First below you can see our generous hosts, who along with their daughter, we know through church (and as fellow blog readers of yours). They encouraged us to come for a long visit (ten days) to their beautiful home in the Tuscan countryside, after our time in Chiusi.

In this post, you can see their lovely home, and its amazing views. Their villa stair is from the 12th century, and the views from their incredible property change constantly with the light or the clouds.

The large art studio I was invited to work in is down outdoor steps, since it is built below the front lawn, and has a whole wall of windows. (I brought travel size surfaces to paint on, which I did in there quite a lot, both early and late and during inclement weather, but that space made me yearn to be painting something enormous instead!)

Their gardens and olive groves were amazing and I’ll feature them soon. However, you can see today their cypress lined driveway second below, which makes for a grand approach. They grow lemons in their greenhouse, so we made our favorite lemon treats– lemon posset (recipe here) and lemon ginger scones (recipe here) and barely made a a dent into them.

We are so grateful for their magnanimous hospitality!