GARDENS, CLOUDS, BEACHES, AND BIRDS

The September weather here has been warm and beautiful, but now the clouds are becoming a part of the sky a little bit each day. When we first came here, there was a severe drought continuing, so we did not see clouds for the first month. How different it is now as we see the scenery unfold with formations and sea colors different from most of the other 3 summers here. A huge red moon came up at dusk tonight with a perfectly shaped bar of dark cloud slicing through it. My camera could not capture this, unfortunately.
I have gotten the main garden planted although the rain will not come for another month, so I have to water every other day. I am thinking of repotting flowers and soil improvement now. Steve will get some grape must, the leftovers of grape seeds and hull that the wineries give out this time of year. But we have been spending so much time at the beach, I think the garden will have to wait till I am done with swimming for the season (about another month). Even with unusually high winds the beaches are gorgeous as you can see from the scenes below. Yesterday however was ruined for me when I almost dived onto a jelly fish!! The warm waters near shore just lured them in. Our busy day taking Alfonso and Maria to the airport to return to the states meant we did not swim, so we will try again tomorrow!
This weekend we took a drive over to Lido Fiori and Porto Palo and had lunch at the wonderful Hotel Vittorio there. Chef Vittorio makes a mean spaghetti with seafood sauce and despite the flies and wasps, we had a delightful meal there on the outdoor terrazzo just off the beach. We met Martin and Wendy, two Sicily aficionados from London. Then we walked the beach and took more pictures of clouds and beaches. The hotel featured an ancient olive tree that has one of the thickest stems I have seen here in the land of ancient olive trees. It had another old olive tree with cucuzzi squash that I am sure my dad will get a kick out of. On the way, we saw a fire out of control that raced across the road ahead of us, and then some of the prettiest grape harvest I have seen in awhile. This is a record grape harvest year here because of all the rain this summer.
Also new with us is our new young male canary Limoncello. He is too young to know how to sing so we must teach him, and he seems to enjoy the jazz singers we play for him daily. We whistle a bit to him hoping he gets the idea.