Today it’s a completely different story, though. It’s an extremely bright, sunny day with a sky so blue it hurts the eye. I’m sitting in one of our battered garden chairs and while I’m still trying to reconcile our sprouting and blossoming plum tree with neighbour’s large flowering poinsettia bush, I discover that one of our orange trees is carrying large fruit – but fresh blossoms, too! And I swear I’m not making this up, as strange as it may sound: there’s a brass band marching outside our front door (yes, it definitely is a curse, living so close to a main village square!), playing the march that belongs to the feast of St Elizabetta. Which is supposedly taking place in July… Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the “fireworks” that was let off a while ago.

All the while George has some soft tunes from some satellite channel playing, not very successful in covering up the noises of that brass band – and rather  badly matched, too. On top of all this, I just witnessed for the first time how our “soft-spoken” Griza attacked the usually more ferocious Felix with such malice, it was startling. Frightening, even.

Am I dreaming or something??

Oranges are in season...

...their blossoms are not!!

Neither are plum blossoms!

The only sight that makes sense today

PS I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a photo of the racing ball of wool that ensued upon Griza’s surprise attack!