their little box, and in their friendly little faces with their interested blue eyes and just had to save them from the frying pan. these 2 ducks are the opposite of the runners: relaxed, interested in what this humans do (Tolle says ducks ---he might not know about my 3 pinguinies--- and cats - are the perfect zen-masters) they do not freak out when we have to grab them. i think they actually like it - not that they purr :-) - but they wanna be around us. and because their favorite place is on 2 rocks with a great overlook of the(ir) territory, i called them the queen and the princess.

our duckies are still very good egg layer, average 3 eggs a day. the white ones ( Princess - the sweetest and Queen) laying bigger and whiter ones than Nancy and Molly. but our Udo (drake) is a real pain to the white ducks, he always chaises them around and with their short feet, he always gets them and pokes the little girls. the funny thing is their reaction after his attack. they are really upset, stretch their necks and it looks like they are shouting, but no noises are coming out of their wide open peaks. they call this ducks here: mute.

the other animals we are working with, are the dogs at the neighbors vacation rental. mostly they are very nice dogs (and owners). some are too lively (dogs) to have them with lots of people and crowds. so this is the perfect situation for them. off the beaten path and lots of space and freedom. in most bigger cities in deutschland there is a leech-law and have big dogs just run and play is not that common any more. we like our house keeper job. we come in contact with people we never would otherwise. so many different ways of seeing/dealing with the same given environment. very interesting for us and our learning about love and acceptance. we could not ask for a better situation. we are very happy with our life in italia and this wonderful friends we meet here.

the summer is here

this was a month of planting, seeding, transplanting, soil preparation and the BIG part: the water system for the veggie-field. we got the whole place surrounded by an electric fence - for/against wild boar and porcupine. Jon just worked and worked. he even got an old bale of hay pushed in our brave car and mulched around the plants. my job is more the beautifying of the place - outside - the inside is getting sloppier, more every day of sunshine. we were soo hungry for this italian spring days, when just everything in this little world feels right/light. i got all the seedlings who decided to give it a try, in the ground and if this silly white ducks stop eating them, we will have a lot of little poppy heads winking in the sun.
we harvested our fava beans, had a wonderful meal with them al fresco and ate the peas fresh out of the shell. they were already wilting, we had temperatures in the 90F/30C. the greens in front of the house are doing very well: arugula and head-salad, spinach, garlic and cress and yesterday we had a sorrel/sauerampfer soup/suppe with potatoes. i never thought i will ever cook so much:-)
the first guests at the neighbor house came and left after 10 gorgeous days back to cold and rainy hamburg. very nice people, i was happy to be their housekeeper and the dogs were as nice too. we had them over when i made "hollerkücherl", baked elderberry flowers and we had a lot of fun.
but the very best day with this fantastic weather was in the mountains. we could not beleave that we are here since last july and made it the first time in the sibillians, it is just 40 minutes away. this was just breathtaking beautiful:orchids mixed with daffodils and flowers i do not know, perfectly colored blossom sprinkled meadows to the horizont and now this: WE WERE ALL BY OUR SELF! how is this possible? in usa would be thousands of people, huge parking lots with over sized vehicles/drivers, a stand with soda machines and signs with cautions. this is how the world looked like and still does in this corner, we are so happy we found this.

new family, nuova familia, neue familie

seit 4 wochen haben wir 3 laufenten. lange, lange haben wir gesucht. and found the ducks at a farm fair close to perugia. 1 male and 2 girls. they were sooooo frightened when we got them. all stiff and straight up like a stick. the italians call them pinguini. but our neighbors have not really seen any of this strange looking creatures. the duckies know now their place and explore every day new territory around the house. we had to get a fence to keep them from going on the road, what would not be a problem, until a dog comes by......
i expected to get some easter-eggs from them. and the ratings for their egg-production is (depending who you ask) from 30 to 300 eggs a year. we want the eggs and their immense hunger for snails and bugs. i got worried about our fresh eggs, but today it happened: in the morning when i let them out i found 2 eggs laying in the straw, no real nest, just laying there. another first time for me: picking up fresh laid eggs from my own happy little feathered friends. how wonderful.
but the B I G family we got last weekend. they say 5000, who knows, no way to count them, they go normally by weight.....
we drove to st maddalena and got our 1. familia di api. in a travel box and we will move them (unbelievable - after it stops RAINING) to their new orange painted box. Jon had a hard time to explain the way he wanted to keep the bees, a more logic and easier way for the bees and for us. but the italians have just one system and stick with that.

there is one more winged friend we have. a little blue-headed-chickadee. i saw him the first time flying in front of the living-room window and thought he is looking for little flies. but no, he is just coming back and again, again and pick on the window. i realized he is picking at that proud male in the reflection. that was too cute. but we do have a really nice place for a little bird to see himself/the other guy: 2 mirrors on the car!
good we love birds more than cars. he is also using it for a bathroom ....

magnitude 6.3

um genau 3:32:42 italienische zeit habe ich noch ein erstes mal erlebt: erdbeben in italien.
at exactly 3:32:42 italian time i had another first time: earthquake in italy.
i did feel the earth shaking before: on hawaii where we got married, comically i sat on the stool when this huge noise rumbled in that little shed we rented for our honeymoon. i thought a stupid pickup could not make the curve and hit for our little place. no - earthquake! but this was all, when i got my pants on and run to the door all was over.
but last night the bed was rattling and rattling, i figured this was not still my dream, this is real, i screamed "earthquake!" to my Jon, deep in sleep, the rattle continued, a bid glass scattering noise made it even more real, i run, down the stairs, out of the door ...... the shepard dogs were barking excited. that's all - no Jon following me. did i overreact, be too worried? a bit i guess, but there were 2 more shaking's and i was out of the bed, and my sanity gone.

the cracks in the house opened up again and paint/mortar/dust everywhere. pictures tipped and a stack of bricks outside felled over. the most damage is to my secure feelings, i suppose. the last one this strength happened 1997. there are many losses, i am scared to look in the news......

1 year ago

it is 1 year ago that we came to sign the contract and we managed to come so i can be in our new house for my birthday. so this was my 2nd time to celebrate. i remembered when we were here march 2008, i was so sad that i had to leave for the usa and had this H U G E burden in front of us: finishing the house in iowa, selling it, get our stuff sold and than pack the container, boy i am glad i do not have to do that again. i am kinda saddled in, adjusted to the unfinished cracked walls, chipping paint, dust where ever you look on the cracked floor tiles.
but there are much more important things: digging in the soil, watching the first bugs crawling in the sun, rescuing little snakes - disturbed in the field, planting 1000's of seeds and look at them twice a day. learning from the internet how to do the bees the best way - for them - so they can be happy. finding crop what is good for the soil and has flowers for the bees. there is so much to learn. and of course learning about ourself and find better ways to communicate and to be happy with ourselves. we are meditating much more and i am getting more relaxed with it. it feels so good sitting together in stillness and be aware about the moment and nothing else.


so here are 2 pictures with exact 1 year in between. both times with little green vegetation appearing; less trees on the newer/right one.
Jon's firewood is now at a different place, instead of the fire wood on the left one, there is a bed with fava-beans coming up. but both have SNOW on it!!! it is official spring: 21. of march, in italia! i did believe people that that was an unusual snow last year, but again, at the same day! i am still learning to accept the unchangeable, weather for sure is one of them.
the most important things the last 4 weeks were the greenhouse and the plowing. and seeding. the greenhouse is big enough for all the seeds i ever collected and thought i should at some point plant them. i did. and Jon got more tomatoes planted we will ever get eaten. but it is so much fun. at that time the sun was out, the greenhouse warmed up to 29 c degrees and the vents were still in the making. i had to take my woolen sweaters, pants, socks off and still too warm: my 1st day in bikini!!! how wonderful, another dream fulfilled.

and we did plant our potatoes, the soil was toooo wet, the last snow melted (view from the kitchen-window towards the field) but more rain in the forecast. that made us getting them in.
the sheep were watching us, they are now next door on the field and grazing happily the juice herba. Luigi had to get a mother sheep and the lamb out of the flog and i had the chance to hold that soft furred little thing: HOW DARLING! it just becomes totally calm and everything relaxed and lays the head on my arm. i do know now it did not fall in love with me, it just did what lambs do when they are caught. now i do understand the religious term: lamb of god or: completely give in.
finally we do have our 3 new little friends: coming soon, with pictures....

easter is coming and my summer job starts.