You know it's summer when . . .

. . . the field across the country lane from our house catches on fire. It happens every year. It might be due to hot weather, dry grass and some sort of magical spontaneous combustion. Or more likely it's just an annual repeat of the time I saw a guy drive by and throw his cigarette out the window. Five minutes later there was a giant blaze underway. 

We have been lucky so far, in that the flames have never jumped the road and headed towards our house. The "field of love" (click here for the whole story) next to us is notoriously uncared for and at this time of year is usually filled with six-foot high dry weeds. My husband just recently called the "guardia campestre" (yet another specialized Italian police force . . . there are so many here it's hard to keep track of them all) and complained about the fire hazard. Two days later the weeds were gone. Now, that was amazing! Quick response is not usually a strong point of local officials.

And yet another miracle accompanied this fire . . . we called the fire department . . . and a fire truck actually came and put out the fire! Now, the amazing-ness of this event may not be immediately clear to all. Let me just say that this same field catches fire every blessed year and we always call the fire department . . . but this is the first time they have actually sent out a truck. Wow!

I thanked one of the firemen for coming and he said "sure" in a puzzled sort of way, as if he was thinking, "Of course we came." Ha! In the defense of the local FD I will say that in the past they didn't come because they were busy with several other fires that were all burning at the same time. But still, that's not a lot of comfort when you're watching the progress of a giant wall of flame just a stone's throw from your house . . .

Let's just hope that this was our yearly fire and now we're done with it, no harm done.