Women Drying Olives On Mats

A stone farmhouse courtyard spreads out beneath a grapevine-draped pergola, strings of onions, garlic, and herbs hanging from the eaves above clay jars stacked along the wall. Four women in bright headscarves and layered skirts kneel over woven mats spread with heaps of green and black olives, raking, sorting, and pouring more from baskets balanced on their hips. A grape arbor stretches overhead to the right, bunches of fruit dangling above rolling hills and olive groves in the distance. Pots of lavender and geraniums soften the stone steps, and a ginger cat suns itself on a low wall while another naps beside a large urn. Rustic tools rest against the doorway, and a wheelbarrow of grapes waits near the vines. The olives lie spread across the mats in loose clusters, each patch of green or black a small pile of its own.