Running for Your Life: Waking to the Wedding March

M and I were in a countryside villa lodge late last month – a hop, step and a jump from Fumicino airport, where we had arrived from JFK that morning. To take off some of the edge of our travel weariness from the overnight flight, we retired for a nap that was shortened by the playing of the wedding march. We both stepped to the balcony and from the sunny field beyond the garden wall came the sweet, unamplified sounds of the wedding march.

When M called to book our one night in Tenuta Torre Gaia http://bit.ly/28S78es the room registrar informed us that on the day of our arrival there would be an early evening wedding of two local young people. Did that present a problem? she asked M. Hardly …

So began our latest trip to Europe. This time to places where Italian was spoken first – if not exclusively. I’ve only now after almost a month (which explains my absence from adding to my blog; when I travel I make a point of going and staying offline – and cellphone free) started to stir from my Alice in Wonderland-like Italian mood that enveloped me that evening at Tenuta Torre Gaia and simply wouldn’t let go.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Paradise

Running for Your Life: American Redstart

Our little backyard with giant oak tree, weeping cherry, gorgeous hydrangeas, rangy acubas and killer forsythia draws birdsong in the morning, cardinals and mockingbirds and the childhood-memory stir of rackety blue jays, who scatter the others like a playground bully.

We’ve never had an American Redstart. In fact, M and I hadn’t even heard the phrase until we talked to a birder in Prospect Park.

It’s one of the reasons I love living in Brooklyn. During the spring migration season, exotic-looking birds and their Two Foot scholars become part of the scenery in our nearby park.

One day we saw a bird with a flash of brilliant orange. Initially we both thought oriole, which we have spotted on the rare occasion. But it wasn’t orange-breasted, more an underwing and wing, tail feather orange. Brighter. Say, mixed with carrot.

That’ll be an American Redstart, a birder said.

Rings like a story title, doesn’t it? Or the hint of a poem.

Next: Running for Your Life: Waking to the Wedding March