It was an extraordinary day ... yesterday

I don't even know where to begin ... last night perhaps, when Alessandra organised a dinner for a few of her friends and I was invited along.  It was outstanding.  

Donatella Soranzio sang, with Luciano Susto on bass guitar, and they were sublime.  I felt so very fortunate to be there listening.  Video by Federico will follow, as it was he who packed his camera and filmed events as they unfolded but they are on youtube as Susto e Soranzo.  And you will see, it was one of those 'pinch me, I'm dreaming' moments, there at Stefano Di Bert's exquisite restaurant called Pacetti Antica Ostaria.

And Stefano ... what a host.  He brought out plate after plate of truly divine food, accompanied by the loveliest of wines ... so many divine wines that came along on that gastronomic journey.  Food and wines from both Friuli and Liguria.  Stefano, Alessandra, Federico, and Donatella are all from the Friuli region. 

1.30am saw Stefano, Barbara, and Alessandra walking me back through quiet city streets to my apartment. This morning, I have to admit that I woke, and lay very still ... checking for hangover damage.  It turns out, the story is true, there is no hangover with good wine and believe me, we had had a lot of very very good wine.

It was one of the most enjoyable evening's I've had in a long time.

Today I had appointments all over the city, ending with a Napoli pizza at my favourite pizzeria on Via Ravecca.

Actually, yesterday I also had lunch with Francesca.  'The' Francesca from Le Gramole.  We laughed often but the dish below, the Troccoli, that made us laugh most of all because I told her of New Zealand's Huhu Grubs ...

I have eaten a Huhu Grub and if you clicked on the link you will have seen why I might have found my Troccoli slightly disconcerting.

I'm too tired to write of everything, although I must add that I also had the pleasure of meeting Sibilla Iacopini.  And I'm enjoying this new apartment in another part of the city.  I'm top floor, with a small balcony and french doors that I open each morning as a way of beginning the day.

I'll take some photographs when my days stop spinning but really ... I love the spinning.

In These Days ...

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves

Erica Jong, extract from Women Enough.

I've been busy ... a project, of course.  A new website specifically for the project, and all kinds of other things too.

At night, I shift my aching body from my ergonomically-disasterous desk and creak to my bed ... tired from sitting rather than anything deliciously active.

But the website is almost done.  I'll launch soon, via a newsletter that shall become regular.  I'm eyeing Instagram too ... I'm in Genova next week, it seems like a good time to work out all this social media stuff that I've mostly ignored, as the new project is all about Genova.

I've been cooking and cleaning, imagining myself quite marvelously productive there too, although wanting more applause than I get for fitting everything into my day.  I've always been dubious about this housewife stuff.  It seems to run along the lines of 'if a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to see it ...'  Same with housework.  A clean house is the result of many lost minutes and hours.  Many.

Erica Jong wrote the perfect poem when she wrote Women Enough. 

So precisely, yes.

But I must work.  I have one more in the elderberry series to post.  It's been up to 28 celsius, thunderstormy, calm and cool too.  It's Spring.  I'm loving it.

Out in the Garden ...

This morning my camera and I wandered out to the garden but it's not really my garden at all.  The Jasmine ... okay, I carried that home from the Amsterdam Flower Market one year, on the train, traveling with my favourite Australian, Clare.

And I pushed for the lavender plants and the honeysuckle too, bought one of the raspberry canes, and asked if we might have a fern.  I was rapt when Gert's parents gave him a part of their rhubarb plant ... while wishing I could have had a slice from the root of the mythical rhubarb plant back home in New Zealand.

Nana and Grandad grew the best rhubarb in the world, or that's how we told it.  Mum and Dad were given a section with roots and voila, we had some of that Invercargill perfection growing out back in our Mosgiel garden.

But I'm more of an admirer of gardens ... as opposed to being an actual gardener.  My mother would have told you that I was a bit of a lazy wench when it came to gardening.  I preferred reading or walking my dog, or just simply watching.  I should have been ashamed, as I come from a long line of hardworking, dedicated gardeners but I wasn't.

Then  I met Gert, who didn't garden but does now ... just like the New Zealanders I grew up around and so our garden is all thanks to him.  The big fat toads living out there simply amuse him.  He brushes off spiders, and goes into battle with the Ivy when it threatens to overwhelm all.

He BBQ's too, and this time I don't have a dog to get rid of the evidence about totally not being a Kiwi when it comes to BBQ food.

So these photographs taken by me mostly capture the result of his hard work and dedication ...

It was a Sunday morning impulse to attempt to capture a sense of how this beautiful day is playing out in our tiny pocket-sized Belgian garden.

A Lightness of Being ...

For me, there is this feeling of an incredible lightness of being that comes with that first really summery Sunday morning of the year.

We can finally open the door to the garden and enjoy the scent of the Jasmine I'm growing not far away.  But better than anything else, in those early morning hours, Nature often wins out as the dominant scent in the air ... especially on a Sunday when the roar of that massively busy highway nearby becomes so much less.

I wandered outside with my camera just now, startled a thrush, then watched a pigeon fly clumsily away.  The lawns will be mown today, there is a BBQ planned for our evening.  It's the first of this summery season. 

And the rhubarb is going crazy out there, so are the raspberry plants.  The fern has experienced new hope and is growing accordingly, and my beloved New Zealand Lupins are finally making an appearance too.  The yellow ones, the kind found growing at beaches back home.  Those ones that have a scent I love like nothing else.

Somehow they manage to contain both this huge celebration of summer and the promise of the sea.  I would fill my garden with these if I could.  But they're not in flower yet so I still don't know if they will grow and smell as they do on the other side of the world.

But it was the Elderberry blossom that turned my head this morning.  Perhaps more photos will follow.  The elderberry berrries are usually gobbled up by the pigeons but the birds were here first and do so little to harm the environment that it feels okay to let that situation be.

A good morning to you out there in the world.  I hope your Sunday is lovely in that way you need it to be.