Autumning
November in Sardinia
The rains have started and we are officially in Autumn here on our little hillside in Sardinia.
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face. ~ John Donne, Poem The Autumnal, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose
Autumn is truly one of the loveliest seasons here in Sardinia. Sure, there are gale force winds and pounding rains for days but it’s not so bad. The rains create a lot of humidity and we’re an island so it’s already pretty humid at the best of times but it does turn the land green again and the winds clear the air. And, when the sun comes out, it’s still warm and everything glitters and sparkles. There isn’t really much in the way of winter here; at least, not the kind of winters I grew up with in Canada. There was snow the other day not far from us, in the higher hills but an unusual event. February and March tend to be the coldest months before the spring rains start in April. Temperatures can drop to just below 0 in those months and there’s usually some snow up in the centre of the island. At the moment, we’re at between 8-10 degrees at night and 14-22 during the day depending on whether there is sun or not.
There aren’t many flowers at this time of year but I’ve noticed the bougainvillea seem to really like this season and have new flushes of rich orange, soft pinks, or deep violet blossoms. When I lived in Morocco, I had a high wall next to my bedroom window that was covered with bougainvillea of different colours and it was a glorious sight to wake up to in the morning, with little birds trilling away as they flitted in and out of the bushes. I want to recreate that here and have started planting bougainvillea all around the hillside.
Autumn here is nut and mushroom season. Supermarkets are full of little bags of chestnuts for roasting over open fires and walnuts. There was a little deli shop, Gourmet, near my house in Zamalak, Cairo which sold these amazing walnut shortbread biscuits and I loved them so much I tried to recreate the recipe. Shortbread was a pantry staple growing up with a Scottish mum, with all that buttery yumminess, but the addition of finely chopped walnuts took them to a whole other level. I sometimes add a mix of nuts, not just walnuts. My recipe is on The Citrus Grove website here if you’re interested. So good! The perfect autumnal comfort food to nibble on with a steaming mug of tea or coffee for those mid-morning or afternoon pick-me-ups.
With all the rain, mushrooms are now popping up everywhere. We still haven’t had the courage to eat any and want to have one of our more knowledgable neighbours give us a quick lesson. They look like they might be autumn porcini (Boletus edulis, Boletus aereus) and chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius). I do love mushrooms! So many great recipes! I’m a ‘soupetarian’, a soup lover, a soup enthusiast, especially in autumn and winter and mushroom soup is one of my favourites. It’s another pure autumnal comfort food with its lightly fried mushrooms, smoky pancetta, soothing leeks, and oodles of panna (heavy cream). I usually make it without a written recipe but I think I started with a recipe for a traditional Tuscan wild mushroom soup. I’ll be adding my recipe to The Citrus Grove kitchen space at some point but there’s an interesting vegan version here.
So, it’s a bit chilly and wet here at the moment. Perfect weather for hunkering down and snuggling up by the fire with a good film or book. On Sunday though, we roused ourselves and popped by for afternoon coffee by the fire with the lovely Lolla and her infectious laugh. She’d made a wonderful banana cake! She’s lactose intolerant so no butter, just organic sunflower oil, and the cake was made with buckwheat and rice flour, and some apple slices as a base with crushed walnuts mixed in and on the top. So good. She also makes her own liqueurs and we were offered shots of basil, liquorice, or blackberry to follow our coffee and warm our bellies for the short road home.
I’ve said it before but this sense of community here is something I really love. I’ve know Lolla for some years now but mostly meeting at larger festive events or in passing on the road or at the beach. More recently, since moving to our land here, we’ve been spending time with each other at home and it allows for deeper discussion and bonding over shared interests. We discovered on Sunday that we have a shared love and fascination with Lou Andreas-Salomé, the Russian-German writer and psychoanalyst. I vaguely knew that Lolla has spent most of her life in social work, supporting women mainly, and she was telling me more about this when she happened to mention Lou. I ‘met’ Lou when I was doing my MA in Germanistik and Women’s studies some decades ago and rarely meet people who know anything about her. I recently wrote a little about Lou on my other Substack, The Bohemian, in a 3 part series on avant-garde women in 1906. How delighted we were to discover this connection.
Lolla told me about an Italian film from ‘77 that I’d not heard of before about the brief period when Lou lived with Nietzsche and Paul Rée. I went home and spent the evening watching it while the wind howled around the caravan.
Speaking of strong, independent women, Lolla also told me about a couple of Sardinian female legends. There was the Countess, Donna Violante Carroz, for example, from 15th Century Sardinia. There are a few legends about her and she went down in history as “Violante la sanguinaria” (Violante the bloody). Some say her ghost still haunts the castle near Cagliari where she once lived. And, there is also the legend of Giolzia, the Warrior Princess from 10th or 11th Century Sardinia. I think I’ll do a little research on Sardinian female legends and write a series about them, probably on my other Substack, The Bohemian.
Notes from Sardinia is more about our life here on our Sardinian farm with a bit of memoir about my childhood and my dad who I know would have loved our adventure here. I created The Bohemian as a space to talk about women who write, create, and think. It’s also a space for me to share my own experience of being a woman, and my art activities and fictional writing.
Anyway, another lovely autumnal afternoon spent with Lolla; just two ol gals, entering their golden years, who almost share a birthday and who love stories about strong women, autumning together! I like this term autumning. For some time, I’ve been wanting to get hold of a copy of Katherine May’s book Wintering. I subscribe to her Substack The Clearing, and really enjoy her words and thoughts. The reviews I’ve read of Wintering make me feel it would resonate. We need to embrace the quiet, fallow, periods and not just in the real time of the winter season but also in our life stage as we age. As a recent sexagenarian, I don’t quite feel I’m in the winter of my life yet; more the autumn. Also, here in Sardinia there isn’t really a winter or just a very brief spell so... Autumn is long though; a winding down period, slow and shorter days, but also a re-greening of the land. There is a sense of peace and joy resurfacing after the intensity of the summer heat, literally and metaphorically.
Well, that’s me. Thanks for joining me on this wet and wild Autumn day, for reading!
Take care of you!
F ox
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Unless external credit given, all images copyright Fiona Pape.