The beauty of rain

Raining. Finally. And you can just smell the soil sucking it up thirstily.

Raindrops on clematis buds.

Carmine Superiore.

Quote of the week No. 45 : On guests

Coolish and overcast. Damp after light unaccustomed rain.

There is, I'm told, a Russian proverb which goes like this: 

"The guest has not to thank the host, rather, the host should thank the guest."

After a week in which Carmine Superiore has been visited by hundreds of intrepid walkers, and our house in particular has been graced every day by the presence of guests who arrived from the length and breadth of Europe, the day promises to be a quiet one.

Before 'normal' life resumes (it's all relative), I'd like to say thank-you in the Russian way to all who came to our home, and made our Easter so happy and, having mixed business with pleasure, so productive. 

And thank-you to all who came to Easter Mass, for which the church of San Gottardo, jewel of Lago Maggiore, was heaving at the seams.  

Spasibo!

Happy Easter/Buona Pasqua

The last of my camellias and the first of my roses - 

for today's Easter mass.

Easter greetings...

...and may your springtime garden - whatever shape and form it happens to take - grow beautiful, healthy and fertile.

Not St George's Day

Coolish, benignly overcast, and with patches of damp where it tried to rain last night.

For the whole of my life, 23 April has been St George's Day, that day when the English agonise over whether to celebrate their patron saint or whether it would all be too politically incorrect for words. Well not this 23 April. And that's because today is also Holy Saturday, when there are traditionally no divine services until the evening's Easter Vigil. 

So that George gets a look-in somewhere along the line this year he's been shifted to Monday, when there will undoubtedly be plenty of angst-free celebrations in other places where he's the patron saint, such as Malta, Palestine, Istanbul, Moscow, Venice, Saskatchewan, Beirut, Moscow, Genoa, Constantinople and Brissago. 

In the meantime, here's a quick slain dragon to keep you in the mood...

The dragon slain, church door, Varzo

Hooray for brave knights on white chargers rescuing fair maidens in distress!

Maundy Thursday, moving day

A bright and warm day with a cooling breeze. The soil is dust-dry underfoot and I can't get the sprinkler to work...

Today, Mama's babies are 17 days old. All the children hereabouts have visited, petted, cuddled and occasionally dropped a chick in the past couple of weeks (and with Easter upon us there are plenty of juvenile feet crashing up and down the staircase in search of fluffy love). 

For the last few days, however, the chicks have been blessed with the power of flight and have taken to jumping out of their cardboard box and, Gremlin-like, have been wreaking havoc in the bathroom. 

Now I used to live in intimate co-habitational bliss with a herring gull, brought as an injured chick from the Castelli di Cannero. It doesn't bear thinking about now that the house is more, shall we say, civilised (it's all relative), but it does mean that Mama doesn't mind the chicks. 

She doesn't mind having 21 chicks hurl themselves at her across the floor like so many plump, fluffy bullets every time she comes into the room.

She doesn't mind when they get into the food sack and spray grain everywhere.

She doesn't mind that slimy, squidgy feeling between her toes.

And she really doesn't mind being sat on like a statue in Trafalgar Square when she's herself sitting and trying to get to the end of the Economist book reviews section despite the fluttering of tiny wings.

But perhaps the cat might do more than take a lively interest in the lively goings on.

"Eeny-meeny-miney-miaow..."

And perhaps we all might decide that a little showertime privacy would be nice.

"No peeking, cheeky!"

And perhaps the avalanche of Easter guests about to dump itself on us starting tomorrow might mind the slime, the smell and the uncertainty of stepping into a seething mass of yellow fluff.

So today was the day for the class of 2011 to fly the nest.

On arrival at Palazzo Pollo, their new quarters, the little ones were immediately sized up by the cockerel. I should explain that when this brood was conceived there were two other cockerels besides this one. Our grand 4-year-old cock died, perhaps trying to keep up with the youngsters in the procreation stakes, and one of the two yearlings went in the freezer, leaving this fella uncertain of his paternal position...

"I want DNA tests on the whole lot of 'em before I show them where the worms are..."

And arriving in situ, they formally met some hens that may or may not be their mothers.

"Are you my Mommee?"

And now Mama is an empty-nester, and is so sad that she has started wondering if anyone would notice if she half-inched a few eggs every day and quietly warmed up the incubator again...

A rose for Monday

Warm and sunny, and dry, dry, dry. 

In my garden, the first roses are blooming. 

This one is to wish you a happy Easter Week.

Reported conversations No. 25 : Morning similes

The usual morning dash for school has Mama, AJ (age 6), B. (age 4) and Jakob! (the canine teenager) belting down the hill to make up the time spent looking out and rejecting a heap of summer clothes before finding something that works.

Safely belted in with Jakob! sitting in the hatchback, and cruising the curves in fourth, Mama lets out a sigh of relief:

Mama: Thanks, guys, for coming down so fast today. Now we won't be late for school. I couldn't believe how fast you were! You were as fast as a rocket!

AJ: Fast as a ... racing car!

Mama: Fast as a ... bullet!

AJ: Fast as a ... speedboat!

Mama: Fast as a ... racehorse!

B.: Fast as a ... salami!

Howls of demented laughter from the back of the car. I catch Jakob!'s eye in the rear view mirror. His expression says, "You can keep the similes ... but I'll take the salamis..."

Motherhood means ... No. 28

Fourteen degrees at 8am. Clear-ish skies. Warm sunshine. The late-twenties heatwave continues.

Motherhood means...

...unconditional love, even when your six-year-old son thinks the funniest thing he's done all day is sitting on your head and making farty noises, and especially when he decides to make it part of his bedtime routine...

Broody

Weather continuing dry and glorious with highs around the mid- to upper twenties. Could do with some rain, but I'm not complaining...

This week there has been a broody hen in Carmine. For days, Mama has been fretting and fiddling and watching and waiting. Adjusting the temperature a fraction of a degree here, scattering a few droplets of room-temperature water there. Making embarrassing chirping noises that closely resemble the noises she makes when feeding the dog and the cats, and thus sending the poor creatures nuts.

The pasta is boiling dry! Where's Mama? Upstairs. The kids are trying to kill one another! Where's Mama? Upstairs. The phone is ringing off the hook! Where's Mama? Upstairs. Time to go to school! Where's Mama? Upstairs...

Finally, Mama went into labour, and after 24 hours of expectant panting up and down the stairs, checking on the very slow progress, she gave up and went to bed.

That's when it all happened. Sixteen little beaks tapping on shells. Sixteen sets of tiny shoulder muscles bracing and shuddering and making appear tiny spider cracks. Sixteen bedraggled and ugly-as-sin chicks safely hatched and either drying in the incubator or already snoozing safely together in a heap of Easter-yellow fluff.

Bionda Piemontese chicks, less than a day old.

And now Mama is high as a kite on the miracle of new life, and insists on running around town spreading the good news, and will soon, surely, be approached by chaps with gentle voices bearing with them a strange white jacket...

Blossom...

...after the rain.

Quote of the week No. 44

This week's weather has been over 10° at the 8am checkpoint and in the mid-20s in the afternoons. Bright sunshine but with a reality-check wind.

Seen on an old Fiat Panda similar to ours but quite a lot less battered:

"Before you laugh at my car, finish making the payments on yours."

I guess that's the right attitude to have in a world in financial crisis...