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...

Over the course of two days, ending this evening as dusk turned to dark, we pulled 1049 kilos of gorgeous Frantoio , Leccino , Leccione ...

It's been pouring, in stretches, three days on. We were promised this; we know better than to bank on such predictions . But when...

As noted in an earlier post , we're in the process of breathing new life into portions of our olive grove that have been sitting...

It feels superfluous, even inappropriate, to comment on recent events in and near Gaza. But as a man whose parents were still children as...

Paragraph 5 of our Health and Safety handout reads "Wasps and hornets may pay you a visit during your stay...We try to clear any nests we...

At long last, Poggiosole's new front gate is finished, and looks posh. With a main body of COR-TEN steel supporting 19 vertical slats of...

The other morning I was reading the "Espresso" (daily digest) version of The Economist when the following caught my eye: Island Nation...

"Half of life is spent dealing with details: the numbers, the paperwork, the dozens of discussions upon which any shared activity,...

I know, I've been quiet. I could say it's been the heat (and it is very hot here this week) but actually much of the summer has been...

As most of the news-watching world knows by now, the US is about to default on its debts and it's been a very wet spring in northern...

Our stone fruit trees are in bloom (above a detail of the Prunus persica just outside Le Rose's front door), our inner olive grove is...

Aside from the five meter-wide strip of asphalt of the Strada della Romita , this was the view from Poggiosole's still unfinished front...

A rebuild of our swimming pool has been underway since we closed for our harvest in October. What's that saying about the road to hell...

My father was a serious person, una persona seria. That much was clear to all who met him, on both sides of the pond. Some went as far as...