A WALK ON A CLOUDY DAY
Today is a national holiday in Sicily, Republic Day, and Steve says it is the end of World War 2, when the Germans left Italy and the Italian Republic was born. He had the day off from drivers school and we woke to a cloudy day, fairly cool, in the low 70s. It seemed to me a perfect day to go for a long walk. I knew the lighting for pictures might be easier with no sun to contend with and there would be little contrast in vistas, since the air and the sea are the same color today. Although it looked like we might be rained on, we decided to chance it and readied ourselves for the joy of checking out the flowers, farming, and building in our immediate vicinity. So we set out on our hour and a half mountain valley route, up and down the circle of roads in our vicinity.
The beach has not been cleaned yet. That was the first thing we noticed. Even though we know that the contract for cleaning beaches starts in June it was foolhardy to expect it on the second day of June. Now the main road is closed while the frana (road collapse I showed pictures of before) is being worked on. We heard two estimates for that jobs completion, 20 days or 2 months. Maybe the heavy machine cannot go around the detour very well. So we may have to wait for that, maybe for 20 days, maybe two months.
Our area is experiencing a real building boom. There are single dwellings being worked on weekends by occasional family help or amateur builders, clumps of two or three houses offered on speculation, and even a 10 villa site on our route back home. We checked the progress of all of those and found that some had progressed much further than others, and that the workers were all on holiday this Republic Day. We also found several questionable construction dumps on back roads. I will send pictures of Italian construction methods at a later time.
Meanwhile, the flowers and plants are going through their yearly cycle, so here is a catalogue of what each picture is:
Picture 1-artichoke-carciofi-when you leave the artichoke on the vine, it makes this gorgeous purple flower. You can smell artichoke in the air when you walk by this field!
2. Corner farmers field-His tomatoes and peppers are smaller but squash much further than mine
3. Wild fennel-finocchio-these clumps have been picked off of many times, but you will see tender shoots coming from the old plants almost all year long. Everyone uses the wild leaves to flavour pastas and salads, but would buy the big domesticated clumps in grocery stores for eating like celery stalks.
4. Broom-ginestra-This plant also has a strong scent and can be seen in clumps everywhere this time of year
5. Bougainvillea-The combination of colors here is striking, but not as striking as the coral color with the fuchsia.
6. Wildflowers-near the end of the yellow margarita season, with red poppies and pink morning glories and yellow cactus above right
7. Cactus, prickly pear-fico dIndia-Almost past prime flowering, on its way to maturing the fruit.
8. Purple heather?-Erica-It looks like heather but has a much fleshier stem, not woody at all. So I dont know anymore about it except it grows at the edge of two wet shady spots nearby.
9. Acanthus-The classical Greek flower that was the inspiration for Corinthian column decorations
The beach has not been cleaned yet. That was the first thing we noticed. Even though we know that the contract for cleaning beaches starts in June it was foolhardy to expect it on the second day of June. Now the main road is closed while the frana (road collapse I showed pictures of before) is being worked on. We heard two estimates for that jobs completion, 20 days or 2 months. Maybe the heavy machine cannot go around the detour very well. So we may have to wait for that, maybe for 20 days, maybe two months.
Our area is experiencing a real building boom. There are single dwellings being worked on weekends by occasional family help or amateur builders, clumps of two or three houses offered on speculation, and even a 10 villa site on our route back home. We checked the progress of all of those and found that some had progressed much further than others, and that the workers were all on holiday this Republic Day. We also found several questionable construction dumps on back roads. I will send pictures of Italian construction methods at a later time.
Meanwhile, the flowers and plants are going through their yearly cycle, so here is a catalogue of what each picture is:
Picture 1-artichoke-carciofi-when you leave the artichoke on the vine, it makes this gorgeous purple flower. You can smell artichoke in the air when you walk by this field!
2. Corner farmers field-His tomatoes and peppers are smaller but squash much further than mine
3. Wild fennel-finocchio-these clumps have been picked off of many times, but you will see tender shoots coming from the old plants almost all year long. Everyone uses the wild leaves to flavour pastas and salads, but would buy the big domesticated clumps in grocery stores for eating like celery stalks.
4. Broom-ginestra-This plant also has a strong scent and can be seen in clumps everywhere this time of year
5. Bougainvillea-The combination of colors here is striking, but not as striking as the coral color with the fuchsia.
6. Wildflowers-near the end of the yellow margarita season, with red poppies and pink morning glories and yellow cactus above right
7. Cactus, prickly pear-fico dIndia-Almost past prime flowering, on its way to maturing the fruit.
8. Purple heather?-Erica-It looks like heather but has a much fleshier stem, not woody at all. So I dont know anymore about it except it grows at the edge of two wet shady spots nearby.
9. Acanthus-The classical Greek flower that was the inspiration for Corinthian column decorations
posted by Sicilian Mama at 9:03 AM
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