When in Rome: Weather

Dad always quoted his mom saying, “If you can make a sailor’s jacket out of the blue, it will be a fine day.” Well, that rule does not seem to apply here. There have been days when the morning sky could have clad an entire navy, and then rain, rain, rain. And since we have had a remarkable Indian Summer since I got here (hurray!), the rain brings… mosquitoes. The special yellow-striped variety (tiger mosquitoes) that pack a huge punch in their venom. We’re talking welts here, with severe itching that lasts for almost a week. Romans have discovered screens since my last visit here (appropriately called “zanzaniere,” which can be translated roughly as “mosquito thingys”), but they only use them on balcony doors and not on windows. You can imagine the results.

As I said, it has been Indian Summer, but now the weather is taking a turn towards genuine autumn. Jane’s birthday was the first truly brisk day. In fact, the grape arbor has very few green grapes, and not many full bunches of ripe grapes; the fruit on the six grapefruit trees is ripening so that it is now visibly yellow; the leaves are beginning to turn brown on the edges and fall—they don’t turn colors here. And the “pollen bomb tree” that assailed me when I first got here has greatly diminished its offensive activity.

I really appreciated (and frequently thanked God for) the continued warm weather (today, my birthday, is a balmy 75°): in Chicago I had to wear a jacket to Church in September! And you know how I hate cold weather. So this has been wonderful, even if the last three weeks have been more than a little rainy.