Bits and Pieces of Italy

There are many photos I take and say, "I'm going to put this on our blog and say...." They often don't get on there so I decided to put up a few with a short paragraph about them.

First: We went to the market and saw this giant potato. When we asked what it was, the man told us it was "patata Americana" which our friend said meant sweet potato. We bought two and brought them home to try. Bob sliced them like french fries and fried them in oil. They were really good and tasted more like potato than sweet potato. They're also not orange inside, they're yellowish-white. I put it with a regular sized potato for the photo to show how huge it was.

As I've said before, there are two bases here. The working base with the air field (we're a Naval Air Station) and other important parts of the work here and the support base where the school, stores, recreation, etc. are located. Driving between the two is always a challenge because you usually have to wait for a flock of sheep to cross the road (and they're never in a hurry). You have to be really careful because they don't seem to have any idea a car is dangerous so they walk in, among, and around the cars in the middle of the road. The shepherd, also, is never in a hurry and you'd better not hit one of the sheep---male sheep cost you 200 Euros each and females cost 500 if you hit them. At an exchange rate of $1.43 for every Euro you just don't want to take the chance so you drive VERY SLOWLY and stop if necessary until they're completely out of the way.

When Ken and Lynette were here we were walking in Motta and looked to the right. This cloud was hovering there and was pretty much the only cloud in the sky. It looked more like a bomb blast than a cloud but it reminded me that I wanted to show a couple of interesting cloud formations. We've seen things here that really surprise us and clouds are one type of thing. They come and go so quickly, though, that you have to have a camera with you to catch them at their most interesting. The second cloud, we've seen a couple of times. (It's really not a tornado.) We're told that the moisture in the air, the dryness and warmth of the air over Mount Etna etc. etc. make this formation show up occasionally.

Just a final note: Bullet, the dog we accidentally adopted is doing well. At one year old, he's still acting like a pup and eating everything. The account of what he's eaten includes (but is not a comprehensive list by all means): the cover off the swimmimg pool, four garden hoses, four---no, more than that---of our next door neighbor's shoes (Giusseppe keeps saying, "No problemo, e' giovani" which means, no problem he's young), five decorative straw chickens from our porch (it has a gate and he still gets in), the irrigation system for the orange trees, a couple of light bulbs from our outside lights, and numerous container plants we've tried to put around for decoration (one was a very stick cactus and didn't seem to bother him). The only stomach problem we've seen from him was when he stole a trash bag that had leftover chili in it. (Or maybe it was the rabbit he caught and ate earlier that day). What a dog.........He makes life interesting. Every day on the way home from the base we wonder..........