Lemon

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it. Small and basic, without internet, the property was supposedly beside a beautiful national park famous for its coastline and migratory birds. The online picture suggested it was pressed up against one of those concrete pillars (common around Sicily) supporting a deserted and rotting motorway flyover. I was writing a thriller with mafia connections. My partner wanted to scrape off six months of fumes from her new job in London. Our daughter needed fun.

“This is a bomb,” said the hostess, opening a cupboard under the sink. “You turn it anticlockwise to go off.”

“Not bomb, bombola,” whispered my partner. “It’s the gas canister, for the stove.”

From outside in the driving rain came the sounds of traffic and sodden animals – frogs and a goose, always in that order: frog croak, goose quack; frog croak, goose quack.

We woke up on the Saturday to the first sunshine in six months. The roar we had thought was traffic was the crash of waves. The sound of a goose eating a lot of frogs in quick succession turned out, in fact, to be the call of wild flamingos. We were, just as our hostess had promised, in a tumbledown farmstead – what Sicilians call a baglio – among the shimmering lemon groves, on the edge of the Vendicari nature reserve; and it was glorious.

A baglio is more specifically a fortified group of buildings around a central courtyard, the stone barn equivalent of “circling the wagons” in America. In the 19th century, armed gangs roamed the fields of south-east Sicily. Isolated farms were attractive targets because they stored a whole year’s crop – grain, olives, wine, tools, animals. The two barns opposite our building were caved in, the stone courtyard was more a sunken boulder. In one corner, a vast cluster of poppies and marigolds billowed in merry defiance. On top of a collapsed roof was a starling with 17 voices, including one that sounded like a falling bombola, tossed over the wall by a bandit, and another that suggested a laughing computer.

Vendicari is small, but it is one of the most important wetland nature reserves in Sicily. In the 1970s, the owners of an asphalt and petroleum company wanted to build an oil refinery here. The local officials, looking across the valley from their glorious baroque buildings in Noto, approved the plan. They hadn’t reckoned on the force of Bruno Ragonese, a local eccentric who kept 20 abandoned dogs as pets, and wasn’t even Sicilian: he was an immigrant from Libya. He strode out to the site, gathered evidence on migratory birds, built local environmental groups into a powerful alliance and, brilliantly, argued that since these birds were migrating (as he had done) from Africa to Europe, this was a much bigger issue than a wallet-stuffer for the Noto politicians – it was an international scandal.

Next came the property developers. Again, the Noto councillors patted their pockets. And again the extraordinary young man swung into action. No, replacing the drained wetlands with fake ponds did not constitute “sympathetic, environmental building”. No, migratory birds wouldn’t be perfectly happy on a smaller patch of land in a cheaper sector – they weren’t social housing tenants. Yes, this is the head of Ramsar (the organisation upholding an international environmental treaty protecting wetlands) on the phone wanting to know why you plan to destroy one of Europe’s essential marshlands.

The nature reserve was established in 1984.

For a piffling €7 a day for a whole family or €3.50 for adults, the entire park is yours. After a breakfast of fresh ricotta, honey and local oranges (all from a Coop: these shops look just as plain as the UK Co-ops, but equal the best London delicatessens for good things), we started our visit on Calamosche beach. With juniper bushes, wild irises, tumbling cacti and the lilting flight of hoopoes, it is a blissful stretch of sand sloping into gentle waves. On the left, the rocks lead up to the Grotta di Calamosche, a cave with a tree growing inside. From there, the exquisite view looks almost solid, as if sealed by light.

It is easy to walk the length of Vendicari in two hours, from the ruins of Eloro, a seventh-century BC Greek colony, past the flamingos, to the eerie modern remains of a tuna-canning factory, where the oil refinery was going to be. For hundreds of years, until 1944, tuna were caught here by a brutal method of netting and trapping called mattazana, literally “the slaughter”. Now roofless, with staring windows and only a crowd of thin pillars remaining, this Colosseum for fish feels as ancient as Rome.

“Did you know flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp?” said my daughter, interrupting my pleasantly gloomy mood thinking about time, loss and tins of fish.

I did not, and I don’t believe it. There’s only so much silliness from nature that I’m prepared to accept. “And what colour are flamingos that don’t eat shrimp?” I said, in a superior tone.

“No colour. The world is full of invisible flamingos.”

The two lakes at the heart of the reserve were thick with these fantastical birds, gabbling and scooping at the water, and coming in to land like badly piloted pink planes.

I retorted with science. “Those tiny buildings?” I pointed towards ancient Syracuse, glimmering in the distance. “Birthplace of Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, inventor of … No, don’t look it up on your phone – phones are banned!”

But it was too late. She had captured another flash of internet. “Hey! There’s an H&M in Syracuse. Let’s go!”

The path around the reserve does not entirely encircle it. You set off left, walk for 5 miles (8km), then half a mile before you get to your ruined farmhouse home, your way is blocked by a private lemon grove. You must not go through it. You are not allowed through it.

We went through it. It was lovely.

In this part of Sicily, lemons are so plentiful and the trees so giving, that you feel the fruit is being forced on you by nature, Breughel fashion; it would be rude not to accept. Of course, you must not add theft to trespass. But I thoroughly recommend you buy some from the farmer: they are delicious. Organic, bloated, dazzling growths of oily yellow, I think they are the famous Femminello Siracusano lemons. Because local regulations forbid the use of wax or pesticides, every part is edible.

After the lemon grove came a path of marigolds, as tall as my shoulder, and wild fennel, above my head. We arrived home at sunset, where we cooked tagliatelle al limone rubato on the bits of the stove that did work, and ate it overlooking Syracuse and its H&M, with three invisible flamingos for company. Here’s the recipe:

Pasta al limone rubato

Lardo or bacon, as much as you want
1 lemon, zest and juice
Scrubland herbs thyme, oregano or whatever you can find. Fennel is good
Pasta, perhaps tagliatelle
Parmesan cheese, lots

Fry the lardo, add the lemon zest, herbs, a little pasta cooking water, and stir. Add pasta. Mix in grated cheese and lemon juice until it tastes nice. Serve under cover of darkness.

POP star Sabrina Carpenter pips it in the fashion stakes in a lemon yellow frock.

The Espresso singer, 27, donned a transparent Dior gown which showed off her white underwear.

And she clutched a ­yellow Dior handbag as the French fashion house showcased its new collection in Los Angeles.

Carpenter had also worn a Dior dress at the annual New York Met Gala, which paid homage to Audrey Hepburn’s 1954 film Sabrina.

She was joined at the Dior show by The Queen’s Gambit actress Anya Taylor-Joy, 30, who was in a black cut-out frock.

This comes off the back of Sabrina’s sensational headline concerts at Coachella last month.

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The singer delivered a set dubbed “Sabrinawood” with a Hollywood-themed set across two weekends on April 10 and 17.

Her shows featured some very iconic cameos from the likes of Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell, and Sam Elliott.

The setlist highlighted her most recent album Man’s Best Friend.

But it also included some of her biggest hits like Espresso and Feather.

Former USC receiver Makai Lemon was in Pittsburgh on Thursday night — and it appeared he would be staying there long term.

Until it very suddenly didn’t.

About two hours into the first round of the NFL draft, Lemon was sitting in the green room — the backstage area for players waiting to be picked — when he received a call from the host city’s home team. A celebration erupted around the former Los Alamitos High star as he was informed that the Steelers were about to select him with the 21st overall pick.

Lemon had one question:

“Why is Philly calling me?”

It turns out that Pittsburgh general manager Omar Khan was a bit premature with the call. The Dallas Cowboys were still on the clock at No. 20 but were expected to draft a defensive player. And that’s what they did with UCF edge rusher Malachi Lawrence — but only after trading down with an NFC East rival at No. 23.

The Philadelphia Eagles pulled off the last-second deal to move ahead of the Steelers and snatch away Lemon in real time. Footage from the green room shows a confused Lemon still on the phone with Pittsburgh but being told by someone in the room with him: “Philly just traded for you! … Philly’s taking you right now!”

“I answered the phone and it was the Steelers,” Lemon told reporters afterward. “My phone kept ringing. I look and it was the Eagles. They traded up, and they were going to pick me. I feel like everything happened for a reason. They traded up, so it means a lot that they really wanted me. So I’m all-in, and they’re going to get everything that I’ve got.”

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman acknowledged in a news conference that “it took us a couple minutes to contact the player” after they had moved into position to pick him.

“The clock got down a little bit lower than we would have liked,” Roseman said, “but we were able to get in touch with him and obviously select him.”

Roseman was asked if the Eagles made the move because they thought the Steelers were about to draft Lemon at No. 21.

“We just felt like this was a player that we wanted to go up and get, just based on where our board was at that time, where we were picking,” Roseman said. “Just felt like it made a lot of sense based on our board. And obviously, when you have a player that you like that’s ranked higher on your board than where you’re picking, you think at every pick that he’s going to be selected.

“That’s just the way the draft is, you think everyone’s thinking the way that you are. And so certainly for us, we didn’t want to sit on our hands. We wanted to go get him. And so that’s why I made a trade.”

The Steelers pivoted quickly, choosing Arizona State offensive tackle Max Iheanachor moments later.

Last season at USC, Lemon was a consensus All-American and won the Biletnikoff Award for outstanding receiver after making 79 catches for 1,156 yards and 11 touchdowns. In his three seasons with the Trojans, Lemon had 137 catches for 2,008 yards and 14 touchdowns.

Lemon’s arrival in Philadelphia would seem to indicate that the Eagles are ready to move on from star receiver A.J. Brown, who has been rumored to be on the trading block. If they wait until June 1 to trade Brown, the Eagles would be able to split his $40-million salary cap hit over two seasons.

Roseman didn’t have any light to shed on the matter Thursday night.

“A.J. is a member of the Eagles,” Roseman said. “We don’t have any trades that have been made or that are done. We’re taking this one day at a time. We’re going to look to improve the team tomorrow. We’ll continue to address anything we have to with our roster, not only through this draft weekend, but we’ll continue to look for ways to improve the team throughout the offseason and into training camp.”