We are rapidly approaching our next trip. This time we will go to France, the Rhone valley, and meet up with my sister (Cindy) and her husband (Bill). This is an important trip as it is the first for Cindy after her arduous treatment last year for Multiple Myeloma. She is doing well. As in past years when we always planned a trip and met up somewhere where we wanted to tour, we are doing the same now. We are taking a river boat down the Rhone. We have never done one before, just ocean cruises.
We have house/cat sitters coming as we always do. It is ungodly hot right now in Europe. Hopefully there will be a break end of next week, I’m packing and getting the house cleaned and wrapping up details that need attention.
We fly from Rome to Munich and then to Lyon. We have a hired driver to take us to Chalone-sur-Saone where we stay 3 nights. The boat sails from there.
~~~~~~~~~ Of course, my tomatoes would begin to ripen just as I am leaving. But we did get our first one and ate it last night. Not the best tomato I’ve had, but good. It looks like our house sitters will reap the bounty for the next two weeks. I hope they like tomatoes!
Tomorrow we drive to Fiumicino to spend the night before flying out. Looking forward to seeing my sister. Of course, there WILL be a Trip Report!
This is a sad post. We lost our beloved cat and esteemed member of our little family, Rocky Diego Cat last night. He was nearly 17. Sudden inability to breathe, 2am visit to emergency vet. Did tests. Chest full of fluid. They put him in an oxygenated cage. He seemed comfortable when we left. It was the last time I saw him, peering at me across the room.
Next day we talked to them. They had determined it was pneumonia and were treating with antibiotics. During the night he had what they called a circulatory collapse. I am sorry I didn’t go visit him yesterday when I had a chance. He had been alone and away from people he knew. Anyway he has passed to the rainbow bridge. After 17 years it leaves a big hole in your heart.
He and his brother shared all our adventures to cross an ocean and move twice. But they were troopers.
You may wonder about his name. When we got him they called him Diego after Diego the explorer. He wanted to be “involved” in everything. We renamed him Rocky, but kept the Diego. He was the most curious of all cats and always wanted to be in the middle of any things going on in the house. He loved to “help”. We called him the Great White Cat or the Gentle Giant. He had the biggest, loudest purr of any of our cats. When he was young, he was magnificent. Never hurt a fly. One of a kind, he was. Here are a few photos.
In this one he was older but still pretty.
Diego the explorer. Note the front feet. He had to “help” with the stufa cleaning.
He especially loved jigsaw puzzles. He liked to be right in the middle of the action.
Goofy cat!
Goodbye Mr. Rock Star. You were a fine cat. May you rest in peace. I will meet my Rocket Man in the stars like the Rock Star he was. ⭐️ 🌈
Orto box (vegetable garden box) is the name of the enterprise our entrepreneur farmer has created here in the upper Tiber valley, or Val Tiberino. I met him today. Luca, a young farmer. He brought my first delivery. It is very early in the season yet so I got two big heads of lettuce, some red spring onions, 5 big zucchini, and a few zucchini flowers. It cost 10€. Picture.
Since the lettuce was so big, I shared half, plus e a zucchini, with my cleaner, Linda. She was thrilled to get it.
Last night I used the zucchini flowers and one zucchini to make a pasta sauce. Chop small onion, two garlic cloves sauté in olive oil. Cube the zucchini and chop flowers and add. I added thyme and a few pepper flakes now. Then cook a few minutes until softened. I used orecchiette pasta. It was good. Didn’t take a photo! Oops.
I unearthed my first new potatoes. So fun. We had a gigantico bistecca on the outside fire and I thought it was an appropriate time to dig a couple potato plants up and see what we got. Like a treasure hunt! Each plant produced 4 potatoes We had them for dinner and they were tender and creamy with melted butter on them.
The big project is my new composter! The beds outside and all the planters seem to “eat” soil. Every year they need additional. Where it goes, I have no idea! I have a lot of clippings from the gardens out there. Olive branches, weeds, trimming for the winter. Things perfect for composting. And I always have lots of biodegradable garbage. We have every sort of recycling container outside the building. Normally I go down five floors (thank god for the elevator!) and walk outside to dump it. My idea is to just use it as compost. Make my own soil. I ordered a nice looking composter from Amazon. Luther lugged the box up and I unpacked it. Whoa! It looked very complex. I hate assembling things. But I got started and then had to enlist Luther. One person just couldn’t do it. Progress so far.
And the finished product. I have started putting in my refuse already. It is called a noble art which goes back centuries. The first recycling as it were.
Today I heard from Luca at Orto Box, the farmer entrepreneur who is trying to organize farmers and consumers for bi-weekly veggie deliveries here in the Upper Tiber Valley. I wrote about him a while ago, Tomorrow I get my first delivery. I will write a post soon about the box and what I get. Ciao!
[NOTE: all photos “borrowed” except the last one in the Niccone valley]
I read everything I can find about what happened here in Umbria during the Second World War. It was a horrible time. Before I talk about what happened in Umbria a little overall background. The war had gone badly for Italy after the Allies invaded North Africa and then invaded Sicily. The Italian Grand Council had seen enough and Mussolini lost a vote of confidence from the King. He was arrested.
Italy surrendered to the allies in September 1943 and allowed the allies to land in Salerno, south of Napoli. Thing was, the Germans were still IN Italy and the Germans even brought new forces in through the Brenner pass. They prepared to dig in and fight. They treated Italy as an occupied country and freed Mussolini who set up a puppet state called the Italian Social Republic.
Italy declared war on Germany in October 1943. What ensued was horrible, Italian and allied troops moved up the Italian peninsula slowly pushing the Germans northward. It was two years of unrelenting warfare. And this was happening where Italians lived and tried to survive. You can imagine. But to complicate things, there was civil unrest within the Italian population with the Partisans fighting against Mussolini’s puppet state (in reality fighting the Germans who propped up that State).
Of course there was a lot more after that before the war ended in italy. But I also want to get to what happened in Umbertide. First I want give a bit of info about the rest of Umbria.
Orvieto was the first to be occupied. It is on the left south of the big Lago Trasimeno. It was very strategically placed between Rome and Florence. But the line was pushed north and the next German defensive line was Lake Trasimeno. Perugia was liberated in June 1944.
Orvieto up on it’s tufa bluff. This made it defensible, until it wasn’t.
Next, an uplifting story was about brave priests in Assisi, and acts of moral courage during the war. Bishop Giuseppe Placido Nicolini, Father Aldo Brunacci, and Franciscan Father Rufino Niccacci built a secret network that provided Jews with false identity papers and sheltered them in monasteries and convents — saving approximately 300 Jews from the Holocaust. The papers were transported by Father Nicolini inside his cassock. The Germans never searched him. A famous Italian cyclist hid the papers inside the frame of his cycle. If they asked to search he said he had just gotten the bike “tuned” for a race and please don’t disassemble it. They didn’t. The Germans admired this famous cyclist and he was never caught.
Father Giuseppe Placido Nicolini.
Sheltering places were arranged in 26 monasteries and convents, and false transit papers were provided — many claiming the bearer was from southern Italy, an area already liberated by Americans. Father Niccacci dressed many of the refugees as monks and nuns, taught them Catholic ritual, and hid them in monasteries.
Even a German colonel, assigned to Assisi, Valentin Müller, head of medical operations, who was a devout Catholic, worked to spare Assisi from destruction.
As one Jewish survivor, Professor Emilio Viterbi, later said: “In the mass extermination of six million European Jews, in Assisi not one of us came to any harm.
Now for the dark side. The partisans were all up in the rugged mountains around Umbertide, Città di Castello and Gubbio, as well as other places on the peninsula. That is where the partigiani had their secret places to hide and their stockpiled arms. They actively undermined the Germans whenever they could. It was a dangerous business.
In Gubbio there is the story of the 40 martyrs. The policy of the Germans was if a Partisan killed a German they would kill 40 Italians in retaliation. That happened in Gubbio. A German soldier was killed by partigiani and they lined up 40 civilians against a wall and shot them. All ages, both sexes. There is a monument there now.
Monument to the 40 martiri.
Here in Umbertide there were reprisals against an extended family of 12 members, innocent civilians and many children. They were rounded up and murdered inside their house in the Niccone valley. Ever since that massacre the house sat unoccupied up on the hill. A monument is beside the road now.
In the past few months I have noticed someone is renovating the house. No idea who. I asked around. I was dumbfounded. The house has stood empty 82 years. I thought it was a memorial, or that since 12 people were gunned down there people were too superstitious to live there. I would have second thoughts for sure. Would you? 😳
