The Olive-picking Wake

by | Nov 24, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel

Olive picking in Tuscany has been the high point before Christmas. It happens in Keats’s ‘Season of mellow fruitfulness’ before the trees are bare and the earth hardened by frost. Or so it used to be. The persimmon tree in front of the house was laden with orange...

Autumn Colour or None

by | Nov 7, 2014 | Uncategorized

Olives eaten by bugs and autumn leaves blown off by gales – what a prelude to winter! Every year we drive to Rievaulx Abbey to see the autumn colour and walk along the terrace  with a perfect view down to the ruined abbey in the valley below. It was one of the ones...