The Taste of Life

By now I think you all know about my new project, a piece of land (jungle) of about 1,300 m2, with three caravans in various stages of repair, from rather good to downright disreputable. The land is less than a kilometre by foot from my favourite seaside destination here in Italy, Baratti Bay, and has about 40 huge, shaggy, pine trees that need pruning or cutting down, as well as a multitude of other trees, shrubs, lizards and mosquitoes! I think we are going to call it ‘I Pini’ (Pines) for obvious reasons!

The Jungle!

Baratti Bay

Why do I like Baratti so much? The bay is exquisite, the water crystal clear, except on the odd ‘algae party’ days, and there are no big hotels or housing to spoil the natural beauty. The few small restaurants and bars are good. There is a quaint little port where we keep our boat, Mistral, and the yacht club that Guido belongs to. There is a diving centre and good places to fish, lots of lovely secluded bays to sail to nearby and Elba Island if we want a slightly longer sail. Then there are the Etruscan archaeological sites, Populonia on the promontory with great boutiques and viewpoints, nearby mines to explore and beautiful hamlets that produce amazing wines, such as romantic Bolgheri immortalised in the words of the Italian poet Giosuè Carducci, so there truly is something for everyone there.

Bolgheri

I can’t wait to be there in winter, when tourists desert the beach, so that I can savour the peaceful solitude and cool sea breezes but the rest of the family think it is perfect in summer too. Drake doesn’t care about the seasons as long as there are lizards to chase, cats to scare up trees and he can sleep in the caravan with James – what more could a dog ask for?

I have fallen completely under the spell of I Pini . At home in the Valdarno I sit under a fan all day and melt. It makes me extremely grumpy and a real pain to live with, but there is always a breeze at the land and with all those trees, finding shade is absolutely no problem! With Covid19 ravaging the world I find that I have no inclination to be in crowded places and have only ventured to the beach once this summer, at sunset, for a swim. Luckily, if we want to swim we can go out on the boat, drop anchor and let the water work its magic.

Sea magic

I am content to sit in the shade, read or write in the (relative) cool, accompanied by the thrumming of thousands of cicadas. Unfortunately we also have thousands of mosquitoes but they are everywhere in Italy in the summer so I’ve learnt to cover myself in stinky, sticky antiM repellent, spray the caravans with a lethal dose of stuff before dinner and, try, to ignore them.

I’m gradually getting to know the land and surrounding area, walking the cute dirt tracks through agricultural land, with pretty villas set well back on individual plots, lined with olive trees, cypresses, oleanders and bougainvillea.

On the first weekend that I spent at I Pini I was graciously and generously greeted by my lovely new neighbours, Signora Adrianna and Signora Rita who gave me flowers and vegetables from their vegetable plots. We also met Pietro whose land borders ours at the rear, where our overgrown mass of dried grass and brambles suddenly gives way to his immaculate orchard and vegetable garden. Seeing the neighbour’s lush, jasmine-lined gardens and perfect allotments gives me hope that in the future I too will be able to create the kind of Eden that now  I can only imagine.

How I imagine my future Eden

Pietro, a fit-looking oldie, started up a very enthusiastic conversation with Guido about compost when my man expressed a desire to have a similar veggie space soon. Digging his work-rough hand into his large, raised compost area, he walked over to the fence and sifted through the handful of dark soil to find several ‘precious’ red worms. Very special worms they were too – a few years ago he bought 50 of them and set them to work. Within months they had multiplied to 540 little wriggling darlings and, yes, he counted them! What a sweet man. A bit peculiar but dedicated to his art! He generously picked ripe tomatoes for us and passed them across the fence with an offer to cut our grass for us (it was good for his compost) and a warning that he thought we might have a badger or wild boar wandering around at night. Guido showed him the repairs he had already made in our boundary fencing and Pietro’s eyes lit up at the thought of his compost now being of extra safe.

After the neighbourly encounters, Guido left me to go and take part in a little sailing regatta, so I settled down to have a wonderful, solitary lunch and write this little blog, while everything was so fresh in my mind. I stuck my nose into the bowl of gifts; pungent earthy tomatoes and sweet roses and the scent was amazing. As I sat down to eat in the shade, a robin or nightingale (not sure which as I couldn’t see the bird but I’ll find out) began to serenade me alongside the cicadas in a wonderful symphony... noisy but the kind of sound that brings peace with it.

Pietro’s worms really do a fantastic job with the soil. I tucked into mozzarella and prosciutto with the sweetest tomatoes that I have ever tasted, and my table was decorated with a vase full of gifted flowers.

What a perfect lunch!

As I get older, I think that the simplest things give me the greatest pleasure. I really enjoyed the other days too; an evening rock concert by the sea, Mojitos at the perfect sunset-viewpoint of Populonia and pizza with friends, but nothing compared to the ‘taste of life’, the genuineness of that lunch. I really wanted to be able to find the words to share with you the feeling of joy, peace and total immersion in the moment that I had. The simple act of inhaling Pietro’s tomatoes and the basil that I picked; the warm, dusty, pine-scented breeze that every now and then wafted across my skin; the explosion of taste from that perfect tomato as I took my first bite and, in the background, nature’s sweet serenade – bliss!