Welcome home!

It has been a little while since I have put up a picture of the countryside other than flowers and such. So, here is a little abandoned house in the middle of a field.

There are lots of these structures in Italy in various stages of decay and abandonment. Some still being used to store things or bails of hey. Some so badly decomposed, that only a few timbers remain. Others yet that barely resemble anything at all. Though very charming, I always wonder the motivation to leave them up?

Today's bike ride was full of perfumes... honesuckles and flowering plants, wet field smells of sour grass, dry field smells of slightly acrid rapeseed and wheat, the occassional pig..., the coolness of the river on the overpass where I stopped to rest, the raw gas smell of a Harley passing by and some other drier foul smells of diesel engines and trucks sharing the road with me.

The rapeseed is waiting to be harvested. The wheat fields are maturing and I would imagine nearly ready for some of the varieties. The corn is just coming up and it won't be long before it is waste high - as this image shows. Just a week ago, the same field was barely showing green.

Great to be out on the bicycle at lunchtime!