home improvement :)

today i was feeling ambitious and decided that i needed to buy new plants for our terrace. keep in mind that i am NOT a green thumb. on the contrary, i think i'm a black thumb. everything manages to wither (or rot, depending on the plant) and die under my care. in the house i have some little cacti that manage to survive (only because i water them once every blue moon) and most surprisingly a rubber plant that was given to us as a wedding present is currently flourishing near our living room window (they must be really, really hearty plants ;) heeheehee!). so today gustavo & i went to a nursery to pick out some new succulents (in italian cacti & succulents are grouped into one group called piante grasse or fat plants... don't ask me why!). i have no idea what any of these are called other than the aloe vera plant but this is what i ended up with:

isn't the view from our terrace nice?

a close up of four of the six plants

i had decided to spend 50 euro max and i spent 52 so i guess i didn't do so bad. but are plants always this expensive? i have no concept of what the price of plants should be. hmmmmmm... maybe next time i'll go to the market in la spezia rather than a nursery (the only problem with that is that it means that i'd have to wake up early on my only day off... hence the reason why i hardly ever go!).

here's a photo of my geraniums (from the last time i was feeling ambitious). tomorrow they'll be on their way to nonna's (francesco's grandma's) because she thinks that she can snap them out of their funk. i think she's optimistic because she hasn't seen them yet. notice how i didn't even put them in nice pots? that's because i've learned from my past experiences that they don't live long enough to merit nice pots. ha!

francesco's uncles (francesco & alcide, pronounced al-chee-day) are doing a major home improvement project. they've torn down and are rebuilding a stone wall down near the gate at the bottom of the house. the wall they tore down was a dry stone wall (which means that no cement was used when it was built) and it was there for who knows how many years. the one they are putting up has cement between the stones and shouldn't risk collapse like the other. francesco's uncles never cease to amaze me for both their hard work and their handiness. zio francesco is out there every morning with a hammer and chisel and he "sculpts" the rocks into the perfect shape for the wall(!!!). talk about patience! they are reusing the original stones from the old wall for the new stone wall (i think in the states we would just buy new ones so i admire their eco-friendly approach).

here's a photo of penelope that i took today on our way back up to the house after her walk (that's our building in the background... we're on the tip-top floor, which i think is out of sight!)