gelato ;-)

it is definitely gelato time in italy- almost every bar has homemade ones, or at least the ones in a wrapper. isn't this look appealing? (i don't know about the blue one, have not tried it)

the tomatoes are HUGE
the corn so sweet,
mozzarella and fresh basil from the balcony
Jon's home-baked bread
with olive oil from the neighbor ...
we must be in heaven
...

but than there was this at the restaurant the neighbors daughter runs:

mocetta, arugula with parmigiano and thick sweet balsamico

more prosciutto/salami marchigiana

ricotta with lemon-jam red pepper and walnuts

my plate: fried mozzarella with truffle, olives with fennel/garlic,
baby-mozzarella in green olive-oil, foccacia with rosemary

we made it into the summer and temperature turns us into italians. getting up at sunrise, work in the garden until it gets too warm. after lunch a long siesta and around 17:00 some activities start again. than there could easily be a festa or sagra, where you can join in. that will be a place where someone else is cooking and lots of people sitting at sunset out on a piazza and have a great time. dance, wine, home-cooked specialties. everybody, all ages come together and chat and enjoy the summer in the community.


this is the festa di san severino mit pizza e birra auf dem stadt platz

afterwards a marchigiani band lit up in front of the old buildings

kids danced a quadrille

at the lake in the mountains, 45 minutes away a HUGE firework lit up over the water at 23:00 with hundreds of cars blocking the road and people sitting on the lawn in front of the lake.



the drive home was actually a race on the twisty mountain roads. because they thought nobody is driving towards the lake they all passed in these narrow curves

parties at the neighbors


wonderful all homemade pizza in a pizza-oven in the garden

by a professional chef

another party on the same road - this time spinach fussili with shrimps and porcetta. homemade potato chips (wonderful) and fried zucchini (i tried that recipe at the next party also fried onions - was a hit)

Nello would love to sell his house and 3 ha ground and gave me a tour

the other neighbors dogs had a blast with all the shrimp skins

a family photo with that darling old mother, who could just stand up to a 90 degree angle - but was cooking this delicious meal.Jon thought i should be on this photo :-)

a party for the elderly from gualdo, lots of home baked goods and

even a little bit of music

the major is always part of the commune life and easy to recognize through his heavy smoking



progress at the little house moves v e r y s l o w no way we will get a new roof on before winter comes :-( pazienza and piano-piano ) or 'nur net huudle' ....... but the stairs become more real:

Jon is the best backer ever

he did not want me to move the flower pots. he passed the trailer with the future stair oak-beam by 2 inches away from my new rose-cuts

the 1/2 tree trunk got cut by a handsaw to the perfect angle

still a provisorium- more next blog...

what happened to that JUNE?

view from ripe di san ginesio towards san ginesio

a whole month is lost, or got worked away. the poppies were fantastico and some special ones are still going:


this one is so beautiful......

i am finally through weeding, thanks to the huge amount of rain we had also huge weeds and not really the time to get to them with all the sprinkling. we had days when we looked out of the window and decided to like that look of the rainforests in costa rica. we saved a long and expensive trip and had the exact same view/sound: low clouds hanging in the trees, very happy birds singing in the warm mist. this little place in le marche has it all!

the garden is now busy to make all the edible wonders: corn tall and sooo sweet the cardoon really tall i guess 3 meter

in front anise hyssop, cardoon right, corn left

and the country side is breathtaking

gualdo on the top right, the valley to the south, (ours is to the north)and the sibillini mountain

san ginesio with grain and sunflower fields
Jon is ready to perform, he has even a manager: Valentina (our beautiful neighbor daughter with a master-degree in tourism), she talks to the right people to get gigs for him. something will happen next month. the speakers are bought, the music is all arranged and Jon is playing and singing everyday.
Valentina is also our italian teacher, we meet 3 times a week for 2 hours and she is getting some of her english back at the same time. she would prefer to stay for 6 months and learn it in an english spoken country with a little job on the side to pay for living. - if anybody knows about an opportunity for her - let me know!!!!!

2 layers of styrofoam on top of the slab, tiles to lift up the grid, red tubing tied to it for the floorheat

we are 1 step further on the little house project: the sandwich floor for the floor-heat is pored. we did it our self and somehow we got it all smooth in 1 day.

the edge is the border for the concret

almost all pored and smoothed

the wonderful summer brings also the heat-loving biters back. i am i a constant battle with one of them. mosquitoes are drawn and killed in a little sapper underneath the computer table. also long pants are helping. but their bites just last 1 hour and done - easy. the invisible sand-flys are the more difficult ones. the bit last for a week and they love to bite 3-4 times at the same area, like around the knee- that tells you they are also under neath the table. they are not interested in the light from the sapper. they just go for skin. i researched for a trap. it would be a CO2 release with a suction. not under 400 $ and not sure if it works. the solution so far: prevention,- socks - a must! toe-bites are really painful and long sleeves, pants. and a TIGHT mosquito net. we had a cotton net around the bed. but places with wider weaving lets them in. in the morning we could count the sucked full, fat ones. they were trapped inside. as soon we tried to get them, they flew up and were invisible. only when they were sitting on the net, the little dot was visible. an amazing little sucker.---- until the new ordered mosquito net is coming we sleep in a tiny tent sitting on the bed, but great: it is tight.

4 sand-flys found inside the mosquito net - these are millimeters!

the meditation takes a large time of our life. Jon's accomplish is fantastic, i am very slow, trying to follow him. i decided i have an attention deficit disorder, what makes kids life so hard in school. (just like mine long time ago). it is so hard to stay focused for just 1 minute. for example i try to think NOTHING while i take a shower. nothing than: shrub the feet... rinse the hair...new soap on the sponge....i am NOT able, the thoughts wander off to all kind of places in this world. how is it possible that i cannot tell my own brain to shut up.?

the sunflowers are definitely prettier sun-catcher - but italy has no nuclear plants and the italians voted against them :-) so this is the future

more sunny thought: sunflowers or girasole (what means turning to the sun). we have an abundance of sunflower fields around us. i had the thought that not many crops make people smile when they pass them, sunflowers do it for me. so many happy faces looking all the same way. and the bees in a buzz heaven.

the 'thing' on the right is a living jukebox, you throw money in and press something and the guy plays the song with his bass

i left the car on purpose - just old meet new - and how does that big audi made it in there?

the concert starts at 9:30 pm and we had a chance to see their soundcheck, Colleen don't you love these chairs?

we went to some wonderful festa/sagras with our dear american friends. we had organic food with biodegradable forges ( the test is still going on in a flowerpot), pizzas by the hundreds,


colmeranos art festa, something else happens around the next corner

dances with life harmonica music,

tortellini at our neighbor town with a loved marchigiana performer

concerts with didgeridoos and huge silk flames.


at the main piazza in colmurano sound check with ...

silk flames flattering in front of ancient old buildings

we love this little town social fests, from babies to old grandpas, all are there and enjoy life, food, art in the summer.

the artist (sculpturer and painter ) chatted with Jon and invited us to the castle he lives in.

Colleen in Le Marche

we had our 1st visitor from usa. Colleen staid for 4 weeks and she could have spend much more time with us. for several reasons: she saw just a fraction of what was interesting to look at - in an hour drive around us. but more amazing - she was just a part of our little household. we adjusted so well to each other, no fuzz or narrow feelings. what a wonderful guest!!!! (may be i was so thrilled because she LOVES to do dishes, kinda the opposite of my feelings towards handling greasy plates and forges).
we had visits to our italian friends, towns and festas.


walks through our woods and fields, enough rain for the weeds to grow crazy (another thing - she likes to do: WEEDING!) and she built all this pretty stone columns in the yard - i forgot the name : i just call them COLLEENS. she announced me as her Paparazza and i took photos of all the events and visits, put them in an picasa album: 333 photos- just 11,1 photo a day :-) ( if you like to i can link you to the album, Jon is often a part of that, of course i am mostly missing in these shots..... the newest from the strada. the gates are moved half off the road, so everybody - seems nobody cares - passes around without stopping. the stone situation did not change - not enough rain to make anything slip. the renters from our german neighbor's guesthouse are all coming, so far no problems. before our dear guest arrived i got some necessary improvements done, the tiny kitchen is PAINTED!!!!!

and the bathroom has a new sink and stool, and the guestroom got some clean-up. but still no place to put cloths on hangers. we work on that ;-)

la contrada contro

la strada - this seems to become a long story. the end is unsure and patience is requested.
1st chapter - 11.march - a letter i wrote to a friend:
"""this is so much fun living in italy. you never know what happens the next day. last night we were with our dear neighbors for dinner: at a brand new place - 1 hour drive- where their daughter and her fiance are working as chefs in the kitchen. while we were waiting for the pizza the cellphone of the 17 year old daughter rang. it was the major of our town: gualdo. he told her that we -Jon and i shall come to a meeting today at 9;00 am - about our road. we were at the major's office. a very nice guy - who owns a guesthouse - were functioning as our translator. he told us that the road we pass to our house is now, after that terrible rain and flooding,

too dangerous to drive and some higher officials from the province decided to close it.

we still are aloud to live in our house ! but we are not allowed to use the road any more. we got the option to stay at a house the commune would pay for.... of course that is not an option for us. so we had to sign a paper that we live there without a passable road.

there is another road not in use for many years what could be fixed - but there are 2 different commune involved - that might take some time to get done. solution: we will buy a 4x4 soon!!!!!! and get much more walking - what is good for us."""

we did walk twice and drive now again. the barrier they put up are easy to get moved to drive through and closed after we passed.



a week later our sweet neighbor daughter came - with her car - and told us that the major aspect us an hour later at the courthouse. he did not send a helicopter to get us there. he did not ask how we came. ...
the same situation like before with more people involved: our neighbor Alfredo was there and some more officials - with lots of labels on their work-cloths: some road safety guys. the news this time were that the help the major hoped for from Rome was canceled. the money has to come now from the province to fix the cliff. the time to get this done might take more than a year. the offer to stay in a house paid by the commune got repeated several time.



the search for the 4x4 got highest priority. and i did find exactly the car we need. it is the smallest SUV possible. the 4-wheel kicks in as soon a tire slips - perfect. i found it through the italian kinda Craigslist: subito.it. that was easy compared with the insurance for it.

the car insurance in italy is one of the highest in europ. so i tried to get some of the bonus transferred from germany. after looooong search i got it actually from the neighbors agent. he could get it for me for 680 Euros/year. yeah!!!!!!! just took 2 weeks and 22 signatures

i was already adjusted with the idea not have to do the housekeeping next door, because the closed road. ideas of traveling south came to our minds. but there might be some people who take this than as an adventure vacation?!

more rain - more rocks on the road.



but Luigi and his tractor pushes them out of the way- he did this the last 40 years and there were much worse landslides than this winter.

but we live in the most wonderful places and spring is soooo beautiful, who would be bothered with italian bureaucracy?