I took this sneaky picture of Clare enjoying an early earl grey tea, around 6:40 this morning.
She is not looking at the orange gloves ( that she wore yesterday to cement some stone steps in our future bedroom ) but, instead, observing the zucche that are growing on the plant in front of her...
Here's a close up of the pumpkins...
If you look carefully, you can see four of them.
To get back to the first photo... I was standing behind a bunch of beautiful, yellow flowers.
This plant is called topinambur or jerusalem artichoke. In Dutch we call it aardpeer ( earth pear ).
The flowers smell delicious!
They remind me of white chocolate but are described to smell like chocolate and vanilla.
Apparently, some chefs use the tubers ( the part that grows underground and can be eaten like a potato ) to create cacao-flavored desserts/ dishes, without using actual cacao.
Clare and I might try that in the coming months, as we have hundreds of these billies growing on our land ( not just in this little giardineto at the front of our first house but in several places ) and they spread like peanutbutter wildfire.
And here's one more pic of the lovely and beautiful @clareartista applying her make up, just before she's heading out to work half a day at a friend's house, a 20 minute drive away.
It was a dark morning and we don't have electricity ( aside from an almost empty power bank that mostly just charges our phones ), so she had to stand in the kitchen doorway.
This is what the view from there looks like ( showing our courtyard and oldest and biggest fig tree ):
Our view is just too nice to ignore.
So standing in a doorway is preferable over staring at a kitchen wall, especially if the latter still needs a(n extra) window.
Yet another project to add to our extensive DIY list ;^)
Sending love from Molise, Italia!✨🧑🌾👩🌾
P.S. I am trying to shake things up with a new format ( photo stories ). Let's see if I can keep this series going and be a bit more consistent.
