S. Worthen | Weblog

Edelweiss is really weird. Of course I had heard of it before, the song especially, but I never saw it before my mother pointed it out for sale at a gift shop, up in a pass in the Dolomites. Half the passersby exclaimed in delight on seeing it, and since she had paused to draw the flowers, she could hardly mistake the consensus.

I saw lots more of it the next day: it decorated every tombstone in the gorgeously-situated cemetery in the town of Colle S. Lucia.

It was not even white, contrary to the song, but a pale, pale green. Its five-plus centers reminded me of nothing so much as Cthulhoid eyes. It struck me as a notably alien and unfamiliar plant. Yet, for the locals, it is a ubiquitous badge of homeland, especially with its geometry abstracted into even fives: five centers, five short petals, five long ones, on tablecloths, hiking badges, and shopping bags.

For gillpolack, who has been reading up on thinking about transhumance. These cows were grazing up high in the Dolomites in Passo Giau. (Click on the photo for larger cows.)

We really lucked out with the weather on this trip. With a few largely-overnight exceptions, we had lovely, clear, warm days despite an until-then rainy summer.

Family friends took us up into the Colli Euganei last weekend, odd volcanic hills southwest of Padova. After an hour at a Monselice festival, more market than seasonal produce, and walking up its hill to glorious panoramas in the noontime haze, we ate a wonderful lunch at a countryside restaurant.

Afterward, in the fading afternoon, we went to a frantoio, where olives are pressed the "traditional" industrial way. It's a small family operation, with the extended family in residence in the surrounding buildings. It was clean, compact, and redolent of grassy olive intensity.

Here is a photo of the first pressing: enormous granite millstones turn at speed, each rotating around its own axis and the joined axis at the center of the vat.



The crushed olives are then crushed again, beneath hundreds of kilograms of pressure, separating the oil from the olive paste which can then be used for tapenades and such. A final round of machining clarifies the oil.

Our incredibly dense day wasn't over. Our hosts took us back to their home as night fell.



Then we were off, too soon, for another meal, pizza at another friend's restaurant. Had we only more appetite with which to do it justice....

A getting-to-know-you meme. "Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given."

gylfinir asked me about:

( Canterbury )

( anime )

( Bede )

( Italy )

( Family )