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Here's a little weekly update on what we're up to here. We're working on Castelli e Primavera ...

About the Variety and Impact of the Small and Short

Sometimes the animal kingdom is a bit like the bar counter: Sure, the big drinks catch your eye first—and a full boot of beer is thankfully a rare sight these days, but when it does show up somewhere, it certainly makes an impression. Kind of like the wolf. But just like at the bar, the short ones often get underestimated out in nature. Yet there is a much greater variety among them. Just think of all the whiskeys, those fruit-based drinks, juniper spirits, or herbal liqueurs! And of course, the small ones pack at least as much punch as the big players. Anyone who’s tackled this topic in practice knows that well. It’s the same with the little creatures—the mosquito, for example, is the most dangerous animal in the world (and hands down the most annoying!), not the great white shark!

Even here, on our little patch of earth, there are astonishing tiny beings doing remarkable things. Take ants, for instance. Sure, everyone knows ants, but we’ve never seen ants anywhere that haul so much stuff around as here. Tirelessly carrying something from one place to another all the time! For example, the snail bait we laid around our small salad seedlings—because we wanted to enjoy some salad ourselves and not just grow food for snails. But the ants swept that away on a grand scale and dragged it into their nest. They probably have a snail problem of their own. And speaking of snails: They are super abundant here, with their shells, really beautiful ones too.

These aren’t the ones who’ve eaten all the salad—at least that’s what we think. One of them once crawled INTO a socket by the pool. A snail-socket, so to speak. We figure, a clear suicide attempt. But it didn’t work. We saved the little snail.

Then of course, there are crickets, cicadas, and those little jumpers – they jump high and have these kind of wings to glide off somewhere. They’re not very good at aiming though, and often have to be rescued from the pool. Actually, the whole little critter rescue from the pool is running at full speed around here.

And of course, there are the beautiful lizards. Some of them are bright green, they love basking by the pizza oven, but they can also be a bit jumpy at times. Well, they’re not as tiny as mosquitoes, but let's count them among the little creatures. They laid eggs in the greenhouse, and then there would be these tiny little lizards popping by every now and then—it was quite amazing. And that’s how it is here overall: not always spectacular, but sometimes it’s the little things that bring you the most joy. And spoiler alert: there are really lots of those!

Blog Update – now it’s getting wild!
(Part 2)

So, there are land animals too – and now things get wild and dangerous! Promise.
Regularly, we spot these fawn-colored, deer-like creatures wandering right under our terrace through the olive trees. I don’t know how many times we’ve asked ourselves: Is it a deer or a stag?
Here are some loose excerpts from our expert identification debates: “That’s too big to be a deer! – But the color – That’s not a stag – It doesn’t have antlers at all – Yeah, but the females never have antlers – There are also fallow deer – Really? What do they look like? – They all look the same to me – Look, Google says fallow deer have spots – Oh, like Bambi? – No, Bambi was a roe deer – But that one down there is too big to be a roe deer.” And so on. Anyway, by now we’re pretty sure: here, under the protection of our olive trees and the forest, there are the very rare roe stags. And even with babies.

If you look closely, you can see the doe with a tiny little darting fawn…

…and here she is with both her now pretty big fawns🩷

Of course, there are wild boars too – they already plowed through half our olive grove last winter. But sometimes you can even spot them from the car – which we much prefer to watching them from this distance on foot.

One evening, we were sitting under the starry sky, gazing at the moon. Then an animal made itself heard.
“What kind of owl is that?” – “Don’t know, we haven’t had that one before.” – “Hmm, it kind of sounds like a very unhappy dog, I think.” – “No, that’s not a dog – it’s an owl or some other night bird.” – “No, dog. Unhappy dog.” – “Where on earth would a dog be howling that far away? It sounds weird too.”
– Pause. Listen. Pause. –
“Wait a minute – I know it sounds crazy, but can you Google how a wolf howls?” So, we Googled wolf howling and listened to it – and what came back from the darkness was an exact echo of the wolf howl recording. Alright then. Wolf it is. We went to bed.

And now, a little later, here’s what we’ve learned: 1. Wikipedia says there are wolves in Umbria. 2. The neighbors say, “You heard a wolf? Yeah, that’s possible. You hear them sometimes.” 3. A wolf is just an unhappy dog after all.

We’ll keep you posted. Next week, probably with bears, mammoths, and tigers.

Blog Update – now it’s getting wild!
(Part 1)

Hey there – did this week feel just as long to you as the time between the last blog post and this one? Time really is relative, isn’t it? And by the way, every soccer fan who’s seen their team lead 1-0 in the last minute—or be down 1-0 in another game—knew that long before Einstein did.

But sometimes, the wait is worth it. We’ve definitely used this long week to carefully observe the local wildlife for you. And since you had to wait so long (at least it felt that way), you get something out of it now: pay attention, today you’re about to learn something!

In our intro, we already mentioned the nightingale and the crickets. But of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we wanted to introduce you to all the local creatures, it would never end—from A for ant to Z for zicada. So we’ve been keeping watch just for you, and we’ll only share the truly exotic and spectacular sightings and sounds.

Let’s start in the air:
We truly think the nightingale (only heard, but quite a lot and for a long time) has the most beautiful song imaginable. In our opinion, it’s even better than Ed Sheeran’s—who supposedly lives nearby but, honestly, has neither been seen nor heard. Plus, he’s not even an animal!

Then there’s the hoopoe; honestly, we thought they belonged in Africa — but when you live here, you tend to forget that Africa isn’t really that exotic anymore. Tunis is way closer than Hamburg, after all. But that doesn’t really matter — these guys are pretty cool. And funny. They don’t really sing, they go “hoop hoop hoop.” And they’re kind of adorable too. They built a nest in the wall of our house and even raised their young there. That was really beautiful and touching🩷

And then we also have the golden oriole right here in the neighborhood. Bright yellow, and its song is unmistakable. It always sounds like it’s whistling after the lovely lady oriole.

And when the sun goes down, the owls take over. Our favorite: The tawny owl. The classic spooky
call straight out of every Edgar Wallace film. Works perfectly even without fog and without London.

And then ---- the snake eagle was spotted! A real eagle! Here with us! Flying over the valley clutching a snake. Truly sensational! Whether it really was an eagle, well, that’s a topic the neighbors love to debate. “You saw an eagle?” someone asked. “I’ll tell you what — if you want to see an eagle around here, you’ll need a very good bottle of wine. And with two bottles, maybe you’ll even spot a dragon!” What can we say? So far, we still haven’t managed to spot a dragon…

And next week, we’ll continue with the land animals — don’t worry, it’ll be just as spectacular 😊

June 2025:

The time has finally come… Castelli e Primavera is open!

Here we are again.

We'd just gotten into the groove. Getting up early, going over the project list over our first cup of coffee, drawing up a daily schedule, working on things, and going to bed early after the day's work. We haven't had such a nice rhythm in years. Yes, okay, the rhythm was nice, but it was also quite a lot, and sometimes we wondered if it would ever end or at least lessen. But then - we were just really going at full speed - we realized: WHOA! We're having guests! Nine of them. Well, that's actually, well, when you're just working away nicely... guests can really be a nuisance. Of course not! Because we remembered in time that this is the reason we're doing all this. And we've been working towards this for four months. And about three hours before arrival, we even hung up our welcome sign. And when two cars actually came up here—and it wasn't the garbage truck or the post office, but actually our very first guests—we were truly, truly happy. And we had a fantastic week with truly amazing guests (thank you so much!)—it was a lot of fun!

And because everything got a bit mixed up (that's how it's supposed to be in Italy, after all!), today we're posting some random impressions of the (almost) finished state of the apartments and the surrounding areas. You'll find them soon on the new version of our website – it'll be out in about 14 days.

Many love greetings ❤️

Sue & Hermann

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April/May 2025:

Weather, summer & refreshment

The pool is open!!

Hello dear ones,

Please excuse the weekly blog for the past week, but we have been so incredibly busy testing ice cream parlors, wines and restaurants that we simply haven't had the chance.

But what can we say – we did everything right. Because this fits the topic much better. Because it's been summer since the day before yesterday! We have to admit, we thought the Italian weather would be something like this: At Christmas you can relax and stroll through the Christmas market in a sweater at a mild 10 degrees Celsius, January is very unpleasant at 11 degrees Celsius and a bit of rain, before February with its almond blossom and 15 degrees Celsius means you're already hanging your jackets in the closet. March is the last month in which you still need long trousers, with temperatures of 18-20 degrees Celsius. That all ends in April. At a wonderful 24 degrees Celsius, it's always T-shirt weather, before May heralds summer with its balmy temperatures... and so on. Of course, we didn't think all this because we'd studied climate diagrams or anything like that [Editor's note: the geographers among us certainly have] , no, we simply thought it because the word "Italy" simply sounds like it.

But then we realized: That's not the case at all. Until last week, we spent our evenings indoors because we hadn't brought any wool blankets for outside. After all, we weren't in the Eifel region – or so we thought. But it rained so much that every Scotsman looked enviously at Umbria...

But we've known since the day before yesterday at the latest that we're not actually in the Eifel, not even climatically. Because it's summer now. 30 degrees Celsius, balmy evenings, just like Italy.

And what's a good theme for the weather? Putting your feet up? Taking a siesta? Or refreshing yourself? Anything! We have a pool here on the premises, or as the Italians say, a swimming pool.

And anyone who knows Hermann even a little bit knows that he has a difficult relationship with swimming pools. But hey – here we have our own, and he can still stand anywhere. Even Hermann can't resist and quickly jumps in after a day at work.

And that's what you should do, too. So, don't work, but relax, take a siesta, and refresh yourself. We've crafted a little something for you by the pool. The old shade was getting old, and we have a preference for wood. So we combined the two and spent quite a while working on a new pool deck (in the truest sense of the word 😉). The rain didn't really help either. And this is what it looks like:

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And here we have summarized the most important things for those in a hurry:

If you want more details about terrace construction – look here:

108 decking boards, painted twice, substructure made of 77 squared timbers,
in stock on 800 pieces of garden hose, hand cut and screwed on,
Planks screwed down with 2,000 screws, holes pre-drilled.

March/April 2025:

Kitchens & Vegetables

Today we're taking you inside. We took a look at the kitchens in the apartments and noticed that some of them have fairly new and modern kitchens. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that – if, after a day under the bright Umbrian sun, you want to cook, fry, braise, simmer, stew, or otherwise prepare the truly outstanding produce that's everywhere here, and then enjoy it with a big appetite or a small glass of red wine. So we wondered whether we could even increase your motivation to cook. And we thought it would be nice if the new kitchens had a bit of color and lightness. Everyday life is gray enough as it is! And if it's too colorful for you – you can of course always go out for excellent meals here.

Apartment Cipresso:

Apartment Oleandro:

Instructions for nostalgic craft lovers:
Eliminate small photos - place them one after the other in the correct order -
Staple together along the left edge - the flip book is ready!

Apartment Limone:

Oh yes, and where there are kitchens, you obviously need ingredients. And those who know us know: Wherever Hermann and Sue are, there's probably a vegetable patch nearby. That's how it is. And since there wasn't one here, we planted one.

Good news: potatoes also thrive in Umbria.

And – psst – there's more than just a vegetable patch here…

February/March 2025:

Outside

olive trees
Early spring is the perfect time to tend olive trees. With 260 trees, that's a lot of grass cuttings. It's a good thing there's suitable equipment for the removal 😉.

Now the trees are well cared for and fertilized again.
So that we have something to pick during the harvest in October.

Hidden picture: There's a small tractor hiding somewhere here...

Laurel hedges
...are truly beautiful landscape elements. It's real laurel, and it belongs here. Only sometimes does the rest of the landscape disappear completely behind the laurel element. And that's a shame, isn't it? And that's why we've given the laurel a little breathing room here and there.