Alva Review-Courier -

CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily (AP) — Spring is ending and summer approaches. The grass is now long, finished growing. For us, it's time to scythe.

This is a beautiful, and slightly sad, time of year for my wife and me, when the fields of grass and flowers on our 3 acres of farmland in the mountains of northern Sicily must be cut. We would prefer to let them live on: There are deep pink French honeysuckles, purple thistles, yellow dandelions, pale pink and white acanthus, and wispy and lazy grasses.

But that's not prudent in the dry Mediterranean summer, when fires are an annual threat and long gras...