Orvieto

Breakfast the next morning took place in a little cafe as part of the cost of our stay.  Alex enjoyed the pastries and yogurt as well as watching the locals drop in for their morning coffee.  We started out with a walk of Orvieto led by Rick Steves across the ancient city, whose ramparts predate the Romans and held back the legions much longer than most Etruscan strongholds.  The city is built atop volcanic tuff rock and they carved away the edges to create a steep wall for added security.  The pope, in a bygone era when such things had to be considered, designated Orvieto as his refuge should he ever have to flee Rome because of the strength of the city's walls.  We toured one of the smaller chapels, whose fading frescoes gave some sense of their age, and then headed to the Duomo.

 

Among all the fascades of cathedrals we saw, Orvieto's was the most elaborate.  Watching Rick Steve's PBS program months before, I remember being blown away.  Standing face to face with the church was extraordinary.  Inside, we marveled again at ornate art in suti and viewed the two side chapels.

In one, the corporal chapel, rests the relic which caused the cathedral was built.  In 1263, a priest who doubted that the Eucharist could actually become the body and blood of Christ was surprised (pleasantly or otherwise being lost to legend) to find the elements seeping blood.  The stained cloth is preserved behind the chapel's reliquary to this day.

In the other chapel, a brightly colored mural depicting the last judgement met our wandering eyes.  The crowning achievement in the career of Signorelli, these paintings predate the Reformation, but in Florence a Dominican priest named Savoronella had gained prominence and was challenging the authority of the church in Rome.  Sick of all the nude people the artists had been detailing, he was burning art and books, and seeing his impact in Florence had the rest of the Catholic world thinking of the end times when the Antichrist would deceive the unfaithful.

After viewing the Duomo, we stopped by a sandwich shop for some pork sandwiches.  Always desiring idyllic scenery for her picnic, Alex led a hungry Arthur outside the city walls to walk around the base of the cliff but the trail lead into a briar patch.  We backtracked and settled on a park at what was once an ancient fortress.  We both remember the park fondly, though finally getting to eat makes every memory more enjoyable for Arthur.

With only a while to go before the train would take us to Rome, we got some gelato and hung outside the Duomo for a while people watching-- tourists getting on and off buses, kids running home after school, and locals going about their daily business.  Orvieto had been a wonderful stop, but now we were headed to our prime destination.  Alex was nervous about the crowds; Arthur  could think of little other than all the architecture they would behold.

Our start in Rome began perhaps a tad inauspiciously.  Alex, the ever trusty navigator, took a tad longer than usual to get us oriented properly, but we patiently made our way to the convent that would house us the next four nights.  (It is easy to get disoriented popping up out from the underground metro in a foreign city you have never been in before.)  We were welcomed in graciously to a spacious room and bathroom, perfect for our laundry.

Our first night, we ate at the convent and were treated very well.  The meal came in five hearty courses with delectable pastas and meats.  While the food wasn't as fancy as some of our meals it was probably a good representation of what a family would gather to eat.  And there was a lot of food.  Around us, eight other guests chatted together quietly.  Among ten of us, we counted four different languages spoken.

After dinner, not quite ready for bed, we took a walk in the great city.  Rome at night is beautiful; the temperature was just right, and our excitement kept us moving.  We got our first sight of St. Peter's, walked across the Angel bridge, guarded by Bernini sculptures, and walked past the massive Justice Building.  At long last, we headed back to the convent (curfew is at 11) and prepared for our first day in the Eternal City.  Omnia Vincit Amour.

Futility of Fruit Trees

They always say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  We are blessed in the fact that when we purchased our home it came with 20 year old mature shade trees in the yard.  We looked at a few houses that were new builds with empty lots-- and no trees.  Sometimes a blank slate is fun but a 20 year head start is even better.  Since we have plenty of shade trees in our yard we wanted to diversify and add some fruit trees.  Kansas isn't an ideal place to grow fruit trees but with the investment and risk does hopefully come reward of a bountiful harvest.

For the past year we have been planning and plotting our backyard orchard.  I have poured over varieties deciding which trees might have the best chance in our climate, which are most resistant to disease, what type of varieties with pollinate other varieties, the pros and cons of different root stock, and when expected harvest occurs to space our fruit throughout the summer and fall.  Last fall I had a general idea of where I envisioned our groups of trees going so I prepared beds with compost, cardboard, and leaves to help get the best possible soil.  All winter we looked out over our piles of cardboard and leaves and tried to ignore the starkness and dream of fruit trees blooming in the spring.  (I'm not sure our neighbors who had to look at the same piles all winter had the optimistic views we had.

It finally came time to make the final decisions about varieties and put in our order.  It was probably a risky move for Arthur to leave me with a laptop, credit card, and gardening website-- there are endless possibilities.  We selected pawpaws, apples, and pears.  We would love to have peaches some day but the crops are inconsistent in Kansas due to unexpected weather changes in the spring-- no kidding as it was 80F a day ago with a tornado watch and now I am watching snow flurries.  Pawpaws are actually native to the area, do well with less sunlight since our yard has a lot of shady spots, and the fruit is the flavor of a mango and banana.  The fruit is only good for a few days so it isn't sold commercially but could be perfect for our garden.  Our pears are actually Asian pears which are suppose to be more crisp like an apple.  I eagerly awaited my box of trees (more realistically sticks) to arrive and finally this week it was time to plant.

The first step was checking the soil drainage since the roots don't like to be too soggy.  Through this process I learned that the site I selected for my pear trees wouldn't work but I could build a raised bed over the same area to get better drainage.  Then one night I was digging the hole for one of the apple trees when about 10" down I cam across a black pipe.  Now a lot of planning and consideration had gone into site selection including where the sprinkler lines and utilities were located on the schematics we have.  However this pipe wasn't marked.  This lead to digging a number of holes across the area to see if it was the electric line to the shed, trying to find a few of the sprinklers to determine if this pipe went to any of them, and then digging up a sprinkler to see what type of pipe was used.  This also happened to be right under the pile of leaves and cardboard that had been lovingly preparing the soil all winter... so onto plan B.

I decided then to move the apple trees about 8 feet from that pipe and proceeded to dig three holes 2'x2'x2'.  I had to trees happily planted and was finishing up the third hole when the shovel made contact-- another black pipe running almost perpendicular to the first.  The maddening thing was that the other two trees now straddle this pipe as well and I had only missed it by a mere inch or two when I drove in my t-post stake.  I had dug three holes and planted 2 trees and would now have to redo all of it because another sprinkler line was not on the schematic.

After I came across the first sprinkler line I mentioned my plight to a co-worker.  He suggested taking two coat hangers and using the wire to make two straight pieces of wire with a 90 degree bend for a handle.  He said that these wires would work like well witching sticks and pull together when you stepped over a sprinkler line or any other utility line.  My husband and father thought it sounded crazy and laughed at the idea so I just assumed that when I moved to dig the second set of holes I would be fine.  However after I had spent my evening digging more dirt than I have ever dug in my life I wanted to know if that trick would have worked and saved me and my shovel from despair.  I pulled out my s'more roasting sticks made from coat hangers and was shocked when the wires crossed walking over that pipe even though the wind was blowing hard.  Arthur doubted the accuracy saying it couldn't work more than 50% of the time.  I then pointed out that my sprinkler schematic had let me down 100% of the time.

So we are still in the process of planting our fruit trees.  I currently have the 2 pawpaws planted and two apple trees are in the ground but they will have to be relocated.  Our yard looks like the front line trenches complete with foxholes, piles of dirt, and a myriad of colored utility flags flapping in the wind.  However we are not waving the white flag of surrender on the fruit trees yet.  I will sit here patiently waiting for the first fruits of all my labor to be harvested in 5 years.  That is if there are not any casualties to fire blight, apple scab, bacterial canker, ceder rust, or powdery mildew.  Omnia Vincit Amore.

Siena

We awoke the next morning anticipating the feast awaiting us prepared by our artisan caretakers.  Bread, jams, yogurt, brushcetta, tarts, thin-sliced meats, and tarts made whose sweetness were perfectly accented with a sprig of mint met us and fueled another wonderful day of activity.  Our hostess thought we were a little crazy for not wanting a taxi to get back the mile or two to town but we enjoyed our walk that morning as countryside turned to suburbs turned to morning bustle of the city just outside the ancient city walls.  Appropriately, our walk into town was along pilgrims way, and after dropping off our packs for the day outside the bus station, our first few hours were spent in a very pilgrim way.

Our first stop was to San Domenico church, notable for the relics housed therein, for in this beautiful church, the skull and thumb bone of Siena's most prominent citizen, St. Catherine, reside.  Siena has 17 neighborhoods called contrada and each has its own mascot and flag.  San Domenico was very large and sparsely decorated except for the 17 flags of each contrada with difference colors and animals.  After this site, we headed to the home of Catherine and viewed the frescoes depicting scenes from her life.

What really blew us away, however, was the Duomo of Siena.  While not as big as Florence's, much of the art remains inside as was originally intended, and the effect is stunning.  We were told that Siena held its heyday before the Renaissance really got going and then never recovered from the plague so that the feel would be much more medieval than other areas we came to, and certainly what we saw throughout the city fit that description.  The Duomo houses examples of the medieval, with prominent mosaics lining the floor and the Piccolino Library is an entire room dedicated to the artwork lovingly placed into the hymnbooks of artistic scribes, but also works by the big names of the Renaissance and even the Baroque dwell inside.  Michelangelo's St. Paul stands in the nave, Donatello's St. John the Baptist serves as the central point of reflection inside one of the side chapels.  No room better emulates this than the Chigi chapel, where the flowing expressions of Bernini's Mary Magdalene and Saint Jerome line the walls and the 13th century painting Madonna del Voto takes center stage.  The time gap between the painting and the sculptures is greater than the entire life of our country, and the painting was painted more than three American lifespans ago.  Heading around to the back of the church, we encountered the baptistry, with panels completed by men like Donatello and Ghemberti. 

There is so much art to speak of confined to this small place, and I'm hardly scratching the surface; we went through the cathedral's museum where many other priceless artworks now reside, presumably because they couldn't find enough room in the cathedral.  We climbed a wall of the museum to see a view of the city, a lovely reddish brown that gave Crayola a color name, and stood agape at the beauty of this supposed Renaissance backwater set in such a beautiful area.

One interesting tourist aspect of the Duomo was that there was a public restroom-- this was a big deal for us since we were never quite sure when or how hard we would have to look to find a restroom.  Since the building wasn't originally designed with restrooms in mind they were tucked just below the gift shop with a turnstile to get in and out with men and women using the same four stalls since there just wasn't room for two separate areas.  Just another reminder that we weren't in America.

After seeing the big sites of the city, we contentedly roamed the bustling streets on our Rick Steve's audio tour until we came to Il Campo, the city square opening up to the Town Hall notable for being the tallest building in town, instead of the Duomo.  Many believed God permitted the plague to bring Siena low for that very reason.

One of the things that Alex was excited about in visiting Siena was going to Il Campo, which is the site of Palio-- a horserace between each of the contrada.  This race has been held since the 1600s in it current form.  It is run twice a summer and the city basically stops the week of the Palio and the rivalries between the contrade is incredible.  Standing in Il Campo we imagined what it would be like if the plaza was filled with tens of thousand screaming Italians with 10 horses racing around the area in a mere 90 seconds.

While Il Campo was not as electric as on the day of the races we soaked in the relaxed feel of hanging out at the heart of this medieval community. We grabbed some pizza and some sandwich from another "Rick Steves approved" proprietorship and munched happily in the shade of the main square.  While Alex people-watched, Arthur went to check out yet another church, and with that, it was time to head out to Orvieto.  On our train ride to Orvieto we rode with many communters making their way home after a day's work back to the smaller towns across Tuscany.  We watched the Tuscan fields and farms roll by the windows at the sun set that day.

When we arrived, it was already getting dark, but this did not keep us from further adventures. The nice thing about traveling in Italy is that you can start your evening out at 8pm after a late train and the activities are just getting started. First we found one of the Rick Steve's recommended  restaurant and dined on nidi noodles, misto soup, and pasta with wild boar meat.  We then quietly roamed the streets for a while until we got the spectacular Duomo of Orvieto.  With no one around, Arthur happily spent some time checking out the detailed carvings on the fascade and eagerly thought about the day ahead.

Alas, we cannot get to the following day without first resting, and so we must leave the happy travelers for the evening.  Omnia Vincit Amour.