Colleen's Italy

I was going to tell you what is happening here at this time of the year but I shall do that another time.

When I lived in England, my mother was delighted with her oleander shrub because it survived the winter and bloomed. Here, there are magnificent oleander trees in all shades of pink and white which will bloom all summer. As I travel down to San Benedetto on the bus, I see the olive trees which look pretty much the same all year round; but I know how much work goes into keeping them healthy and productive. And I see the grapevines which one week looked dead and the next were covered in foliage. I also enjoy the vivid magenta of the bougainvillea which will continue to bloom well into the autumn.

Have you ever seen a humming bird? I saw some in the West Indies, feeding from hibiscus flowers, and was amazed by them. Two summers ago, I was sitting on my terrace when I saw what looked like a humming bird, enjoying my blue plumbago plant. Of course, we don’t have humming birds in this part of the world so I got on the internet and found that what we do have is the humming-bird hawk moth. It flaps its wings at the same rate as a true humming bird and looks almost identical; and they come at all times of the day and the evening.

We also have lots of dragonflies here in the summer months, so beautiful with their iridescent wings of blue, green and mauve. A few years ago, before I came here, my cat Sox brought a dragonfly into the house; I managed to save it but, as I picked it up to put back outside, it sank (what seemed to be) teeth into my finger. It was very painful but worth it if the dragonfly lived.

Lizards! I love them, but so does Sox who catches them on my terrace or on the roof and brings them inside. I’ve set several free already this year and there will be many more I’m sure. One very hot Saturday afternoon the first summer I was here, Sox came downstairs with something in his mouth; it was thrashing around but I couldn’t see what it was. When Sox dropped it to the floor I saw that it was a lizard’s tail, still moving and with blood on it! It was about twenty minutes before it stopped moving. I have since learned, that when under threat, lizards can shed their tails and grow new ones. Certainly, the first lizard I rescued this year had a stubby tail; the second, a half-grown tail.

Last summer I heard buzzzzzing sounds in my bedroom. I couldn’t work out where the noise was coming from but – yes, him again – Sox traced it to my bookcase. I pulled a book out and something flew past me. I pulled a few more books out and some dry pottery-type matter crumbled and dropped. When I looked closer, there were about twelve small, black spiders; all apparently dead. So I got on the internet again and found that the flying insect was a mud-dauber wasp. The wasps collect mud and when they find a suitable place, they deposit it, go back for more, and build little structures; they put paralysed, small spiders and insects in, lay a egg and seal up the hole. The hatched wasp then has a supply of fresh food. A reversal of the spider and fly process. You might know these things already of course. 

Next time I write my diary I shall have been to the opera and La Passatella and will tell you about it.

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