The nets are out in the olive groves now, waiting for the harvest. They look like ghosts floating in the trees. We are all happy that there will be a good harvest this year after last year's disaster.

The autumn mists have moved in and, in between days of startling blue-skied beauty, we have wet red tile roofs (which are so much more vivid than the dusty red of summer) and mossy stones and storms sweeping across the sea.

The chestnuts are ripe now and I have made chestnut butter twice this week -- coffee, chocolate and cinnamon. And the corbezzoli berries are ripe -- much fatter than they were last year when we all gasped in the heat until late autumn and waited, anxiously, for rain. Our persimmon tree even has ripening persimmons in reach, just waiting for me.

So I have been playing at being a good farm wife -- brining olives and making chestnut butter and corbezzoli jam. And tonight we are having a fall vegetable lasagna -- a "lasagna bianca" with cream sauce instead of tomatoes. It has baked sweet potatoes and fresh sage mixed into the ricotta. And more sage with sausage and caramelized shallots. And, of course, porcini mushrooms sauteed in rosemary-infused olive oil. Then there are roasted carrots and butternut squash and mozzarella and well-aged parmesan. I wish I had a sprinkling of pine nuts to add, but I didn't think about that until just this minute.

Later, we will go down to the pub and have a glass of wine with the boys and then come home and eat lasagna together and then go to sleep curled against each other while it rains in the night.

 Been a bit damp lately.

 

While we were in the US, I took the opportunity to be finger-printed (again) and request my criminal record (again) from the FBI, who have not yet discovered any crimes I've committed. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my various misdeeds have all been so trifling as to be beneath the notice of any authorities, but it does come in handy now.

So with my clean record in hand and an Apostile for my long-form birth certificate, I now have a three month window to apply for Italian citizenship. After three months have passed, they figure I might have had enough time to begin a new life of major crimes and I would have to get new fingerprints and a new copy of my record. Having waited this long, though, I really can't see myself being bothered to begin any hard-core criminal activities now. At 62-years-old, it just strikes me as exhausting.

My one stumbling block is the language test, so I have signed up to take it on December 5th and am now kicking my studying into high gear by hanging around more with the boys down at the pub. Last night we discussed our various attempts at making alcohol at home.* Jonathan and I once failed miserably in our attempt to make honeysuckle-infused vodka, turning out some glaucous beige shit that smelled of dirty feet and rotting cabbage. But Nonno tells us that he has had great success making liqueurs with both plums and figs. It is good to have a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. When people tease him about being old, he says that he will outlive us all. I hope so.

We sit inside now that the weather has turned colder and talk about this and that while the card players play at the table in the corner and Renata gives us a platter of sliced meat and cheese and bread because Daniele and Alice have stayed home now that the tourist season is over, so there is no great pasta bowl of one of Daniele's fantastic dishes to appear out of the kitchen tonight. Jonathan and I walk home holding hands and we can see all the islands very clearly out in the sea and all the boats heading into the harbor at La Spezia. The air is very clear and cold. We are glad when we get home that the heat has come on inside.

*If the language test is food-and-booze-related, I'm a shoo-in. Otherwise, I'm toast.

 

It's rainy today, with clouds and mist huddled around the house blocking our view of anything other than the dripping chestnut trees and the moss-covered stones. There are no sounds.

Jonathan is baking bread. The first corbezzoli have started to fall, so soon we will make corbezzoli jam. And then it will be chestnut season again and we will make our famous (if only to us) butter-rum chestnut butter. I feel somehow that I should learn to knit.

Instead, I have made a caramel-apple pie and a batch of late plum jam. We have been gorging ourselves on wild porcini sauteed in rosemary-infused olive oil. We are cautiously hopeful about the upcoming olive harvest.

Last Friday night, we celebrated Oktoberfest at the pub, even though it was still September. In these precarious days, we feel we should not delay our fun.

And Avi's father passed away early Saturday morning. He was a musician, a violinist, and Avi was his only child. We went to the funeral and then home alone in the rain. It's hard to believe that only one month ago, we were so hot and so tired of the katydid song and so glad to go into the cool water at the beach.