The hills above the house this morning just before the rainclouds came over

Yes they are beautiful colours, lovely view.

beautiful view.

my dogs would get lots of walks though!!

It's a darned good excuse to stop work every now and then, Meadow. In fact we bought a bench as an anniversary present to ourselves to put up among the vegetables, so we can, every now and then, sit down and gaze at this very view when we're tired of digging.
Lulu, I wish all the Italians round here WOULD walk their dogs. The poor things tend to get chained up and howling 24/7. Not sure why they have them. Ba****ds! We've volunteered to take them out and are thought extremely strange. We foreigners are mad, of course!

Oh dear, poor pooches :(

I know, Lu. I don't think it is true of all Italians, but country folk round here do seem to have the capacity for terrible, unthinking cruelty, and don't seem to think it matters much. Even my dear little Maria used to say, when we were trying to convince her to get the local stray cats sterilised so that the dozens of kittens produced every year didn't die of cold and hunger and disease. "Ah well - it's not something to worry about - they don't have souls, you know." And she meant it. I could say something really nasty about her take on Christianity, but GoY rules forbid it.

Beautiful scenery, Gattina, with the blue sky backdrop :o)

Didn't last, TT, but we can't complain - we've had unbroken blue skies for weeks now. I'm fed up with watering things.

Yes...
... after so many dry days, I bet you welcomed the rain.

You are so lucky to have this view on your doorstep.I would have to get the easel out.

WOW!

lovely picture, hope you make good use of the bench.

maybe they keep dogs for "security"? though if htey're chained, not much they could do except bark, and as they're doing that all the time anyway, who'd pay any attention to "you're being burgled" barking?

Some people's take on animals, and animal welfare, is a bit staggering - but then, only a cpuple of centuries or so ago, people believed that people of a different skin colour didn't have souls, either! Religion has a lot to answer for.

Are these the same hills that I asked about in one of your snow pictures of the chapel?

afterthought: durr, they can't be, or the chapel would be in this picture!

We are surrounded by hills and mountains on all sides, Fran - they are a part of the Appennine chain, so one way or another, most of my pictures will be the same bumpy bits taken from different directions!

lol, and hope to see more!

Of course hills and mountains all around will affect local weather patterns, making your weather different, or more intense - hotter drier summers? colder longer winters? more and deeper snow yoi've told us about! - do you get much wind? err, perhaps I should rephrase that ...

We have a surprisingly sheltered little microclimate here - cool breezes in scorchingly hot summers, idyllic springs and autumns, surprisingly mild winds when the rest of the area has strong ones, and you would not believe how much it can vary between valleys a bare 10 kilometers apart. Our snowfall has been no worse nor better than the rest of Emilia Romagna right up to the Alps, and even 1600' down on the plain, it has been every but as bad, which surprises us. We are, on the whole, very fortunate. Our neighbours in the valley say we live in "nostro proprio piccolo paradiso" (our very own little paradise), with the emphasis on the word "little". We rarely use the central heating, no-one needs air conditioning, and the sunshine happens so often it gets almost boring, but, of course, sometimes, like everywhere else, we get exceptions.

It does sound ideal - present circumstances excepted, of course. But then, everyone seems to be getting exceptionally bad snow, as you said. I'd been thiking more of a "contained and concentrated environemnt", rather than a"sheltered environment" - ha, shows how much I know.

Do you have pics that you could make into an all-year-round blog?

My knowledge of Italian is limited almost to the point of non-eistence, but I'm assuming that "piccolo" means "little"? must be how the musical instrument got its name - but "little" what? but then "piano", as I understand it (and I'm ready to be corrected) means "quiet" - quiet what, it doesn't add

Yes, Fran, Piccolo does mean little (as in little flute) and "piano" does mean quiet: the musical instrument used to be called a "pianoforte" which pretty much means "quiet-loud" because it had strings which were struck rather than plucked, so the pianist could do it softly or more loudly (by bashing the keys harder) whereas a harpsichord could only deliver a single volume level.
Honestly, I'm a walking encyclopaedia, I am!

lol I'd heard Eddie Izzard doing a piece about music classes at his school, so I was sort of fairly sure what "piano" meant, allowing for his slanting it for humour. don't want to divert the thread any more than I have already, but isn't that what the piano foot pedals are for? louder or softer notes? (but what's the third pedal for?) of course, I could investigate it - sure to be plenty online!

The pedals, if I'm not mistaken, shift layers of felt between the hammers and the strings to deaden the sound or enhance it.

thanks, dear! lol you are an educator *s*