One year ago today, Jonathan and I arrived in Italy, exhausted, wild-eyed, and crazed with emotions that I didn't even have words for. Of course, I also didn't have the words for "rental car," "reservation," and "parking lot."

We had hatched a plan, Jonathan and I, to buy a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, and some cheese and to immediately head up to our then-unseen house for a little impromptu picnic outside the gates (we didn't move in until the 5th because the house was being cleaned for us after the departure of the previous tenants.) But we never ended up doing that because of being exhausted, wild-eyed, etc. etc.

So tonight we have a vaguely heretical bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a loaf of bread that Jonathan is baking right now, and a cheese that we bought yesterday at the once-a-week market from our friendly cheese-seller who has the best cheese that we've found.

Then we will go down to the pub to bring Renata some of the green fig and Cointreau jam I made yesterday. It tastes great, but looks like snot. (The Italian word for snot, incidentally, is "moccio" -- oh, the vast swathes of useful vocabulary I have picked up in the past year!)

When we were buying figs yesterday at the Frutta D'Oro, we told Barbara about our Italian anniversary. "It seems like you arrived just recently and also long ago both at the same time," she said. This is how it feels for me, too.

The rain finally came last Monday night -- drenching, torrential, windblown -- taking the godawful heat and the roof of our parking area with it. Temperatures are supposed to go back up again starting tomorrow, but we have taken advantage of the respite to use the oven, which we had been avoiding during the sweltering dog days. Jonathan, as I said, is baking bread and I have a roast marinating and another batch of snot simmering. Wandering around our grounds to survey the storm damage, I discovered that our apple tree is covered with big red beauties.