What a sight for sore eyes!

It has been much too long since I was able to get out and enjoy this place. Autumn has firmly arrived.

Heaven!

In early October at the annual plant exhibition and sale at the Giardino Orticiltura, I purchased a bunch of ranunculus and anemone bulbs or seeds. https://getbacklauretta.com/2026/10/03/the-annual-fall-plant-and-flower-sale-florence/

Being me, I didn’t wait, but planted them in soil in pots on my terrace soon after, though I knew it was too early by about a month.

A it turned out I am glad I took the initiative and planted them, because laid up as I have been with my left arm in a cast from my hand to mt elbow, the 2 little pots have given me something to gaze upon and cheer for!

Look at what they have become over the past 3 weeks! If this isn’t encouraging, I don’t know what is! The view above is how I see the pot of new growth from my living room or bedroom windows. So cheerful!

Below is a close-up. Clearly, based on leaf shape, I have 2 types of plants growing here!

But I started wondering: will this lovely cheerful growth mean the plantts will bloom in this fall, ahead of schedule, or will they know to hold back and bloom next spring.

I know a lot of plant lovers and gardeners around the world, but nobody in my circle would know about these plants in this location,

So I wondered what AI could tell me?

I love AI. It told me everything I wanted to know.

These are my final days with the cast. Soon I hope to be writing again using both hands! I will be so grateful for something everyone usually take for granted. Never again will I not notice the gift of 2 working hands.

Hallelujah!

And this book helped make it so. Highly recommend, especially when you are homebound with a cast. But, honestly, whenever you want to know more.

I’m happy to say that I have used the last few weeks more or less confined with my broken arm to study ancient Roman history. I’ve never had the time to do so before and it has been very rewarding personally.

I appreciate the fine scholarly studies available in English.

And, btw, reading in English has been extremely comforting to me in these foreign times of physical discomfort and healing. We are so blessed to have the world at our fingertips through the inter webs, even if 5 of my fingertips are essentially immobilized.

And, happily, there are yet more books to read, as always. I remember walking through a remarkable state-funded library in my small hometown when I was in high school and being filled with the melancholy recognition that in my lifetime I would not have time to read all of the books even in that library. And I knew even then that it was a relatively small library in the world of such repositories.

I’d be happy to tell my younger self: true that, but I did make a huge reading dent in the world of books and I even offered up some of my own.

PS: Im updating this post on a Sunday afternoon from my apartment in Florence and when I gaze out my window to my terrace, I think how lucky I am to be safely and warmly ensconced in this little cocoon, traveling back centuries via literature in the absolutely amazing history of this country in which I am privileged to live. Grazie a dio!

Outside, the wind is howling, but I’m almost unaware, lost as I am in the first century BC. I am traveling with Julius as he crosses the Rubicon. That die was cast.