The "caretakers"

I really should have started writing about Helena and Danilo before, because there is so much to write about, especially Helena.

Helena and Danilo have lived on the property where we are staying for about 25 years, since they got married, Helena would have been a beautiful and spirited young Brazilian woman and Danilo, I'm sure a very handsome and charming older man (about ten years older than Helena). They lived in the small house on the property, tending the olive trees, the large veggie patch, looking after the owner's villa, grapevines, etc. Pure subsistence farming, and they did it well.  Over the past 25 years they have seen the property they look after change hands three times, they now help the owners of the house prepare our apartment/house for guests, also cleaning the owner's house, pool, etc, and preparing the houses for their guests (and there are a few!) plus everything else to keep the property running, including making wine, olive oil, preserving the produce, etc.

Danilo, now in his 50s, also works for the commune (council of Monte Castello di Vibio), and Helena does the cooking, cleaning, gardening (and that is a term I use lightly because this place is MASSIVE).
They have a son, Anthony. He is 21 years old and a gorgeous guy. Very quiet but he has big dreams of moving to Brazil, buying a block of land away from everyone and becoming a farmer.

The second day we arrived I heard Helena in the cantina (cellar), so I went to introduce myself. About 20 minutes later I was intimately acquainted with her dental problems that were causing her so much pain she couldn't do anything. She looked really miserable.

A couple of days later with Shane in France, I ran into Helena again. She kindly offered to take me to the supermarket because I was housebound without a car. I then learnt about her other allergies, intolerance to gluten and a very bad sickness she had about 2 years ago, that nearly took her life, but by the strength of God, didn't. I know all about the doctors in Perugia, which ones are bad, good, charlatans, the dentists in Todi, where she goes to get her gluten free flour, how it took them so long to diagnose her illness, she was bed ridden for months. I am intimately acquainted with her health situation let's say.

Helena is a character. She fulfills the part of the feisty Brazilian wife very well. She is also a shoe-in for the part of the lamentative Italian woman, with a jealous husband who she doesn't really like that much ('all men are the same' - I get that sense also in the way she speaks to and talks about Shane....), meanwhile she is always busy ironing sheets and cooking etc etc etc.  I am summarizing to get the point across, but you get my drift.

Collecting apricots to make jam in someone's field down a dirt road far away from our house
where there's a farm with a man who wants to make love to her.

Danilo is a very kind man who loves the kids - he is the king of the kids well and truly, and his son has the same talent. Danilo and his tractor rock Sam and Charlie's world in the first few days here and the tractor still pulls the kids regardless of what they are doing (with the exception of TV). Danilo has always lived in Monte Castello di Vibio and is very traditional in his tastes, a true Italian farmer, with his mother who lives just a few houses down. He seems really content with his life and doesn't want for anything, so it seems to me. They are an odd match...

BBQ - what's medium rare?

Helena invites us over for dinner and we are lucky to experience her cooking, what she can do with veggies from her garden puts my cooking skills to shame, and she's not shy to tell me either! Modesty is not really a word I would use, but she is as honest as they come. 'Salt of the earth' comes to mind...appropriate for Helena because despite her claims that Italians use too much salt and she is a very healthy cook, she has a very hand when it comes to seasoning her meals.

These guys have been generous beyond explanation and have opened up their home - so much so, that the boys go over without a word to us and lie on their bed to watch cartoons. Charlie and Sam have a new set of pseudo grandparents, lucky them :)

We get to meet Danilo's mother and her boyfriend one night at dinner, a woman that Helena despises - I can't begin to explain how she feels about her. Needless to say, I'm grateful for my mother in law a million times over!

Helena's Brazilian aunt Jenny who doesn't look a day over 45 is also a character we have had quite a bit to do with. Another spirited Brazilian woman who runs her own cleaning business and from the photos in her house was a latino dance champion and a total babe in her heyday.  Divorced with a capricious, spoilt rude (her words) 26 year old daughter who lives in the basement and who she despises and I get the sense that the feeling's mutual, Jenny lives with her 70 something year old boyfriend Francis, a Dutch ex-drumming teacher who also lives downstairs (in a separate part to the daughter). Incidentally, her boyfriend refuses to speak Italian. How they hooked up a year ago I have no idea, but given that noone in Jenny's family speaks a word of English, not even Jenny, I'm betting they are awesome at charades. We have had dinner with Jenny a few times, when Helena has invited us to dinner and we have been part of a cast of many, also driving the hour to Jenny's house for dinner also to be greeted by lots of other people from different parts of town, and each time we hear a long story about the relationship between Jenny and her daughter. I have just returned from one of these evenings where we have been invited to dinner. I have accepted, but being a bit wary that it's a long night for the boys (and me!) - tonight there were 15 people at the table, and her daughter also had a dinner party at the same time, but separate to the rest of us...random people I don't even know how they fit in, the only person who's name I caught at the beginning ended up being the 50 something year old butcher, Salvatore, who provided the meat for the bbq and who tried to get my phone number. Nice.

Helping hang the onions and garlic in the cantina

Shane's envy reached its peak when Helena told
him that this year was a really bad year for tomatoes.

Who gets watermelon like this in their garden?!!!

At times over the past few weeks I have wanted to pull my ears off so I don't have to hear some of the things these people have said about their family...Helena is open in the extreme, and she talks as fast as the Eurostar in a Brazilo-Italian accent with grammar that I'm sure isn't right. Try catching the stories after a few wines and see how you hold up, it's not easy! Having said all that, she is generous in the extreme and I am learning lots from her, if not grammatically perfect Italian or how to treat your husband :)