I think this house is under an enchantment.

It's not just the topsy-turvy layout, the wandering moss-covered stairways vanishing down into the woods that make it feel like a dreamscape Wonderland. There are also the spring flowers blooming in the fall and the magical appearance of things we need just when we need them -- a lovely marble bench that suddenly materialized under the elm tree one day when I thought "I wish there was a place to sit here," for instance. I swear it wasn't there a minute before. And new outbuildings show up constantly -- the most recent one was magically stocked with firewood. Autumn is coming on.

But things disappear, too. We have lost a room. Here is a picture of it. I recognize everything about it as unequivocally our house -- even the bowl on the table in the picture is here now, sitting in the cantina. But the room itself, with the built-in shelves over the radiator, does not exist. Or at least we can't find it.

The islands out at sea appear and disappear on a regular basis. Perhaps it is an atmospheric phenomenon. But then again, perhaps not.

The chestnuts are falling with a soft tocking sound on the stone walkways. We have made marrons glaces twice and are now beginning to search for more uses of our bounty. The olives are coming along nicely. I haven't figured out yet how to get to the ripening persimmons. I dropped a clothespin underneath the clothesline yesterday and it fell so far down the mountainside that there is no possibility of retrieving it.

The sea is so luminous at sunset that it makes us gasp.