In-between Babies: Day 2: The Devil and the Garden of Eden

Grape vines on multiple trellis'

The next morning Henry and Bea woke me up at 4 and I really didn’t go back to sleep so at about 6am I woke up and stepped outside to check out the terraced backyard and found the most spectacular garden I have ever been in.

The left view from our apartment

The right side view from our apartment

The family that built the house on the entire hillside and through many years, have constructed from the bottom up, an almost completely vertical garden up the mountain behind their home.

Figs weren't quite ripe yet. Blast!

I began looking around and with every step, discovered a grapefruit tree, then a pomegranate tree, fig tree, plum tree, kiwi tree, blackberries around every corner, grapevines growing up trellis after trellis, diverse citrus trees, herb bushes, plus perennials like tomatoes, squash, basil growing all over the place, and on the base of just about every grapevine there were pumpkins and winter squash vines growing up the stems. The place was a paradise for me.

View from the garden

Half way up the garden, a large piazza was dug out and an outdoor entertaining area created complete with a brick oven for cooking pizza, an extra large table for about 20 people, oil lamps to light the place up and the whole place was entirely covered by a giant trellis covered in grapevines that were dripping with grapes dangling above our heads. It was a vision. Then at the top of the developed area was a hutch with rabbits and a chicken coop with fresh eggs inside.

Pomegranate. Looks like the forbidden fruit doesn't it?

After I took photos of everything I returned to my outdoor terrace to read my Book of Mormon and then I saw a pudgy old man come out. He turned on the water and stood for a few minutes watering just his grapefruit tree. He finally turned to see me and I began talking to him. I asked if I could take a photo of him watering his garden but said he didn’t want to because he hadn’t put his teeth in. He finished his work down below and I asked him if I could come with him to help with any garden chores.

Not only veggies in this garden. Flowers were everywhere

He asked me how old I was and then told me he just turned 79 years old. Bear in mind, he didn’t have any teeth during this whole conversation. Then he began to tell me that he has passion for what he does and that he loves his garden. He also mentioned to me that he loves women…many women and that he still has the passion for women, every day. Hmmmm. We collected the fresh eggs and he gave me some fruit. We sat to rest for a second and then he leaned over to me and whispered in my ear some strange subtle sexual references that I didn’t fully understand, however the gesture he made made it quite clear what he was trying to do.

These little plumbs were ripe and delicious

I politely said, I didn’t understand and he laughed and said that it was better for me that I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. Then he asked me how I liked the bed I was sleeping in. haha. This man would not give up. I ignored his question and then asked if we could have a pizza party on his piazza. He laughed and said he would talk to his wife.

The Devil

The offering of the fruit

We descended and we parted ways. I think if it had been anyone else but an 80 year old Italian man without teeth I would have been offended, but I don’t expect any better from any Italian man. Haha.

My first breakfast here in Italy.

Anyway, I sat and ate my delicious breakfast of Buffalo yogurt and garden fresh fruit and spent an extra hour taking in the beauty of that garden in front of me. The kids woke up and immediately running up all the dangerous paths, picking all the plums, grapes and blackberries.

Lucy in the garden

Henry and his new buddies came back into our kitchen and used their newly picked fruit to make juice. They squished all their fruit with forks and spoons, mixed it with sugar and made about a tablespoon of disgusting syrup. They froze it and made one disgusting popsicle.

We finally left and went down to the beach for the rest of the day. Before we got to the beach we found the farmer’s market and bought some wild strawberries that were about as big as my pinky fingernail that had incredible flavor, cheese, and other fruit to take with us to the beach. The beach was relaxing except that you were supposed to rent a beach chair for 10 Euros per day if you wanted to be comfortable. We got kicked off quite a few times but it was just too expensive!

We ended up setting our towels up on the beach and we had a delicious picnic lunch. Henry and his buddies dug in the rocky shore and made a small hot tub for the baby with giant boulders, the babies took naps, I swam out to the buoys three times with Laurel, Justin and Lucy each. During one of my swims, Clementine wandered off up the steps and was found wandering around the parking lot. Ai yai yai. Luckily she didn’t get killed or kidnapped.

After we were done swimming, we headed over to eat gelato at one of the most delicious places I have ever eaten at. I had dark chocolate and yogurt. My favorites. The kids got the usual fruit flavors. Bea fell asleep on the bench outside of the store, still clutching her cone. Since we had 8 kids amongst us we were a pretty big spectacle. People were either adoring them because they were acting cute or hating them because they were really annoying throwing tantrums. It’s hard to not notice my four kids with bright blond or red hair running around all over the place. We quickly ran to the store for some dinner and breakfast food, made it home quickly to cook pasta with pesto and put our screaming and cranky kids to bed!