The Harvest

Back to the States, to a head cold, to the chill of fall.

Tuscany beautiful in a rough-hewn, ancient, wine-ripe sort of way. We had a silver full moon for three nights casting a piercing light over the grape vines below our farmhouse. Cows lowed in the distance. Mornings, the grass between the lines of bulging purple grapes was wet.

Harvest Time in Tuscany

At a winery that hosted us for lunch we gazed across at the lofty skyline of San Gimignano and visited with a two-week-old calf from ancient, white-coated, thick-horned forbears.

Etruscan Calf

We ate wild boar sausage, red and raw-tasting. Made pizza in an old wood-burning oven outside that had seen lots of dough in its day.

Oven Shelter

Traipsed through an abandoned castle in the woods. Drank cappuccinos at the edge of Siena’s red slanted Campo, its central square.

Il Campo, Siena

Also caught this guy on a wall in Siena:

Siena Head Banger

Etruscan ruins nestled in the southern walled hill towns, and we climbed ramparts manned by soldiers 800 years ago, the scent of wine and mint and rosemary in the air…

In Florence, a fearful message from a medieval past.

While a modern David stood tall and unperturbable in the Accademia.

Toy Story

But Florence had a piquant salutation for us as soon as we crossed the Arno, in a delicate bit of graffiti.