Every day more chestnut leaves fall and our view of the sea becomes more clear. Today, the water is wild and gray with furious white breakers foaming far out past the edge of the pier at Marina di Pietrasanta. The offshore islands have all disappeared into the fog.

This morning, we brought two teensy bottles of our olive oil down to Barbara and Sara, who promised to try it and to let us know their honest opinion. (They won't -- they will tell us it is wonderful no matter what, because to tell someone that their olive oil is good is to tell them that you are friends.) 

This is just the latest in the big interlocking circles of generosity that go on around here -- we gave the painters corbezzoli jam and they gave us ancient grain flour. Fabio and Luciano give us figs and we give them marmalade. We are involved in exchanges of chestnuts and books and persimmons, lemons and limoncello and liqueurs and dried lavender, potted plants and pickled kumquats, Italian gelato and Swiss chocolate and Polish vodka, math tutoring and holiday wreaths and honey and tomato sauce and wildflowers.

So I feel sad for people who are stuck living in a dog-eat-dog world of unfettered capitalism and corporate greed and the profit motive and I-got-mine-Jack-so-fuck-you. They never know the wonderful surprise of finding flowers from a friend tied together with string and left on the garden wall.