The rain comes in waves these days. In between storms, the view is very clear and the sea is ink blue. During the storms, the mists roll in and it seems like we are alone on an island with cherry trees and new figs and lavender and no one else in the whole world. It is warm and yellow inside the house and outside the rain falls gently and the clouds gather around us and we can't even see the hills just behind the house.

The rain has washed away all the wisteria blossoms and the red poppies by the side of the Via Capriglia hang their heads down like beautiful ladies all left heartbroken.

At the pub, we have become part of the furniture and when the power went out in the rains last Friday, Jonathan called down and Alice told him how to turn it back on again.

Mimmo has been asking around about the fur near our front gate and the consensus now seems to be emerging that it is not wolves after all that have left it, but wild boar, who apparently like to scratch themselves against metal gates whenever they get the chance. This does not strike me as particularly comforting news. The wild boar are just as vicious as the wolves, but somehow I imagine the wolves to be swifter in dispatching their victims -- a small consolation, maybe, but a consolation nonetheless.

We went to the opera in Firenze Friday night -- Don Giovanni. The performances were amazing, of course -- one does not end up singing opera in Italy by being second rate. But for me, everything was haunted by echoes of other summers when Jonathan and I drove down to Santa Fe to the opera there -- a road trip across the Sangre de Cristos and then dropping down into Santa Fe for a night or two at Garrett's Desert Inn (which no longer exists) and a visit to our usual café, our usual bookstores, our usual restaurant. We have an umbrella here with us now that we bought one rainy afternoon at the Five and Dime on the plaza -- it got broken last week, but I will not throw it away.

And then the opera at the Santa Fe Opera House open to the night at the edge of town, where we would be cold together in the high desert air and dazzled and the sky was always clear sapphire blue. Once a man at the table next to us in our usual restaurant leaned over and asked us if we were married and for how long. "Why do you ask?" we said. "Because he looks happy," he said, pointing at Jonathan. But we were both happy then and, in my memory, the operas that we saw glow and sparkle and I remember sleeping very close to Jonathan on those nights to stay warm.