Kaleidoscope Montone Style

The days are starting to blur together as the hectic summer life of Montone begins in earnest.

First, we sadly said good-bye to the last of the SADMO’s and the orto looks fantastic after all of John and Libby’s work and now its up to us to tend the garden and make us all proud of the ‘giardino americano’.

We shared a final glass of Prosecco with “the Dues” before indulging in one last full on meat fest of soctto ditto.   Scotto ditto is Umbrian style grilled lamb, simple rough cuts of meat, salted, grilled with a bit of rosemary and devoured while hot. At one point I was taking care of something at the stove, and all I could hear was sounds of ‘mmmm’’’ as everyone was grabbing a piece of meat. In the morning I literally swept up a carpet of rosemary bits from our feeding frenzy.

Well, Dues…. Both sets of you….you are missed already, so come back soon!

Summer weather is here, so Saturday afternoon we headed off to the Pietralunga pool, only it wasn’t officially open yet as it opens today, but they let us in for a swim anyway. We had this whole ginormous pool all to ourselves!

Then it was off to Citta di Castello for a little date night aperitivo and as usual that town puts on a fine show at aperitivo time. We actually bar hopped from Syrah to Café Latino and here’s the report: Syrah makes a better Manhattan and Latino has better nibbles, so clearly it pays to hop.

We knew there was a party going on in Montone, so we scurried back thinking that I would make us a quick bowl of pasta to fuel ourselves for a night of dancing in the piazza, but as we walked up the block, the smell of grilled meat came wafting down and literally dragged us up the street. The Aries soccer team was throwing its annual party and there was grilled meat and dancing for everyone!  But seriously do you have any idea how loud techno-disco music sounds at 1:00 in the morning bouncing off of medieval walls?

We bailed on the party at around midnight because we had to be up at dawn today to gather flowers for the Corpus Domini infioriate. That’s when the streets are covered in elaborate flower designs that we work on for hours and hours and then are destroyed not moments after completion. I’m still working on my Zen acceptance of the destruction of so much work, so quickly! It all happened so  fas….the band came down Via Garibaldi, the priests followed and the populace behind them. Next thing I knew… we were cleaning up and all that was left was the scent of incense hovering in the air. It’s a  marvelous morning’s work, and all in all its been a fine few days.

For the full set of photos from this morning's flower fest: clicca qui.