Trains, boats, & planes, & coaches lead to coppiced trees

No boats actually, but the other three came into play, and clearly TPP is not in Kansas any more, not that he was or even wanted to be.  But here on the north west coast of Italy is where we find ourselves in a rented villa of an heir to the Fiat fortunes.  One of the many things that give it away are how they treat their street trees.  They use a lot of lindens, that are sometimes called lime trees because their flowers smell sweet rather like those of citrus trees.  And they prune the heck out of them, a type of coppicing.  In this little town the crowns are pruned to meet over the center of the street, which is typically enough one-way and narrow.  And you drive under these leafy arches.  It is quite lovely and as you know TPP does not like to see trees and shrubs poodled.  But this is a bit different and on a grand scale.  This is just not done in the USA except on a small scale in some gardens.  

The Great Gelato Challenge - Post game wrap up

TPP is surprised you could stand the suspense, but here it is, with time running out, with the lay-over in Rome coming to an end, so just before we departed Italy, Mrs. Phactor yanked victory from the freezer of defeat!  The little restaurant in one corner of the terminal had, much to Mrs. Phactor's surprise and delight, exactly 1 new flavor of gelato giving her exactly 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days!  Now some people might want to put an asterisk because technically, based on labels, she had passion fruit gelato twice (and did TPP ever mention his wife's fondness for passion fruit?), but they most assuredly were different flavors, one sort of eh, and the other a brisk, tart-sweet, zing of passion fruit, more or less what we expect!  This unassuming little shop the Cantina del Gelato is about a block along Via dei Bardi from the Ponte Vecchio, but they have the best artisanal gelato. It however lacks the fancy glass display counters and colorful trays, but the aficionados know quality when they find quality. And with gelato, it is all about taste, not appearance.  Also, remember, tastes and licks just don't count, but a small cup with two flavors was allowed. Here's the gelato flavors rundown: coconut, espresso, lemon, mango, vanilla-bourbon, cherries & cream, hazelnut, peach (quite good), mora (blackberry, but sometimes mulberry is also called mora), caramel, pinenut, dark chocolate, passion fruit eh, mojito (lime mostly, hint of mint), mint chocolate chip, pistachio, white chocolate with bits, raisin, peanut butter (a surprise actually), passion fruit zing!, chianti (a real disappointment considering this was in Tuscany), pear & cheese (more like cheesecake with pear bits), mascarpone, tiramisu, strawberry, watermelon, plum, pineapple, chocolate chip, and egg cream (another surprise). You can figure out the problem right away; common and popular flavors are found repeatedly, and toward the end several gelato places failed to produce a new flavor, and the only person this did not disappoint was a nephew who got vanilla at each and every place, a different sort of survey. Mrs. Phactor played it very cagey selecting what she thought was the most unusual flavors first leaving many common flavors until toward the end, e.g., strawberry, which was bloody good strawberry as it turned out. 

Classic Italian botany

Here’s some historical Italian botany; an illustration by Jacopo Ligozzi on display in the Palazzo Pitti and photographed without flash in keeping with museum policy.  Always impressed by how well this camera does in low light conditions. The interesting thing is that this lovely illustration (ca. 1577-1567) of mandrake (Mandragora autumnalis – Nightshade family) is pretty accurate (flowers aren't quite right) while illustrations of an earlier era portrayed this famous toxic plant  anthropomorphically and very inaccurately. (Does anyone remember Mandrake the Magician comics?) This illustration has held up very well for 400 plus years. Ligozzi was about 20 years earlier than Gerard’s famous herbal, which also had fairly accurate (although sometimes mislabeled) illustrations.  According to legend, and as portrayed in Harry Potter, a mandrake it could scream so loud it could kill you if you pulled it up, even if to repot it.  Here the taproots, often branched, look like roots rather than arms and/or legs. 

Death by Vespa

The most dangerous thing in Italy other than the narrow mountain roads enclosed by rocky walls are Vespas. There are two ways to die by Vespa, at least as TPP sees it. Death of the first kind deals strictly with Vespa drivers who dart in and out of traffic, even if the bother to throw out a hand signal before cutting into your lane, or cutting between buses and trucks at the rare stop sign, or zipping to the front of traffic lines. Even with reasonable vigilance TPP has almost creamed a couple of them, and he dreads returning the rental car with a new hood ornament. While mildly troubling, risky behavior is a person's own business and if this is you chosen method of offing yourself, by all means be TPPs guest so long as he remains uninvolved.  Second, and this is rather the scarier, is when you get caught midway across a street, or alley, by a flock of Vespas charging down upon you with the intent to kill. While individually they are not large, in coordinated pedestrian-hunting flocks they can be quite intimidating with their powder-blue alpha Vespa piloted by a sunglass and scarf wearing, flashily-dressed blond (?) matron of indeterminate age in high heels. Yes, this will produce quite an adrenaline rush as you sprint for the relative safety of a bus lane. So beware you drivers and walkers; the Vespas are stalking you. 

The Gelato Challenge

As a partial compensation for having dumped on Italian bread, TPP will admit that gelato is great stuff. Personal challenges can be highly motivating, so far be it for TPP to ever suggest that Mrs. Phactor's gelato challenge is anything but a righteous endeavor. So here it is: 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days, hey, and licks or tastes don't

count. The effort involved cannot be diminished, nor can the sacrifice.  Her major problem is that our Tuscan residence is quite a ways from the nearest gelato emporium. Today while visiting Florence, she made a major effort to regain her pace.  First, she started with a basic chocolate (now don't criticize, you can get distracted by the exotic flavors, so this is showing some deep strategy). Later when she needed a basic pick-me-up, and had located the Gelato Fanstastico, with a modest 50 flavors (but not black sapote - for that you must seek the Frosty Mango). At any rate this establishment had passion fruit gelato, one of our favorites, but it was not up to Frosty Mango standards although pretty good, and mojito. As much as TPP loves his topical fruit gelatos, he had to admit that the mojito was superb. But it's still no black sapote! We will see how this challenge progresses.  So far her new flavor favorite has been pine nut, pignoli, gelato. Anyone want to make suggestions for her? The comments are open. The image is not Mrs. Phactor, but clearly a well-focused gelato devotee. 

To the manor born - not!

Ah, yes, all my relatives especially Mrs. Phactor and the F1 think my retirement was a brilliant move.  Well, at least the part where TPP rented (actually Mrs. Phactor made this happen if truth be known and credit is given where credit is due) a villa so that everyone had an excuse to visit Tuscany.  Presently the number of visitors is 9; next week it’s just 4 (but more troublesome types), then 4 more, and then 5 more the week after that. Thirteen relatives (rent-a-mob), 8 friends, and a young German biologist, go figure.  How’s that for instigating travel?  How's that for mooching?  The Italian tourist bureau should be giving us a medal!  Is it an actually villa, you may ask?  Sadly no, firstly because Torre a Cona is the summer manor house of the Count Rossi di Montelera, so it actually isn’t for rent, and secondly because TPP was just a university professor, but the estate has a number of residences that are within TPP’s price range.  Look down the hill to the right of the monstrous manor house and you’ll see the 3^rd floor loft of our quite spacious, pinkish Tuscan residence sticking up above the olive trees. It’s disappointing that the Count has not walked, or driven, or been  driven, down the hill to greet us yet, so he’s probably busy, or just most likely he doesn’t realize who his tenants are.  He makes some very good wine & olive oil.  Obviously vineyards and olive groves dominate the agricultural landscape here abouts, although a great many other tree fruits are grown in way smaller amounts: apples, peaches, plums, figs, cherries, and even a medlar here or there.  The scenery is just wonderful with manor houses, fortresses, and little towns dotting the hilly landscape with ochre and red tile splotches amid the green of orchards and vineyards.  The fresh produce is quite nice and surprisingly extensive. It appears that testing the concept that someone could get tired of Italian food may take some time. By almost anyone’s standards the assembled troops are eating and drinking very well.  Mrs. Phactor is on a quest to do 30 gelato flavors in 30 days.  Hercules should have had such tasks!  Today she checked off mango & lemon.  Do the Italians make a sausage that isn’t terrific?  Do they make a cheese that isn’t wonderful?  Do they make a bread that doesn’t have a nice crust? The world wants to know. Someone has to try to find out. TPP is the man to let you know.  Ciao.

Buongiorno

TPP has taken up a new residency for a month. Rent-a-mob, the inlaws, have already descended upon us. After two days of traffic, airports, airplanes, and in some cases, trains, some lost time, an epic grocery shopping stop to get some bread, some butter, some wine, just the necessities, a fun time teaching our GPS a new language, a quick lesson in the local scary driving style, lots of narrow, curvy, walled roads, a very late meal of carbonara, followed by a fatigued collapse into something remotely like sleep, TPP awakened to find himself somewhere in Tuscany, the paying guest of a count and countess. The point of this is to convince his academic counterpart that waking up surrounded by vineyards and olive trees is just as much fun, just as relaxing, just as renewing as preparing for the fall's onslaught of little academic savages to teach.  The therapy seems to be working. The view is from the long wooden kitchen table so recently occupied by the mob for some coffee, toast, and fruit. Most importantly, the only thing planned for today is to make some dinner, perhaps a nice puttanesca.