Spring and mimosa in southern Italy

Well, it has certainly been a long, cold winter ... but today David and I sat munching lunch in the back cockpit of our boat, gently rocking on a more or less glassy sea, warmed by the early sun of spring, listening to the voices of the Italian boaties nearby ... and felt we really had made the right decision to come here.
That said, of course, world news continues to be pretty depressing. So I just mention Tunisia and Israel. ... before moving on to more cheering topics.

I spent a wonderful week in Greece, visiting Ioannina where I had never been before, and the stunning landscape around Megallo Meteora. (I put some pix on Facebook.) During that period the seas raged and the winds blew back here in Bari, so I was glad to be elsewhere.
Since my return it hasn't been too wonderful. But today, 18 March, in preparation for the arrival of Primavera in two days' time ... ecco, un cielo azurro azurro!
We begin to feel at home here in the Bari area, meet some locals (I continue my inspiring Italian lessons) and every day we cook or consume the most delicious Pugliese food. What a joy: we love the little sentence in Eataly that runs, la vita e troppo breve per mangiare male which translated word for word is: life is too short to eat poorly/badly, or in slightly more English English: life is too short not to eat well!!

Then there is the sky above the vast sea; this makes all things good. Even if deep grey and cloud-lowering... it is always changing and the sunsets are often a watery delight.
So now back to Pirandello, my elevated Italian literature... I forgot to mention the little problem I am presently enduring with my right shoulder (pulled a tendon in November) but that isn't the main concern of my life! It may take over a year to heal completely, so I do my exercises and wonder...
And of course I am writing little poems and so forth in my sealskin black book.

Here's one I wrote in Greece:
The meaning of an Ithaca

Why do I weep?
I came across your pencilled copy of Cavafy's poem about travelling to Ithaca;
written on a sheet of paper in your eccentric Gothic hand...
we could not find it to read when we sailed there last summer.
So instead, I wrote some lines titled Sailing past Itaki, which began:
'We did not land...'
But we did.

We have lived seventy years and it seemed time for us
to stitch up our joys and sufferings
and to arrive.
Laden.
Tomorrow I travel without you to the north of Greece
to the place where Zeus ruffles the oak leaves
and those who wish to, listen.

(Wendie, 26 February 2015)