Piegaio’s zucca (pumpkin) festa was back again for its sixteenth annual appearance last weekend.
As ever there was much to please children of all ages from 1 to 100: with handicraft stalls:
animals including a regal one-banded buzzard or Howard Hawk:
and much else including, of course, some of the most fantastically shaped gourds:
That ghastly interim, otherwise known as the pandemic, seems so far away now although sadly we have all lost loved ones while it raged and apparently still does for we have received memos for further injections before the winter falls upon us and reminds me that only last February I finally caught the dreaded plague.
Incidentally ‘zucca’ not only means a gourd or pumpkin in Italian but a head, especially a bald one. Indeed one of Donatello’s most famous statues is called ‘Il zuccone’ or large bald head. It represents the prophet Habakkuk and was commissioned for the campanile of Florence cathedral in 1425. You can see why it was this nicknamed here::