THE ZUCCHINI SYNDROME
I always like exchanging things with neighbors, but that process reached new heights here. Everyone has had too much zucchini and tried to give it away. Well, it started with the basil that I planted in three different spots to make sure that I had enough. I was freezing basil before anyone came for the summer. My freezer was full of strawberries and basil by June. But the basil kept coming, and I kept wondering what to do with it.
Although I can be quite timid, I found the act of getting rid of the stuff helped me get my nerve up to meet new people, so I started offering neighbors basil. I did not know what I had started. In rapid succession, we got dinner invitations, bottles of olive oil, peeled prickly pear, half bushels of tomatoes, cakes and other delicious sweets, bottles of wine well, you just cannot let a good deed go by without getting something in return here. Of course, the figs we kept giving away became almost too much so that neighbors started to admit that they were giving them away to their friends.
One really sweet thing I noticed was that once I was invited to their houses, I saw that each of the neighbors that I had first given basil to had their own basil plants! They may not have been as tall or bushy as mine, but they werent in dire need of any basil.
The same thing happened here in terms of music, film, and computer generated pictures and videos. Again, to overcome my shyness, I started taking pictures of people and events and printing them up for neighbors. Then I would get a neighbor showing me his pictures and offer to give me shots of the same events. We swapped three of four times and by the end of the summer, I had a collection of beautiful black and white shots from Enzo, a video of all the cabarets and events, and shots of almost everything we had participated in (including me!). For Mariangelas 19th birthday, I made her a copy of the CD my son had given me for Mothers Day. Then Federica brought over the CD her rock musician boyfriend made. Melito and Francesco have looked with interest at our Italian video collection, and Melito borrowed one that was his favorite and put it on his computer. Now we are looking for a movie that our neighbor Toto was in that was shot in Caltabellota, The Sicilian. I bet the next time I ask these guys, one of them will have a copy of it for us to see!
Although I can be quite timid, I found the act of getting rid of the stuff helped me get my nerve up to meet new people, so I started offering neighbors basil. I did not know what I had started. In rapid succession, we got dinner invitations, bottles of olive oil, peeled prickly pear, half bushels of tomatoes, cakes and other delicious sweets, bottles of wine well, you just cannot let a good deed go by without getting something in return here. Of course, the figs we kept giving away became almost too much so that neighbors started to admit that they were giving them away to their friends.
One really sweet thing I noticed was that once I was invited to their houses, I saw that each of the neighbors that I had first given basil to had their own basil plants! They may not have been as tall or bushy as mine, but they werent in dire need of any basil.
The same thing happened here in terms of music, film, and computer generated pictures and videos. Again, to overcome my shyness, I started taking pictures of people and events and printing them up for neighbors. Then I would get a neighbor showing me his pictures and offer to give me shots of the same events. We swapped three of four times and by the end of the summer, I had a collection of beautiful black and white shots from Enzo, a video of all the cabarets and events, and shots of almost everything we had participated in (including me!). For Mariangelas 19th birthday, I made her a copy of the CD my son had given me for Mothers Day. Then Federica brought over the CD her rock musician boyfriend made. Melito and Francesco have looked with interest at our Italian video collection, and Melito borrowed one that was his favorite and put it on his computer. Now we are looking for a movie that our neighbor Toto was in that was shot in Caltabellota, The Sicilian. I bet the next time I ask these guys, one of them will have a copy of it for us to see!
posted by Sicilian Mama at 1:46 PM
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