Tramonta

Last night's sunset - isn't it incredible.

Santo Stefano

Saint Stephen's day or more commonly known as Boxing day. Apparently, one of the possible reasons Boxing day is so called, is back when the larger estates/houses used to reward their staff with boxes of gifts on this day.

Anyway Buona Festa tutti.

The shortest day

Can you believe it we're here already. 

Obviously the trainee contadino thoughts turn to garlic on this day. Plant on the shortest and reap your harvest on the longest day. My sort of gardening.

Roll on summer...

This morning

The coldest morning of the winter so far - 2∘and this was the view over towards the hills above Coste.

The blue tinged haze at the bottom of the picture is woodsmoke. Most houses in the area have wood as their primary source of heating. In the valley below us, after several days without any breeze the air takes on a particularly horrible brown tinge as all car and industrial exhausts are trapped.

Ah..... the oxygen of publicity

National Geographic's Intelligent Traveler has selected Casa Margherita in their top 10 gift ideas for Christmas 2011.

Check it out at http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/15/holiday-gift-guide-2011/

Poste Italiane

Currently spending quite a lot of my time in the post office sending out packages to people who adopted trees last year and are now receiving their two litres of olive oil as well as new adopters for Christmas this year who are getting their gift packs.

I cannot say I am enjoying it. Queuing has never been my thing and as for one fingered typing. Never a visual pleasure.

However one thing I can concur with is what one of our new adopters wrote:- "The best gift in the world - Italian olive oil".

To find out more go to http://www.casa-margherita.com/adopt-a-tree/cat_6.html

A sign of the times?

This is an abandoned olive grove below us that over the last few days has been worked on and pruned to bring it back into production.

There are many abandoned groves in the area, some as small as 10 trees others covering quite large areas. It would be great if some of these were brought back into production as it is a waste to see abandoned groves.

Fossils

Recently during our walking in and around the local groves we have found a couple of fossil remains.

The one on the left is an ammonite fossil but I do not know about the other one.

An ammonite was a mollusc. Other mollusc's include smails, clams, squid, octopus and cuttlefish.nl

It is funny to wonder that without Google I firstly would not be writing this and secondly I would not have been easily able to find out about an ammonite fossil.

Winter colour

This is the view looking at one of the oaks on the edge of the grove with Trevi behind it.

The colours of the trees this year are delightful.