Just a very brief addition to our blog. We have designed and constructed a new wall and balustrade for the main house of which we are very proud. Here it is:
July 23, 2012
Summer Feste
In Tuscany, at this time of the year, there are plenty of superb summer festivals. In particular, many music and arts events to keep visitors entertained. Particularly impressive are the many local festivals that nearly every small town has which draw the crowds from both from the local population and from the millions of visitors to the Tuscany region. There are a number of all-night events in towns through the season where bric-a-brac and antique stalls, food vans and restaurants vie with music and art displays called La Nottambula ( I think it means something like, moving all night!). These begin at about 7 pm in the evening and go on until 5 am in the morning! It is an Italian tradition that has been encouraged by local councils in these times of austerity to drum up more trade. The one in Pescia attracted thousands of people, boy they do not do things by halves in Italy!
June 4, 2012
Parco Villa Reale
The Villa Reale near Lucca Tuscany
Last June we published an article on the Villa Torrigiani, one of many villas and parks in the Lucca/Pescia area. The Palazzo of the Villa Reale is no longer open to the public unfortunately. The stucco crumbling from some of it’s elegant walls testimony to the fact that it’s current owner now have neither the money or the will to renovate this once proud house. However the park and gardens are open, and what a joy they are. Extensive lawns and formal gardens descend the gentle slopes toward a lake in grand vistas, with superb mountainous specimen trees in magnificent clusters.
April 6, 2012
Palm Sunday
In Tuscany we have been having some warm and benign weather after the chills of February; indeed we are here in Florence on Palm Sunday. Here, there is a quietly joyous feel about the city in the balmy sunshine, everyone seems intoxicated and dreamy in the breezy spring weather, anticipating Easter (or Pasqua). In front of the Pitti Palace there is a Palm Sunday parade, a priest leads a procession through the streets of choirboys and parishioners each carrying either a palm frond or a sprig of olive branch. There is a sense of calm and peaceful solemnity among the crowds. There are the tourists now beginning to throng the piazzas and museums. There are locals carrying newly bought Easter eggs, great chocolate ovals wrapped in colourful shiny paper. There are people carrying picnic lunches to eat by the Arno, watching their children play on the swings. There are lovers kissing on the Ponte Vecchio or having their photographs with the Doumo in the background. No rushing or shouting, no anxiety or strain just a quiet anticipation of summer.
January 29, 2012
Winter in Vellano
We hope you all had as lovely Christmas and New Year, as we had here. The weather was mild and sunny this year and there was lots to to do and people to see, including our friends and neighbours. Aren’t Christmas decorations interesting in Italy! There are lots of plastic Santa Claus’ flapping about precariously from chimney tops and climbing up traditional green Tuscan shutters. Plenty of lights illuminating the trees in the road and one enterprising villager who is a big fan (tifoso) of the nearest Serie A football team which is in Florence, called AC Fiorentina. He had a huge purple/violet Christmas tree surrounded by an arched doorway of violet lights. Fiorentina incidently play in the colour violet (never seen in England you understand!). This colour apparently originates from the original red and white city colours they used to play in. The shirts were apparently then washed one day in the river Arno and the colours bled to form this particularly lurid and striking colour. Fiorentina may not be Italy’s most successful team but they are the most beautifully equipped. What would you expect from Italy’s most stylish city.
December 23, 2011
A Very Merry Christmas from Tuscany
We cannot believe that another wonderful year has gone by and nearly two years since we first moved to Casa Verde. Here in the hills it is sunny again after a very fierce storm with high gusty winds last week, unlike last Christmas we currently have no snow. This is just a little ironic as many of the regions of Tuscany have just introduced a new law that says all automobiles must carry snow chains or have snow tyres fitted between the middle of November and the middle of April.
November 20, 2011
Autumn in Barga
Many of our visitors to Casa Verde head off for the great triumpherate Tuscan cities of Lucca, Florence and Pisa; all within an hours drive from Pescia. However, there are some stunningly beautiful parts of our area that not all travellers manage to see. One of these areas lies around 40 miles away from here over the hills and valleys of the lower Appennines to the Garfagnana and the Serchio valley. The town of Barga is the jewel in its crown. A lovely fairy tale place set on a hilly promontory overlooking the craggy marble magnificence of the Alpi Apuane hills, and topped by what I think is one of the most unique and glorious of Romanesque churches in Italy.
October 2, 2011
Padule – The Fucecchio Marshes
This is a particularly beautiful and yet strange landscape. The Padule lies between the areas of Lucca, Pescia and Fucecchio, right in the centre of the large flat valley south of the Appenines in which we live and the rolling Chianti hills further south. It was probably once an inland sea but for many centuries it was an undrained, unmanaged, boggy landscape; uninhabitable and full of mosquitoes and malaria. In the Middle Ages drainage canals were dug and the river damned, excavated and controlled. This land became habitable and provided a rich alluvial landscape to grow a wide variety of crops, most common of these today is maize (presumably used primarily for polenta). There are also many nurseries in the flatlands that grow maritime pines and olive trees, but also many shrubs and plants that are extremely rare and exported by growers all over the world.
August 28, 2011
Out and About!
We have been away on a little holiday, just at the time when we were having a heatwave here in Italy. Two weeks of temperatures up around 100 degrees made travelling a little challenging. However at our first stop here in Mantova (Mantua, Lombardy) we were able to walk through the cool halls of the gigantic Palazzo Ducale in the heart of the city, the home to the Dukes of Mantova, the Ganzaga family, who ruled the region for 4 centuries.
August 8, 2011
Baked Marrow Boats or Nave di Zucca!
Ok – if you want to try a bit of cooking, here goes. There are a lot of lovely vegetables on our terrace garden at this time of year. For the first time we have grown Zucca or Marrows. It is difficult to always know what to do with these lovely sweet tasting fruit (or are they vegetables?). They always make a tasty soup when mixed with garlic and cream. However we tried stuffing and baking them.