At Sunday afternoon’s ‘Festa del Pappagallo’ (‘parrot fete’) in Fornoli’s Parco della Pace dedicated to Liliana Urbach. Thanks Marco Nicoli for organizing it and letting us forget the heat!

We spent last Saturday afternoon in the company of Marco Pardini, one of the most eminent ethnobotanists in our part of the world. A regular presenter of his subject on NOI TV, the local television channel serving Tuscany and the Lucchesia, Marco escorted us through the magical flora of Barga’s Parco Bruno Buozzi which can be sighted below one of the bridges connecting the city’s historic old town to its newer development of villas.

(Marco telling us about Saint John’s Wort)

But who is an ethnobotanist?  He/she is someone who studies how people make use of native plants and what significance they have in their own culture. Plants principally provide food but they also can serve as medicines, dyes, fibres, oils, resins, gums, soaps, waxes, latex and tannins. Their substance can be used for anything from making clothes to building houses and without their presence we would be unable to breathe.

Marco is a long-serving practitioner of this valuable field of study and has a therapy centre treating patients with remedies derived from plants. A brilliant teacher of his subject and with his base at Viareggio Marco has recently opened a branch near us at Pian della Rocca. He is also an author on ethnobotany and we have greatly enjoyed reading his latest book called “Erbario Poetico” which sums up the difficult predicament in which our age finds itself.

Marco asks what still has to happen to humanity for it to finally realize and make amends for the rapidly deteriorating condition our planet finds itself in, particularly with regard to climate change.

For if we continue to cut down forests to make way for cultivation, expand cities into megalopolises, erode the soil, desertify and so, unguardedly alter nature’s delicate balance, there will be unimaginable consequences. Global warming is already generating a climatic instability now experienced by all of us. Italy, for example, is currently suffering from the worst of arid conditions it has known and thousands of acres of crops including maize and rice have already been lost through lack of water. The river Po has even turned from fresh to salt water for part of its length. Tropical storms arise in areas that were once temperate. An increased number of tsunamis and ever-more disastrous flooding (CF today in Assam) are affecting us.

Moreover, humans increasingly are coming into contact with wild animals able to transmit frightening epidemics through “species-leap”. (There’s no need to specify which epidemics we are referring to!) In short, the Earth is like our mother and must be treated with equal love and respect.  We must urgently change attitudes and adopt the concern and awareness that has been forgotten for so long before it is sadly and irreversibly too late.

The Parco Buozzi encloses a fascinating array of plants and some fine trees including Douglas Pine, Ash, Beech, and Tree of Heaven. Many of the flora have one main feature: they are largely non-native to the area. I would have liked to know more about why this is so. Perhaps, returning emigrants (and Barga has had a considerably high rate of emigration, largely to Scotland and Canada) might have brought these species to their place of birth for ornamental or agricultural purposes.

Furthermore, the park seems somewhat neglected with many areas overgrown) and decaying paths although, clearly, rewilding is to be encouraged.Marco is in discussions with Barga City council regarding improvements to this otherwise magical area of Barga. For example, his plan is to provide a proper signage for the trees and plants in the park. The amphitheatre is to be regenerated into an events area where talks can be given, films shown and concerts held. It all sounds very promising.

We wish Marco every success for he is a person with genuine natural energy and a truly captivating presenter of the fascinating subject of ethnobotany weaving together the most amazing correlations between nomenclature, ancient myths, folk traditions and modern scientific discoveries relating to the planet’s flora.

Find out more about Marco Pardini on his web site at https://marcopardini.com/

A summer holiday for Italian families would once have lasted two or three months. It was called ‘la villeggiatura’, a name derived from the old aristocratic practice of removing oneself from the town house to a villa on the family estate. For example, in order to escape from Florence’s torrid summertime heat the Medici would run away to those lovely villas we can see at Artimino, Careggi or Pratolino.  Family members would leave in June with the start of school holidays, and the advent of the big heat, to return in mid-September. (Alarmingly this year that heat has come upon us as early as May and record temperatures have already hit 40C).

Husbands would once have remained at work in the emptied towns and cities. So empty, in fact, that radio announcements advised the listener which grocery shops and chemists remained open. As a child I remember Milan, the city where my mother was born, almost deserted in August with few cars on the streets and most bars shuttered – a pre-covidian lock-down in fact.

It was the bread-winners’ lot to be left alone sweltering in the usually non-air conditioned family apartment during the week, to fend for oneself and cope with the most basic domestic tasks like boiling an egg. Of course, for the more ‘furbi’ (cunning) males this situation might have facilitated the conduct of extra marital affairs and the involvement of an ‘amante’ to cook for one. After all, some husbands might have reasoned that they did not know what the wife was up to at her beach resort.

On Fridays the city offices closed and the fathers would motor out to spend the weekend with their families, returning to work the following Monday. I remember once getting a lift from the city to the seaside from one such husband ready to re-join his family by the beach.

The weather would generally be unbroken sunshine until August 15th, which is ‘Ferragosto’ or the Italian August bank holiday. After this date the weather generally broke with precipitous thunderstorms and cooler evenings, a premonition that the holidays were entering their final phase.

With September normalcy returned. Children went back to school, and the main theme among their mates there was “what did you do on your holidays?”

Today things are somewhat different. Holidays have become much shorter for Italians. Instead of paying for one’s place at a ‘stabilimento balneare’ (seaside establishment supplying deck-chairs, sunshades, showers and a bar on a stretch of beach leased from the State ) for two months it’s more often two weeks spent in Sharm El Sheik or, for the more adventurous, the Far East or the Caribbean. Furthermore, holiday traffic migrating en masse locust-like on predetermined weekends and creating vast traffic jams have been increasingly replaced by ‘partenze intelligenti’ or ‘intelligent departures’ where holiday departures are staggered. Actually, with the present world uncertainties ranging from inflation to climate change more and more of us are being encouraged by adverts to become ‘intelligente’. The big thing now is ‘la spesa intelligente’ (intelligent shopping). Basically this means relying on the age-old tradition of shopping lists, realising that in some stores OAPs get a discount on Tuesdays and, of course, searching for those bargain offers.

Things may have been simpler for Italians once as far as holidays were concerned. It’s also true that holidaymakers may have also rather happier than they are today. Families tended to go on holiday together, food would have been more familiar since the majority of vacations tended to be spent in one’s native land and airport chaos would have played a minimal part because ‘cheap’ air travel had not yet been invented.

As the song goes ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun’. But why? One of the first things I learnt living in Italy is that summers are hot and winters are cold. Obviously! Conversely, one of the first things Italians learn in the UK is that the seasons there often seem all jumbled up in one day.

In Italy, on the other hand there is a time in the year when one changes from winter clothing to summer togs, discarding the winter ones which are put away in a wardrobe until the end of October. So, referring to that Noel Coward ditty, I suspect brits still haven’t got used to the fact that a siesta is absolutely essential if one is to survive the Italian summer – even though we are quite lucky at Bagni di Lucca through the cooling effects of our river Lima (now with a dangerously low water-level because of the appalling lack of rainfall). Speaking of Siestas I think I’ll have one right now. After I was up at 6 am cutting the grass before it became a penitentially hot task to carry out!

Fun, food, games, market and music at our coolest (at height of 2763 feet ) village: Montefegatesi yesterday afternoon.

Italy’s heatwave continues with particularly high temperatures in its big cities. Florence, for instance, has temperatures well into the upper thirty degrees centigrade; I do not remember the heat turned on so early in the year before. Normally we wait until the end of June but this year we have been sweltering since the second half of May.  I am not a particular devotee of high temperatures and have devised various ways of dealing with them. Even if our house is at an altitude of 1079 feet it does get hot here too! (It must be hell, however, in Lucca by lunchtime…)

First way to deal with the heat is to get up early and do essential chores like looking after the garden or shopping by ten o clock before the heat is well up.

Second is to keep in the shade which, in our property, is quite easy to do as we are surrounded by cool forests and a walk among the chestnuts can be rather pleasant.

Third is to plan day-trips to higher altitudes. The problem is that our highest mountains which rise to over 6,000 feet have hardly any forest cover and their bare rocks can hit surprising temperatures. I remember, for example, passing a night among the still warm rocks of the Monte Pisanino in comfort.

Fourth is to aim for a (preferably air- conditioned) bar and enjoy a gelato with scrumptious flavours to choose from. (Our last one included lemon – always – coffee and banana.)

Fifth is to head for our main river, the Lima, and find a place there to dip one’s feet, have a paddle or swim in its refreshingly cool waters.

Yesterday we chose the last option and went to a favourite spot near Fabbriche di Casabasciana. The Lima is particularly picturesque in this stretch and there are some fine sights on offer.

There’s a wonderful bridge over the Liegora, a tributary, which, with its brilliant brickwork of staggered arches, seems to combine the best features of Romanesque and Gothic architecture in a nineteenth century virtuoso display of the mason’s craft.

The arches lead to an iron footbridge which crosses the Lima River. Its height above the swirling waters is quite stupendous and almost makes one’s head go round.

On the other side of the footbridge is a waterfall, now a mere trickle but which after a storm can turn into a dramatic cataract.

Beyond a path, formerly a water channel feeding a local mill and paper works, leads along the Lima.  Sometimes the eddying stream is interrupted by weirs forming expansively placid pools in idyllic surroundings.

Which will it be today? One thing is certain. It’s going to be hot, hot hot.

We are, therefore, so lucky to find our own escape valves for the torrid Tuscan summer heat with natural air-conditioning surrounding us at no extra cost!

However, deep inside me, this earliest of heat waves is most worrying since it is a direct result of global warming due to climate change for which mankind must bear considerable responsibility.

I do believe in routines without which I, in particular, am likely to lapse into a somnolescent state venturing into that never-never land of utter disorganisation and chaos. This is particularly important here in an Italian summer when by the time it’s eight o’clock it’s almost too hot to do anything except stretch a hand and grasp a cup of strong caffè.

By the time morning peeps its rosy dawn into my bedroom window I am ready for whatever action I can muster.

First (regrettable) is a dose of pills I have been forced to take ever since the heart surgeries I had to undergo at the start of 2020.

Second it’s Duolingo. And what language am I learning? On Sundays its French followed on Mondays by German and Tuesdays by Latin. These are all languages I am supposed to have learned in the past, largely in stuffy classrooms, but it’s good to go over them again and find out how much I still retain (or have forgotten.). Then on Wednesdays and for the remaining weekdays it’s Welsh. Welsh? I first started learning the iaith paradwys in the 1990’s of the last millennium at London’s wonderful City Lit. Why? Because at the time we were looking after a Welsh cottage in Powys and felt we should make concessions to the local culture. Actually hardly anyone spoke Welsh as a first language there and we had to go to that centre for endangered languages, Nant Gwrtheyrn in the Lleyn peninsula, to be in a part of Cymru where Welsh was widely spoken. I should also add we have Welsh ancestry on my father’s mother’s side and I think that’s why I have taken to this beautiful Celtic tongue in a consistent way.

A language for too long neglected, I returned to Welsh after being ticked off by a Welsh-speaking couple we met on our holiday to China some years back. I could hardly remember to say ‘Bore Da’ any more then . I think a little improvement has since taken place.

After the language lesson it’s time to have a coffee con latte and a piece of toast which is usually made of flour supplied courtesy of our local Penny Market superstore. The munificent store supplies us with sunflower, ciabatta and multi-grain varieties and they all make superb staffs of life. (I, of course, cheat by using a bread-making machine).

My breakfast is eaten to the sound of RAI Radio 3, that confusing mixture of news, political discussion classical and popular music offered by Italian radio.

By this time it’s getting on to seven o’clock and the sun is starting to hot up the earth. Time to get out and do some gardening. This consists mainly of watering our little orto or kitchen vegetable garden and doing some strimming with my fantastic battery-powered strimmer. Since each battery last barely more than twenty minutes this task is happily curtailed for me before it starts becoming strenuous.

Bath/shower follows to wipe off that sweat before the day’s official business starts.

What will it be this morning? Let’s consult the calendar on my cell phone…..ah, a choice between an appointment at the post office and a dip in our local river. I think I know what I’ll choose…

(Now I don’t think this fellow is one of ours!)

As advocates of urban exploration we have enjoyed sometimes hair-raising adventures visiting decrepit ruins of houses, factories and such-like. The only rules of the game are not to take anything from the site and not to be specific about where your exploration is. Of course, such places must be safe to enter – I would not wish cement girders from disused mills to fall upon me, for example – and common sense must be applied in all cases.

Italy is a particularly exciting place for urban exploration and several of my posts have covered objects of our investigations. For example:

Urban Exploration at Pieve Fosciana

The Decaying Beauty of a Villa

The Secrets of Villa Ada

Lucca’s Tallest (and Biggest) Building

I would extend the field from urban to rural exploration for Italy abounds in so many abandoned farmsteads, its former denizens having been lured away from poverty by rich prospects in emigration to overseas cities

Sometimes there is no clear reason why such domestic buildings should have been abandoned. The sight of this once charming farmhouse traumatised us the other day.

Clearly a lot of love and effort had been spent in restoring the house and garden. And it must have been carried out recently too! Yet the almost tropical forces of our flora were slowly recapturing and strangulating the building with luxuriant foliage covering steps and walls.

How sad! What had happened for this little treasure to come to this? What curse had befallen its stones and bricks? What family tragedy had struck the once beloved plot? How could the place not have been sold or at least auctioned? Truly it seemed to forecast the start of the fall of another House of Usher!

Religious buildings and chapels abound in secluded parts of our beautiful countryside and luckily so many of them have been preserved as living parts of the landscape and never foresaken. True, there may be just one Mass celebrated in them annually (usually in May, the month of the Madonna) but this is enough for these charming chapels in the woods to keep their roofs and to be lovingly tended with offerings of flowers and a good sweep. Happily a sacred place in Italy is still largely respected and is free from the horrors of vandalism. Indeed, if such behaviours take place they do make headline news.

Yesterday we took a walk in the luscious woods in our area.

Eventually we came across this delightful ‘chiesina’, or little church, which celebrated its annual Mass last May. Some might ask why build a chapel in the middle of a forest and away from human habitation. However, these ‘chiesine’ were conveniently placed for shepherds and farmers to practise their religious devotions in areas away from their villages without having to detour to the main parish church. Their delightful pillared porticos also make welcomed shelters from those sudden thunderstorms!

I love the association of chapels in woods with legend and, especially, with Malory’s evocative Morte d’Arthur. One of the loveliest places I know in Wales is indeed called Betws-y-Coed or Chapel in the Wood and has Arthurian connotations.

Chapels are naturally sacred places and often built on sites of ancient significance where miracles have occurred or where holy hermits have lived in olden times. I always feel strong natural forces entering my whole body when approaching such spiritual places.

May the chapels in the woods continue to heal our souls and ever be kept free from abandonment.

Bagni di Lucca is frequently described as a land of poets. In the past it was visited by such giants of the poetic art as Shelley, Byron, Pascoli, the Brownings and Heine who spent some of their most peaceful and productive moments here. This great tradition continues today and one of Bagni’s most distinguished poets, Rossana Federighi (who also runs the ‘Lavanderia Ecologica’ at Ponte a Serraglio), presented her latest volume ‘Il Treno all’indietro’ (‘The Reversing Train’) in the elegant setting of the pink room above the Ristorante dei Forestieri.  The book is infused with a profound love of nature, particularly nature as a moral force and a guide very much in the Wordsworthian sense. We are, indeed, guardians of our planet and, following its principles of birth and rebirth, must preserve and help regenerate the Earth’s vital life-forces if we are not going to die in its company.

We are fortunate that nature embraces us in our part of the world. We gaze on the green forested hills and grass-carpeted mountain slopes. We are encircled by a symphony of sounds from ecstatic bird-song to the barking of deer. The landscape is enhanced by the tolling of church-bells and the tinkling of flocks of sheep led by the cries of mountain shepherds to their faithful dogs. The meadows are alive with the kaleidoscope of wild flowers, the forests seem hardly touched by the axeman, the craggy contours are unscathed by the devastation of motorways and the air is so limpid that it gives new life to the most tubercolotic of us. Even the horrors of the pandemic have left our part of the world relatively unmarked and well over seventy years have passed since the terrors of war bombardments soiled its settlements.

So everything is hunky-dory? Or is it. Sadly not. Our area, like so much of Italy, is being depopulated. The young desert their hamlets for the big cities or emigrate further afield to other parts of the world. Fields which once were local granaries of spelt and wheat have long since been abandoned to weeds and thorns. Chestnut trees are left to disease and their life-giving fruits no longer able to provide nourishment for the people. Saddest of all, old crafts are being forgotten and ancient traditions no longer kept up.

True, our part of the world is in a much better state of social heath than parts of the UK where young locals are no longer able to afford to buy their own family homes and where some rural areas are bereft of schools, bus services, shops and even pubs! But here too the prognosis is not good and even the income provided by those from abroad coming here to restore ruins to be turned into holiday homes which they, in their countries of origin, might ill-afford does not offer sufficient hope that this land could return to its former regenerative ways. I do find it most ironic that, whereas in the brexitanian kingdom of Britain the big nature conservancy word is ‘re-wilding’, in our part of Italy it is precisely that ‘re-wilding’, caused by land abandonment and depopulation, that is creating negative forces.

The theme of land abandonment causing the wrong sort of ‘rewilding’ characterise at least one of Rossana’s poems which is presented here in the original followed by my translation.  

Nelle terre di nonno Aristide,

terre rocciose di acque sanguigne

che scorrono calde

nelle viscere dei monti

si poteva mangiare.

*

Non abbiamo più

mani piene di frutti di castagno

e zolle ricche di patate

ma acacie che avanzano scomposte.

*

Portano via il campo

e il bosco ormai infecondo

in questo sfarzo fiabesco

odoroso e ribelle.

*

Prepotenza di fiori bianchi

acciuffati

tra verdi foglie prorompenti

e rami selvaggi.

*

Si riempe il terreno di rovi

lungo il solco,

verso la cartiera

e il fico nero non cresce

nelle terre domestiche

di nonno Aristide

che non ha più braccia per fermare

questo mondo invasivo.

Queste spine selvagge

Questo regno rapace.

——————-

In the land of grandfather Aristide,

a rocky land of sanguine waters

flowing hot

in the bowels of the mountains

one could eat.

*

We no longer have

hands full of chestnut fruits

and clods full of potatoes

but acacias that advance in a wrecking manner.

*

They take away the fields

and the now barren wood

in this fragrant and rebellious

fairy-tale splendour.

*

An ascendancy of white flowers

gets captured

among bursting green leaves

and wild branches.

*

The ground is filled with brambles

along the furrow

towards the paper mill

and the black fig does not grow

in the homeland

of grandfather Aristide

who has no strength left to halt

this invasive world.

These wild thorns

This rapacious kingdom.

————-

There are many other themes touched upon in Rossana’s treasurable book of poems. Personal fragility, so much in evidence by the pandemic, the healing wonder of nature from earth to the planets, the sheer joyous miracle of existence, the whole mystery of the why, when and how we are here and what we are, are all mentioned in often transcendent poetical metaphors in this collection which may be obtained from Cinquemarzo editors of Viareggio (who once had a memorable bookshop in Bagni di Lucca – remember them?) or, from Rossana’s own work headquarters in the ‘Lavanderia Ecologica’ at Bagni di Lucca’s Ponte di Serraglio. So next time you bring your laundry there why not ask Rossana for a copy of her latest book of poems?

Our days are fanning out into more and more activities and events since the restrictions imposed by the Italian government because of the pandemic have been largely lifted from the beginning of June. When we think about what we had to go through for over two years: everything from the mask-wearing to the showing of green passes, the curtailment of social events, the social distancing, the staying-at-home, the avoidance of ‘unnecessary’ journeys, the daily news-litany of covid-19 deaths, the sadness of schoolchildren being deprived of their natural social development, the closure of playgrounds, theatres and concert halls, the abandonment of fetes, carnivals and celebrations… What we have had to go through will all sound soon almost unbelievable although it has taught us humans that we are infinitely adaptable and, even more, that hope springs eternal. ‘Andrà tutto bene’ – it’ll turn out OK in the end has been the permeating motto in Italy and although we are not yet out of the woods it’s lovely how quickly we can readapt ourselves to normalcy even though it is obviously a ‘new’ normalcy.

Two positive social signs of a return to a new normal (for we can never return anymore to the old ways after what hit the world at the start of 2020) were apparent last weekend.

The first was our afternoon spent in Napoleonic-style company at the Villa Reale at Marlia, Elisa Baiocchi’s (Bonaparte’s sister) favourite residence when she was Princess of Lucca.

It was lovely to wander among a mask-less public again in glorious summery sunshine, to appreciate the care the participants had taken with their costumes and , above all, to enjoy one of Italy’s finest garden landscapes.

The second event was a contrast between luxurious leisure and tormented wartime conditions: the visit to some bunkers on the Gothic Line, used by Jerry to slow down the Allied progress up the Italian ‘wellington boot’. These precious remnants of Second World War defences are now under the protection of an association who have refurbished a magnificent museum ‘della memoria’ at Borgo a Mozzano.

The new museum, opened last year, is housed in a former chapel. Our guide signor Pieroni brilliantly explained some of the outstanding objects on show there. Most helpfully, the panels were described in both Italian and English.

A visit to two nearby bunkers followed. I was amazed at the standard of cement form-work and the finely conserved features. This first gothic line, built by the Todt organization using largely slave-labour, was never put to the test since it was cut off in 1944 by invading allied and Brazilian forces causing Fascist and Nazi forces to hastily move north to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana where the major battles took place and where the allied forces advance was halted throughout the winter of 1944-5.

It is the events particularly concerning this second Gothic Line which form the background to Anna Valencia’s enthralling first novel ‘The Chestnut House’. The book, the subject of my post at https://longoio3.com/2022/02/27/the-chestnut-house/, narrates a story of love and war, hope and treachery, tragedy and joy in a country torn apart by civil strife. We were privileged to have the author present her novel as the highlight of our gothic-line events before a select audience and to sign copies of the book for lucky purchasers.

Life is, indeed, an unpredictable mixture of sybaritic pleasures and the most difficult of austerities, of languorous pleasures and of unimaginable atrocities.  Attending these events last week-end fully made us aware of how tenuous our precious individual life timelines are. Let us always be aware of our luck in the face of what is happening elsewhere in our tortured but beloved planet earth.

Today two countries, that more often have inspired each other – both artistically and politically – than not, celebrate two rather different political systems. For Italy it’s ‘La Festa della Republica’ commemorating the day in 1946 when, as a result of a referendum (which included women for the first time in that country’s history), Italy abolished the monarchy and declared itself a republic ‘based on work’.

For the United Kingdom it’s instead the start of four days celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee: her seventy years’ reign.

Some people may choose not to celebrate either being a citizen in a republic or in a monarchy. The fact, however, is that the two seemingly utterly different political ideologies have enabled both Italy and the UK to survive in a reasonably peaceful and stable state since the last war. For this we should be ever grateful…

So let’s enjoy this season of festivities and be happy that at least we can go on peaceful country walks picking cherries and admiring views in golden summer sunshine free from the horrors which our European neighbours further east so tragically are having to suffer at the present time.

(Several photos courtesy of Sandra).