Here's a question to kick off 2025, addressed to the stink bug pictured above: did it really have to be the finger space of our storage...

I am struck, given the historical and political moment (in the US especially but also in the capitals of at least three major European...

When, back in August of 2022 Giorgia Meloni and her gratingly-named "Brothers of Italy" party were leading the polls in the Italian...

"Grief is the most mature emotion" a wise art professor of mine, himself an artist, once said. He'd have us read poems of love and loss,...

Fallen telephone cables notwithstanding, we managed to pull 590 kg of olives from around 200 of our trees today, bringing the total...

I could wait a day or three and pepper this post with links to any number of articles that will soon appear in some of my favorite...

Halloween harvest! As I wrote in an update to my recent Oak tree down post, this year we're splitting our harvest across two dates, nine...

Anyone remember Super Size Me ? In 2004, Morgan Spurlock, an independent documentary filmmaker went on an all-McDonald's diet for a month...

...along with a roadside telephone pole in our upper olive grove, and four massive wooden poles between the two snapped like toothpicks...

A little over three years ago I wrote my Zauber post , thanking Poggiosole's many German guests for their patronage and praising...

It's late to be getting around to naming our summer beneficiary for 2024; as much a matter of indecision as the odd grind this year has...

When I think of my mom's life journey: born in 1930, the first of three children of two unskilled laborers, growing up in war-ravaged...

Taking on the stewardship of hundreds of olive trees when you've spent most of your working life in front of a computer (in my case...

Go for it! Poggiosole is on Kickstarter with our tasty extra virgin olive oil, raising funds for expert pruning and the purchase of a...

Pictured is my son Max, age 7, a week ago at bedtime. Moments earlier, the usual mini-drama to wind up the day, urging and cajoling him...

A while back, I was making my way through Milan's ugly Malpensa airport when I saw a giant and very handsome billboard advertising Vrbo...

In contrast to last year, our lights (and water pumps) stayed on all through this past summer. A still happier contrast is that between...

Tuscan soil is loaded with stones (that's one reason most older houses here are made of them) and recent digging in our upper grove ...

This Thanksgiving weekend we're planting two dozen olive saplings in our upper grove. Some fill random gaps in rows of mature trees....

I turned sixty today. My mom Lilia, who all those years ago brought me into this world, turned, instead, away. At ninety-three, she was...