Con Questo Caldo

These days, when you say "How are you?" to someone in Cortona, the answer is usually, "Con questo caldo. . ." and a big shrug.  In other words, "With this heat, what is there to say?"  With the heat appeared the cicadas with their double-time racket in the pine trees. Their yammering accents the beating down heat.  Oh well, under the Tuscan sun. What can I expect?  With the heat also comes the great vegetable season.  Our orto is beginning to give forth cucumbers, lots of lettuces, potatoes, and green beans.  One tomato has ripened but the laden bamboo trellis promises a big crop in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the roses continue to have their day.  Along our upper terrace and our "Polish" wall are Pierre de Ronsard, called Eden in the U.S.

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Here's Pierre up close:

It's my favorite, aside from the unidentifiable one we call Bramasole rose.  Two of them survived the thirty or so years the house was abandoned and have continued to flourish for the twenty-one years we've owned the house.  It has the most ethereal and deeply sweet fragrance of any rose I've ever met.  Despite many trips to rose nurseries and consultations with gardeners, I've never come up with an identification.  Here it is–a tight peony-like bud and a many petaled bloom when open. That color!

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Against the house, it's a climber and when in bloom we can smell the fragrance in the dining room and at the little outdoor table where we have dinner.

My other favorite is the rose named for Rita Levi di Montalcino, an Italian scientist who won the Nobel a few years back.  She's a plucky bloomer and a transcendent beauty:

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After all these flashy blooms, you have to look closely in the orto to appreciate the lovely little purple eggplant flowers and the delicate yellow cucumber and the tiny white potato blooms.  The orto has much interest for the eye, however.  I love the inventive and natural constructs for supporting plants as they develop. Here, beans climb branches cut from the woods and stuck in the ground:

And below, here's the whole orto, with the bamboo teepees for the tomatoes, and more branches in the ground for the cucumbers. At the far end, just out of sight are the strawberries and raspberries, both red and the even more delectable yellow. The basket is full of the first, just dug, potatoes. Simply boiled in big chunks then seasoned and given a few splashes of olive oil and some chopped parsley–nothing better!

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To take that basket down late in the day and pick most of dinner is such a profound joy!  We are loving simple vegetable pastas at night.  I sauté, separately, zucchini, tomatoes, onions (with some garlic), peppers, and eggplant, all in great olive oil, season each and then mix them together in a skillet for a few minutes, just for them to become acquainted with each other, then mix in penne or farfalle or any pasta on hand with a handful of parmigiano.

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Summer food!  Kiss the ground!