cold but sunny

 

here's the latest installment of village pictures, complete with sunrise-y snapshots taken from the bus. the whitish line you see in the first one is fog lifting off the valley - and below, an unexpected green which i can't remember whether i saw in reality or is just a camera effect:

i actually love my morning bus trips, which might not be obvious from how i normally talk about them. they remind me my first times taking this bus from cluj, ...i want to say 2002, though logically even earlier. i think i'm thinking 2002 because that was the first year i was paying with my hard won money :). it's a journey back in time in more than one way,and always full of anticipation.

you sort of know what you'll find, but you never know EXACTLY, until you see it.
some things spell out autumn - here the sunflowers drying out on my aunt's sill -

and some others are just the 'home in the village' usual

but look, i'm trying to post a tutorial on making these dough thingies ('pancove')

 

new household addition: the still-unnamed calf

and my uncle in a very brief cameo. it's very funny how he doesn't know exactly what i'm doing, i.e. whether i'm photographing or filming him. so that makes me be not very sure what i'm doing either, ha! i think i'm just trying to have him be his usual self, not stiff and pos-y - always easier with the women, seriously. :

i missed out on picking crocuses because i was walking with someone downhill from the bus and was trying to behave/converse in a mature manner. then i kicked myself, of course, because i never got to return to the other side of the village where i'd seen them. i tried going up the hill on our side and didn't spot any...they grow in pretty specific places, clearings/flat ground with small fine grass, not on the thorny bushything that our land has become. these were picked by my parents on their way down.

and the domestic production of flowers: dahlias...and, i don't know how you call the small ones but they're cute.

i took it as my duty to pick as many varieties of grapes i could find. i guess every house used to have vines all over the facade - but they are very different sorts. back in the day we had small white ones in front, and then a strain of bigger black ones in the yard. i also stole from the abandoned house nearby, my mum's favourites. and then we ate so much (grapes, and new walnuts too, but those aren't so picturesque!)!!!

this is my quest for crocuses, in thorn territory

and one of my aunt's lands, where my father was helping them gather the corn cobs. note that it's been a bad year for corn but ok-ish for pumpkins and absolutely amazing for plums:

and our house from the back - picture prompted by my mother's reaction : "if you showed me a photo of this, i wouldn't recognize it!" - it's a bit weird, i'll admit, because the house used to be unvarnished brick, with your classic reddish-shingled roof, and now after the renovation it's...a stranger building. and from the front you at least recognize the yard, but here at the back the old walnut tree was always the main feature.

these people are helping themselves to some pumpkins, because there's a wealth of them around. i feel i have to add that they're generally just used for pig feed

or for horse feed, in this case  (hey, beauty!)

this garden and up the hillside used to be my great-grandfather's land. his house (down on this road, just a bit up from my aunt's) was low-ceilinged and long, with a porch, with no electricity, painted all blue (that beautiful deep blue) and with earth floors and a thatched roof. i cried when they tore it down 21 years ago, when he died. i don't think we have any photos of it.

the road is bad again because of the mud (it only rained one day, after what people say is the longest drought they remember, and this happens: the cows/buffaloes come into the village from the field and trample all this mud into weird ridges).

this is my dinner! looks gross, eh? but it's so delicious! (ask me about the ingredients!!)

and the infuriating richness of cherry tomatoes - there's no way you can pick all of them, unless you just cut them off the vine like grapes

visiting my other aunt/uncle, the parents of my cousin who's in seattle now. i spent a lot of time at their place growing up, and i'm pretty glad they've been renovating. here's a very clever bench

and they have so many flowers/different plants in their yard! consider this 'the purple of the day', (dana!)

this is what my uncle made: look, we have a cat too!, he says to us.

and one of my childhood books that i found in the dust pile, saved by special request of giulia

we had to make a real fire in the stove at night, because it got so cold we were frozen to the bone after our evening visits to relatives. layering clothes is becoming an issue! and it's hard to warm all the rooms in the old house.
but all things considered, we're still in the beautiful mellow part of the year. i hope it stays some more.
c