It certainly felt like it over the weekend. The Chieti province weather's been getting steadily warmer and on Saturday was 61F/16C - great for early February - so we thought we'd check out a few leisurely walks you can take when you're staying at our Abruzzo villa rental. Incidentally, we've already shown you the view due south from the patio of your villa for two - on the left is a reminder - but you haven't yet seen what lies due west. The house on the right is where we'll be living: your villa for two (and the pool) are hidden by the olive grove !

And those olive groves are a delight at the moment. Pruning the trees is in full swing to keep them at a pickable height for next November's harvest. The cuttings are either left to dry and then bundled up for kindling for use on fires next winter, or just left for grazing sheep, who regard the little twigs and leaves as a gourmet delicacy. The wild flowers are an absolute delight, turning some of the olive grows into an abruzzese version of an alpine meadow. Our Abruzzo villa rentals are set in acres of olive groves - and we have  seven trees of our very own !

And in turn these wild flowers were providing an early Spring snack for the honey bees. A huge number of bees in small, portable hives are moved into olive groves and vineyards over the coming months to help pollinate the flowers. But on this particular warm February afternoon, the bees were making a - er - bee-line for clumps of wild rosemary.

Later in the year, you'll be able to buy the resulting honey from local producers at the weekly markets in Chieti province. Abruzzo honey is particularly good - either a 'single variety' (chestnut honey's my personal favourite) or the mille fiore made from - literally - 'a thousand flowers'.

The sun's also rousing the lizards from the tiny cracks and crevices under rocks and in old walls where they've spent the winter. You tend to hear them skittering about before you actually see them, just catching snatches of movement from the corner of your eye, because they're incredibly quick.

I snapped our friend on the right from about 10 feet away as he basked in the sun - then enlarged the pic. That's why he looks like Godzilla. Don't be alarmed ! The local lizards, tail and all, don't measure up at much more than about 4 inches. (And most of that is tail !)

(Click on pictures in text for larger images) 

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under About Abruzzo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.