SUMMER WEEKEND

It’s summer! The heat is full force, the sun is scorching, the parking lots fill up as our summer neighbors arrive. They promise to move in for good for the rest of the summer next week, after all school activities are done. We have kids and teachers in almost every apartment on our level, and that makes a big difference in the date of starting the season here.
Sicilian attractions are crowded on weekends, so our American guests have stayed around the place Saturday and Sunday swimming and taking it easy. Saturday they were treated to a bread baking at Paolo’s outdoor forno (oven). Just like everyone else who meets them, they were struck by how sweet Paolo and Ignatzia are to us, really like second family. Actually, they treat us better than their own families, which is typical of Sicilian families, at least my own. Paolo and Ignatzia work as a team in the bread baking, snarling at each other all the time. She is like an older sister to me, he like Steve has another older brother.
On the home front, Jack, Mariana, and Veronica returned to cook pranzo yesterday, and Jack whipped up a huge meal for us to taste some of the products he plans to export to Montreal. Especially notable was the pasta in pistachio sauce and the pasta with fennel crème. Then there are the cherry tomatoes, sun dried, which are so sweet you do not need candy when they are around. Here is a picture of my attempt to dry the local cherry tomato. I have since learned I did it all wrong, but the results are pretty and still not too bad. I did not take any pictures of our meal though-too busy eating. Later we took a walk around the resort with Veronica to find the playground behind our house (I had never been there before!). The place is really humming.
But not our front porch. The blue plumbago is in bloom, and things are serene here, As we finally sat alone in the cool quiet of the evening, Steve used his special whistle (well, he folds his hands a special way and blows) to call a morning dove closer. That is one confused bird. He just cannot find the dove that is answering his call!