On the last Sunday of September, for many years now, I have had an important engagement with my Granny, Maria, one of the first women to get an MD in biology, in 1949, from Parma University. She is still very keen on botany and zoology, so I once again volunteer to go with her to have a look at a show called Rare and Lost Plants and Animals, that has been held in Guastalla every year for the last 16 years, at the end of September. On that day and for a day only, scenes of everyday life long since died out are suddenly revived, together with the taste of foods and products of yore.

We start roaming around: there are over 400 exhibitors of rare, endangered species and age-old arts and crafts that nobody can or wants to practise any longer. We take a look at the balètt, sieves used for cereal, fèr da sghèr, sickles, sgùrbie, pruning hooks. I confess that one of the initiatives that most arouse my curiosity is the so-called donkey-bus. How can it possibly work? And what about getting a donkey license? Who will “deserve” one? Granny would like to attend gardening lessons, despite the fact that she doesn’t need them, as she has a true green thumb when it comes to house plants: hers grow as big as baobabs! Anyway, I decide to please her. I shall have a look at more amusing initiatives later on. Among them are: a crowing competition open to all Italian cocks, a beauty contest for geese, Pretty Goose, a photo contest called Lights, camera, action! We’re braying. This initiative seems to me particularly nice, as it is a photographic competition open to all children. I cannot take part in it, of course, but I can take a picture!

Visiting Venice on a clear winter day, after the passage of joyful Carnival crowds, is a unique but achievable experience! Having parked my car in Piazzale Roma, after less than two hours’ drive from Guastalla, I haven’t made up my mind whether to walk to the Pinault Foundation – which I haven’t seen yet - or try to track a route invisible to most, but charming, which I have heard of for some time: that of the hidden Venetian vegetable gardens… Given the sunny day, a decision is easily taken! I head for the big Campo Santa Margherita, with its fruit, vegetable and fish market, where huge seagulls try to snatch away shopping bags from unwary customers, scaring them off with their shrill cries. I cross the bridge leading to Campo San Barnaba and I bump into a boat that drops anchor there every single day to sell fruit and vegetables: a feast of colours! I immediately notice artichoke hearts, so typical of the Venetian cuisine, floating in a large bowl of water.

A few more steps and I reach Zattere, where I wait for a boat to take me across the Giudecca Canal to Zitelle (literally “spinsters”), a religious complex that owed its name to a neighbouring charitable institution for poor young women.
Peering here and there inside the Venetian palaces and houses, I can see gardens everywhere, but at Giudecca you can still find small vegetable gardens next to the houses. Here you can also see a “common vegetable garden” of about 16,146 square feet., open to residents and tourists alike. It is not an exception: Venice municipality granted the cultivation of 38 municipal gardens to pensioners also in Dorsoduro, a district which includes the entire southern area of the city. Other urban vegetable gardens are present at the Lido -Venice beach resort.

Giudecca common vegetable garden is a "synergic" one, where the soil is neither plowed nor fertilized and crops are concentrated in beds raised from the ground and a variety of plants and flowers are grown, complementing one another. I wander along the “mulched” flower beds, covered with straw and other vegetable substance, taking care not to step on cultivated land.

Heir to the medieval tradition of the hortus conclusus (enclosed vegetable garden), Venice is also dotted with orchards and vegetable gardens tended within the cloisters of its churches. Thus, at Sant’Elena’s, the monks grow exotic plants, along with pomegranates, grapes and olive trees; at Il Redentore’s (the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer) the Capuchin friars grow fruit trees, olive trees and vines, together with vegetables and herbs; at San Francesco della Vigna’s, in the district of Castello, the Friar Minors, who live in seclusion, cultivate the vine. Even in the islands of the lagoon you can find vegetable gardens. In San Lazzaro degli Armeni, for example, or in the island of San Michele. The so-called "salt gardens" are also famous. Their name is due to the high rate of salt in the soil, especially in the islands of Vignole and Sant’Erasmo in the north-eastern lagoon. Their most famous produce is the "purple artichoke", on sale on the wonderful stalls of Rialto Market. Before leaving Giudecca, I can not resist the temptation of sipping a spritz - Venice celebrated cocktail - on the roof-garden of Molino Stucky, a former mill recently turned into a Hilton hotel. From the rooftop terrace you can enjoy a breathtaking view of Venice and its lagoon!

Beside the famous, strong, sweet wine, Marsala has some interesting produces. Salt may seem trivial, well, it is not. Faced to the regular Mediterranean wind coming from west this blessed land had the ideal climate to extract salt from sea water, since the first human settlements, through the Greeks, the Romans and today. Since that time and for ages afterwards salt was so important for food preservation and human nutriment to be regarded as money. Hence the word “salary” we still use today.

In Marsala a saltwork still produces the salt on the same spot, the same way of two or three millennia ago, with Sun, wind, and seawater.
It is a beautiful view: huge, shallow pools are placed in degrading order to bring seawater inland with the help of traditional sail windmills. Pool after pool, the water changes color and while evaporating it thickens, leaving all the mineral it contains until, in the last pool, blinding white piles of sodium chlorite are amassed, by hand, in cones.
This slow process produces the best salt for human usage, healthier than rock salt where all the minerals are still present along with the chemical products used for extraction. Pure seawater salt can be identified on the box and by its higher price. The difference is affordable and a moderate use of the good one is advisable.
Marsala is near Trapani, can be reached by flight, or Ferry and has very beautiful surroundings, including the Aegadian Archipelago with the island of Favignana, alone worth the trip.

Verona is about one hour drive from where we live and work. It is a very elegant town and full of historical buildings. Placed as it is at the entrance of the Brenner valley, that connects Northern Italy to Austria and Germany it has always been a capital for the succeeding ruling peoples in each time of its long, long history.

Not every time I go there do I visit the famous monuments, like the Arena, or spill a tear or two under the balcony of Juliet (great fiction, isn’t it?): we go there for shopping!

Via Mazzini starting from the Arena, ending at the Piazza delle Erbe, has the most elegant shops and as spring is approaching my wife Gabriella stops at every, I mean every, window for shoes, purses that seem to be a “must have” for the new season.

Luckily she is a sensible girl and most of the shopping is made with her eyes. It is a kind of activity that quickly bores me and over the years we found a reasonable compromise in splitting our ways after the first five or maximum six windows. This is when different interests come into place, why to insist?

Last Saturday I happily went alone, hunting for curious things in the narrow roads departing from Piazza delle Erbe. I found this beautiful Salumeria where a lot of prosciutto legs are hanging inside, while the front windows still keep the original fixtures and sign.This I what I call a window! And look at the inside. An Easter Chocolate Egg is just waiting to be bought! Going inside I could not resist buying thinly sliced prosciutto, craftily packed with three different types of paper: oily paper for the slices, a thin transparent divider, everything rolled and wrapped on Havana coarse paper. The perfume of this little pack accompanied me until we finally got home that evening… Gabriella did not bother; she was craving to show me her new shoes.