The little gift that goes a long way…

I’m touched by individual stories of foreigners who have come to the Amalfi coast and have left their hearts behind.   After all it happened to me.   When the individual in question is a little boy who’s barely ten and spent two weeks on the Coast a couple of summers ago, it’s even more poignant.

Annika, who’s blog many of you read, has launched an appeal to pay for her son’s trip to Siena Italy.

Annika is in a one salary situation and can’t afford paying a second fare for her son Alexander from Sweden to Italy, for her much dreamed of, weekend away.

Alexander really desires to go as he’s obviously among many things, ‘un buon gustaio’ and loves Italian food.  But he also appreciates the Italian culture and women, because as you’ll notice on the video that Annika filmed, he made a special friend with this little princess on his trip to Positano.

It’s one of the most beautiful home spun videos that I’ve seen about Positano because it has been made with the secret ingredient: ‘amore e passione’.

Please go read Annika’s story, and give just a little to help Alex join his Mum!

Ladro di Limoni – When Life gives you Lemons, or rather, doesn’t…

My mind may have waffled by age, but the few remaining neurons tell me that we left a lot of lemons behind on the trees in our garden this summer.

It just isn’t possible to consume the quantity they produce, all at one time.   Hundreds found themselves in  granita (seeing that I bought an ice-cream maker at a 70 percent discount).  Others in lemon curds, and lemon tarts non stop.   A large jug of lemonade took up too much permanent space in the small fridge.  Ice lemon tea, lemon marmalade, lemon chicken, grilled fish with lemon…need I continue?

I even bring lemons back with me to Luxembourg. I haven’t bought lemons in years. After having the whopping Sfumata D’Amalfi lemons at your disposal, it’s hard to call the shop bought ones, real citrus.

  

Lemon Pergola

My husband headed back to Positano a week ago and I reminded him that we were low on lemons in Luxembourg. I was sure that he’d bring back as much as his luggage would allow him to. I spoke to him on the phone the next day.

“There are no yellow lemons left” he said.

“ What do you mean? None at all?”, I asked incredulously.

“Not One ! Only green ones”, he insisted.

“Have they all fallen off ?”, I said  facing the fact that strong wind may have contributed to their demise.

“There’s nothing on the ground either!”

They couldn’t have been stolen I thought, because this garden with four lemon pergolas is a completely walled-in garden. No way passers-by would dream of coming in.

Gate to garden.

 

When the gardener dropped by to prune the grapevines yesterday, my husband asked him if he knew what had happened to them.

'”They’ve been stolen”,  he said.  “ Most likely to be next door’s seasonal gardener.  With a  ladder let down from the garden above, they would have taken all of five minutes to snip off the fruit and disappear again”.

Sfusato Amalfitano

Great.   Someone is going to make wonderful limoncello.

         Dear Lemon Thief,

• May all the lemons be dry.
• May they be lacking in flavour.
• May they have trees complete with roots and leaves in each segment.
• May they have scores of pips.
• May the Limoncello you make, give you a terrible hangover.
• May we catch you next time!

Meanwhile, I’ll have to buy the scrawny things in the shops…

Technorati Tags: Positano,lemon pergolas,Sfumato D'Amalfi,Amalfi Coast gardens

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – Think Pink!

It’s been Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October and these lovely ladies have joined in with me to promote the campaign by posting pink pictures and information on their blogs.

I’m offering a virtual flower from my garden to each one ♥

Laura from Ciao Amalfi gave us a whirlwind tour of the towns of the Amalfi Coast and amongst the rainbow of colours, she found pink in the most unexpected places! She stresses the importance of early detection with facts from The National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Sue from The Pownall Chronicles had a great line up of women photographs from her travels and facts from The Pink Ribbon Foundation.

Anne in Oxfordshire shows us her feminine side with pretty pink objects from her dresser. Many of her friends took part in Breast Cancer walks in Paris too.

It was cyclamen season with Pat from Sicily. In Sicily Scene, she stressed the importance of not ignoring lumps however tiny and that men are also subject to Breast Cancer. Thank you for putting up the link to LILT, the Italian Tumor Foundation too.

Darling Fifi from Fifi Flowers Design Decor has used her talents to help the campaign, by donating 10 percent of sales of her zany French pink painting collection to Breast Cancer research.

Michelle from Bleeding Espresso supported the campaign with jewelry and pink coffee machines. She had links to important information from the Breast Cancer.Org and simply suggested that we don’t forget about being vigilant but have Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer in our minds all year long!

I think that that’s a very good point to end on!

Thank you so much girls!

Think Pink!

The tags on blogs have been tinged with colour lately.  Laura from Ciao Amalfi saw red, and Anne from Oxfordshire, and Rowena from Rubber Slippers, to name a few, have both posted with blue objects from their houses .

That gave me an idea. Many of you will be aware that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I thought I might see things through Rose Coloured glasses with hope for a cure and post some pink things from my life in Positano.

 

I don’t want to rock anyone’s boat, but Breast Cancer affects us all.

I’m certain that everyone knows a person who has been touched by the illness.

 

Show your solidarity for these people.

Go on walks, post Pink, wear pink, give to research or simply hug a survivor.

Check, check check your breasts every month after your period.  It is treatable if you get it early. Get any change, however small, checked by your doctor.

Have a mammography or ultrasound every 2 years.

Post your Rose Coloured Photos this month and let me know. I will do a post on October 30th linking you all together in solidarity for the victims, the sufferers and the survivors. 

Think Pink! And remember that the 15th of October is Breast Health Day.

Tails from Positano

I often switch terraces to compare views, to take a stroll while waiting for the pasta pot to boil or simply to spy on my kids on the beach. Sometimes I even feel like waxing lyrical about the poetry of the Positano coast streaming before my eyes.

But every time, before I make myself comfortable on the low wall, I take a peek over its ledge to its rocky side to ascertain that I am the only visible presence in nature at that moment, and then up above my head to check that I’ve not suddenly become part of someone else’s view.

A rustle in the grape vines to my side doesn’t alarm me too much as lizards are a dime a dozen in these parts.

A light thump likewise doesn’t attract my attention.

I catch the movement of a lizard in the corner of my eye.

It seems to have a twig protruding from it.

But this little creature was wearing a second tail on top of it’s first.

A bit like a flagpole mast on the back of a bike.

It quite unabashedly sunned itself until a movement from my dog caused it to launch itself back among the grape vine leaves.

Of course the first thing an Italian local said when I showed them the photo was ‘Porta Fortuna!’ Sure, along with dog and bird droppings. Good Luck indeed.

PS. Did you notice the ET. toes?

Technorati Tags: Positano,Amalfi Coast gardens,gardens,reptiles,lizards,strange creatures

Whiskers on Kittens

Where have all the cats of Fornillo gone?

In our area of Positano, the alleys between villas were a haven for the whiskered felines. Huddled together behind corners, cats and their litters would scatter briefly as someone came down stairs or dodge feet by clinging to the wall’s side in the alley behind Pensione Maria Luisa . There would always be a pair of eyes watching nervously from the top of the walled garden and a handful of fluffy kittens in nestled in the fragrant clump of night-scented Bella di Notte (Clavillia). Tiny ears would be visible in drain pipes under steps and the more courageous or semi -domesticated would follow me all the way home hoping for a tidbit or lick from a tuna can. Usually there was no hope of patting them back.

These were cats born and bred in our gardens. Mouse hunters extraordinares, their mothers would wait patiently in the dark night on our terrace for the rodents to wander past so that a lesson in catching a meal could take place. The scrawny ‘skin and bones’ look to a cat would alert me to a litter badly in need of nourishment and I’d entice the kittens up from the abandoned gardens dangling strings of spaghetti before them. Kittens were sometimes so tiny that their heads would fit right inside yogurt pots and in their hunger, they would forget their fear of humans, to lick my fingers, after I’d hand fed them. Their purring was my reward.

Our gardens in our house in Positano were the throughway for the cats. They’d take the deep stairwell down the hill on the side of the house, and after a jolly jaunt across the terrace take our private stairs into our lower garden and then into the terraced lemon groves below.

These were wary cats that wasted no opportunity. Terrace doors left open were an invitation to come inside.

And if you turned your back a moment, they would. And quite likely pee in the dogs basket as this one did.

But I miss the cats. These were free spirited beings belonging to no one but themselves. They are now few and far between. There is not one cat in the alleyway and I rejoiced when I saw a mother with her two kittens this summer in our garden as its become such rare a sight.

It seems that someone at Positano is poisoning the cats in the Fornillo area. A hand written notice posted on the wall at the Fornillo Grotta area earlier this year asked the person responsible to refrain from doing it but the cats have all but gone.

And when the cats are away, the mice will play.

Technorati Tags: Cats,Positano,gardens,Fornillo

The Winds of Change.

The wind has returned to the Coast.

The gales whip shimmering curtains of light across the turquoise water. Umbrellas are folded politely across the back of the deck chairs and bathers roast unfeelingly in the noon sun.

I love to watch the wispy veils of silver graze the surface of the placid sea. The boats, their weight lightened by the force of the air, twist and turn in unison.

The colours are intensified. I dream of painting our old wood-wormed furniture to match.

But it also means sweeping dirt, real DIRT from inside the house. Leaves from the gardens spangled with bougainvillea pink and purple, somehow make their way through the underside of closed doors. The terrace is swept clean but the stairs accumulate piles and piles of leaves. All doors, inside and out need to be fixed tightly to hooks or blocked with weights to prevent a deafening slam knocking the frames out of skewer. We fear for the glass in the fragile iron frames of the terrace windows. Replacing a pane in the rusty holdings, in this part of the world, in this part of the year, means begging.

Our young Jacaranda tree, already two stories high and permanently fixed to a pole, risks toppling over as we foolishly removed the other two poles that we had placed there against the winter Tramontana wind.

An old blanket and beach towel are taken overboard with the wind and lie in wait for retrieval in the abandoned gardens below the house for several days. When finally the gardener takes a ladder and brings them back up to our place, a tiny snake hidden in the blanket folds stays tight till the late afternoon, before slithering across the terrace head held high and slipping under the umbrella stand.

It takes a good deal of courage on my part to lift the stand and scare it off with a broom back into the abandoned gardens after it insists on staying put where it was.

I think I deserve a medal for that!

Technorati Tags: Snakes,Positano,Sea gardens,Sea winds,Amalfi Coast gardens