It has been raining lately and up here on our mountainside sometimes we are inside the clouds and sometimes we are above them. 

The wild boar have found their way into our garden again and left long trails off dug-up trenches in between the grape vines and all across the olive terraces. Mimmo says they aren't really hurting the plants, so we just quietly co-exist with them here in the rain.

In the pub, everyone has moved inside now to sit around one table near the wood-stove. They have put up a sign on the door that says if someone neglects to close the door after themselves when they come in, the next round of drinks is on them.

We sit so close together that our knees are touching. There is the smell of wood smoke. Two different people brought bottles of wine with them Friday night and Daniele railed against them -- but gently -- from where he was playing scopa in the corner with Almo and Alvaro and Luca. Our national tennis hope, Jannik Sinner, won in two sets -- 6-4, 6-3 -- on the television over the door to the kitchen. 

Nonno bought us all punch al mardarino and we drank them as if it was deepest winter although it was only a cloudy evening after a long day of rain and the dark of true winter is still three months away. We ate spicy salami from Napoli and then gorgonzola bruschette and then octopus bruschette and there were, at the height of the evening, twelve people squeezed in around a table for six and when the actual diners started showing up at 8:30, we wandered away and Jonathan and I walked home the long way, holding hands in the wet streets with the moon coming in and out of the clouds and an owl, sounding lost, calling again and again in the woods.

Luciana sent a picture that she took from her bedroom window of our drive and our red maple tree. She can't see our actual house from hers -- no one can see our house because it is hidden away of the back side of a little hill. Jonathan didn't recognize the view and thought she was sending a photo from some fabulous vacation spot. "Wow! Where are you?" he texted back.

She is here, looking at our house.