I am listening to @clareartista 's latest podcast entry ( see her profile for a link ), while writing this. It's late morning, here in Roccavivara and we have spent 10 days in a row on our new land. It's our third time here, staying overnight, and our longest stretch so far.
For Your information, we discovered this plot of land a month and a half ago and became the proud owners two weeks later(!), one month ago.
It's a bit confusing to listen to both her podcast and work on my own post but, as per usual, eventhough I hear it a lot ( living together ) her voice is very calming and it still is pretty special that someone who I used to listen to long distance ( for almost 5 years ), is now spending most of her time with me. In fact, we haven't been apart for a single day for almost a year now(!). Ever since we first met in real life.
Comunque/anyway, this was supposed to be a post about abundance but I will mainly let the photos speak for themselves...
Here's some pictures of the nearest/ most prolific cornus mas ( cornelian cherry ) tree on the edge of our land. We have been drying hundreds of these berries for a handful of days now ( and only picked about 10 percent ). The taste is sweet sour ( once dried ) and very sour when eaten straight from the tree.
The second and third photo show our 'casetta' ( brick building improvised on top of old stables ).
I could go from picture to picture, to describe things to you but I think the message is pretty clear. So, instead I suggest that you just scroll through them and enjoy the natural abundance and the beauty of nature, here on the Italian countryside. 650 meters above sea level and 40 kms away from the sea ( we can just about see the latter on a clear day ).
*Make sure to scroll down past all the pictures, to read the end of today's post.*
I have no doubt that you enjoyed these pictures of ripening peaches and pomegrenates, olives that need a couple more months. Close ups of juicy brambles and exciting berries, as well as all the green, the sky around our land and so on and so forth.
And then, while writing this, it started raining again. We might not have a water connection nor any water in the old ( improvised looking ) well on our land, we do seem to already have an abundance of rain. And, interestingly enough ( but not surprising to us ), we already seemed to have an abundant harvest ( brambles, cornus mas, figs, hazelnuts among other things ) before it even rained. And that during the driest time of the year, mid to late Summer.
You can only imagine how the land changed/ has been changing, since the rain started falling down seriously ( we even experienced a little hail shower, yesterday afternoon ).
Long story short, we can't wait to see and discover all the greens sprouting up on our 11000 square meters of clearly pretty fertile land. Clare was very excited to discover some 'bietoli', yesterday evening, one of her favorite foragable greens.
*I hope you enjoyed this little insight in our ever greener garden. I sure enjoyed sharing this.
Much love from Molisse,
Vincenzo
formerly known as Vincent.