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.