Beginnings

Umbrianista....a female inhabitant of what is called the "green heart of Italy". As a part-time resident, visiting for now only once or twice a year, I have hardly earned the name. But I am doing my very best to remedy that by spending more and more time in my favorite country and putting down roots in the garden of my miniature compound atop Monte Peglia on the outskirts of historical Todi. Le Caselle is the tiny borgo of five or six stone houses and only one family in permanent residence. My vicini - the Italian word for neighbors - are the real deal, having lived off the land for a generation. I, on the other hand, am a curiosity - a single American woman, a New Yorker, no less, who purchased a package of three modest crumbling houses on a large giardino from which one can see in the distance, the misty silhouette of Santa Maria della Consolazione, the famous round church that distinguishes Todi from the surrounding hill towns.

Le Caselle lies in Quadro, a frazione of Todi; a rural spoke on Todi's bustling wheel. Quadro consists of the narrow road that leads to Le Caselle, along which a rag-tag community of elderly Italians and new immigrants from Muslim countries make their homes. There is, in addition, a circolo, or community recreational center where locals gather to play cards, socialize, gossip and have a hearty meal in the downstairs cantina/restaurant. I am certain that I am discussed if not regularly, then from time to time, most likely in the context of being an American of some means, and thereby the source of potential income via the restoration of my house. Across the way there used to be a Tabacchi that was owned by an elegant elderly couple, who must have passed away since it was closed and boarded up last time I was there.

Ascending the serpentine road leading up Monte Peglia one gets an increasingly broad and dramatic view of the landscape. Vineyards, olive groves, restored villas and new construction, open fields, luxurious driveways lined with cypress trees. It's a fantasy of the Italian countryside; the sort of thing you see in films and glossy magazines, come to intoxicating life. It all makes you pine for fresh figs, oilve oil and umbrian bread, and one cannot help savoring the lushness of it all as you climb towards what is certainly heaven or Xanadu or whatever one calls that perfect place of tranquility.

Le Caselle has a welcoming committee of three mangy canines - Bruto, Piubruto, and Brutissimo (Ugly, Uglier and Ugliest). Straining against metal chains, their barks like bullets in an echo chamber, their matted coats and filthy faces warning of fearless attack capabilities, this security team ensures that no one enters the borgo undetected. For this, I suppose, I should be thankful, but I can't help imagining waking each day to an alarm clock of yelping, barking and croaking (from the rooster in my neighbor's chicken coop. ) Not having spent a night there yet, I am filled with fear about having made the most foolish purchase in Italy's long history of selling off ruins to foreigners. But another part of me can't wait to throw open the shutters and breathe in the in the bright mediterranean sun on that first morning, just like the English ladies of that delightful film "Enchanted April", who, having arrived in the Italian countryside the night before in a depressing rainstorm, found a burst of glorious light waiting outside their window when they awoke. Reality will probably fall somewhere between the two scenarios, so I resolve to be prepared for either Nirvana or murder.