The house has been real busy this week, guests staying and builders building.

Summer has begun to turn to autumn, there is a chill in the air in the late evenings and the trees are just beginning to turn glorious yellows, golds and reds.  Days are still warm, indeed it was 30 degrees yesterday, and this morning is a perfect cloudless day.

I have good friends coming up from Rome for lunch, so have been busy cooking.  A neighbour brought me a basket of porcini mushrooms, those will do nicely with a bit of rosemary and garlic and our own olive oil over some home-made pasta, followed by a lemon tart made with those wonderful large knobbly untreated Amalfi lemons.

This evening we are off out to a fund-raising concert in aid of Abruzzo in the beautiful restored church of S Pietro in Gubbio.  An orchestra, choir and tenor solo, with works by Faure, Mendelsson and Franck