US invasion!!!

9 settembre
Ciao a tutti. Well, yesterday was a first at Nascondiglio di Bacco, I am sure. 6 americans on the property and all speaking "american" as they say here. Karen and her husband and their 2 friends found me via the blog while searching for a b and b in the marche with AC. They suffered here in 2003 with the deadly heat wave in a house with no air conditioning and were preparing for the worst, although our weather has been quite mild this time around for them, so they were safe in the old family home in Abruzzo. Karen has been following the blog with her friend and has left a few comments as you may have seen. They brought gifts of a bottle of spumante from the veneto, a salumi from Norcia and a cd made by their son who won the old time banjo contest this yearat the Uncle Dave Macon Days festival in Murfreesboro TN. Now that should give you googlers something to look for! His name is Joseph Decosimo.
Also Elizabeth, an expat who lives in Casserai and is a designer, cook, italian and english teacher and jane of all trades was here to visit having been given my name by one of our English guests who stays here off and on while remodelling a house in the town of Porchia nearby. We had a nice chat before the others arrived and are planning a series of events at N d Bacco for the offseason wherein she will do some cooking lessons on a weekend perhaps. Speaking of that particular guest who's name is Andy... congrats on being the producer of the # CD in England for 2 consecutive weeks by a singer named Newton Faulkner and the cd is called Hand built by robots.
Also yesterday after months of cohabitating peacefully with our local bees and wasps, I grabbed one of our dishcloths in the kitchen with a wasp inside and was severely damaged by the little bugger. He or more likely, she, left a laceration in my thumb! I have never seen the likes! Oh well, sooner or later, it was bound to happen.
Today..... drum roll please.... Raffaele and I harvested all 543 grape bunches of the white variety and tied them to the cavi to let them dry in hopes the birds will leave some for us to make a vin santo... who knows. we are either crazy like foxes or truly insane. (I didn't really count them...10 man hours of work however) Tomorrow or the next day we will harvest the montelpuciano grapes and ferment them in an open vat , then transfer them to an oak barrel for aging... another crazy idea hatched from ideas we gleaned from bourgogne!
That is my weekend in review.. hope all had a good one as well. Soon to follow, pix of the master bedroom when the last 3 pix are hung in the stone walls.. a real challenge! and the ironing board takes a breather.
Finally, from a book my Uncle Lee gave me called Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner... the post from September 1
{"This is the day which the Lord" has made says the 118th Psalm. "Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Or weep and be sad in it for that matter. The point is to see it for what it is because it will be gone before you know it. If you waste it, it is your life that you're wasting. If you look the other way it may be the moment you've been waiting for always that you're missing. All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them. Today is the ONLY day there is. }
I hope you live it well! Enjoy our sunset from today.
un bacione dwight