I came across Frances Mayes’ “Bella Tuscany” this spring and read just a few lines to remember how beguiled I was by her first memoir on the subject.

I have heard Mayes’ prose dismissed as something only older women enjoy. I don’t think that’s fair. Her writing is lyrical, her observations are lively and she animates life in a rural Italian village.

“Under the Tuscan Sun,” chronicled her life in Italy after a gutsy purchase in 1990 of Bramasole, an old villa on a hill that had seen better days. It’s huge with a great view but also has a broken front gate, plumbing and electrical issues, crumbling garden walls, neglected fruit trees and other issues.

Her books rejoice in the breathtaking beauty of Tuscany: narrow cypress trees punctuating expansive green hillsides; sun-drenched gardens; small town piazzas full of lively shop keepers and families living much as they’ve been doing for millennia.

Mayes’ memoirs have been called excessively sentimental, self-indulgent and bourgeois fantasy.

Again, harsh! I suppose her books are a sort of fantasy for anyone who owns a home and revels in domestic life. The life she paints is sumptuous. Her subject matter covers gardening; cooking (she includes recipes); touring the countryside; art, architecture and ancient ruins; shopping for home, garden and kitchen; learning the Italian language; and, of course, the frustrations and rewards of renovating an old home with her husband, Ed.

I suppose some of the criticism is rooted in jealousy. Who wouldn’t want to live like this? But they worked hard for what they’ve got.

When they were having the garden retaining wall rebuilt, the workers were bemused that the woman of the house was doing physical labor. How else would it get done? She and Ed put in so much sweat equity. When they had the beams sandblasted, it was Ed’s job to clean sand from every crevice in the house. And Frances got on her hands and knees to wax the terra cotta floors (in her 50s, no less).

The stories of the local people are the best. The workers, whom they employ again and again for the many projects around the house, have unique personalities. After initially hiring a contractor who was incompetent (he directed hot water to a toilet, among other foibles) they found some very capable workers who become friends.

Their real estate agent Anselmo became their gardener in a coincidental way. They asked him if he knew of anyone who could manage their garden. He pulled an agricultural diploma off his wall, said he was tired of selling real estate and took the job. Anselmo plants too many rows of fava beans, and they can’t keep up with the harvest. He also has his own ideas about what to plant, prompting Mayes to wonder, “Whose garden is this anyway?”

When washing down a wall in their dining room, they uncover a fresco landscape painting. In talking to neighbors, Mayes learns that almost every house has fresco paintings — some in every room. She wonders what kind of a person decides they are tired of looking at a beautiful painting and whitewashes over it.

One neighbor is in a fit about an archaeological project that has commandeered his backyard. They are uncovering ancient Roman ruins beneath his olive trees. He dismissively says, “There are ruins under everything here.” To back that up, Mayes uncovered an ancient tile floor while leveling a floor in her house.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mayes spies a forager on her property. The old woman picks mushrooms, wild asparagus and other edibles. When confronted, the woman is nonplussed about trespassing and offers her harvest to Mayes.

Mayes describes some unbelievable feasts. It’s as if you must eat six meals in one sitting. She claims that the Italians are another breed for being able to sustain this level of eating and drinking: two pasta courses followed by a seafood course, followed by a meat course or two; uncorking yet another bottle of wine; utilizing a neighbor’s oven for a roast, since the host’s oven is at capacity. At one restaurant she asks of the waiter, “Is he bringing us everything in the kitchen?”

There’s a liveliness to the towns she visits. People still go to market and buy ingredients for the meal they’re making that night. A crazy man shouts out a window, and instead of ignoring him, people wave and say hello. Families with children in tow are out in the evening in the piazza, sitting outside having an after dinner drink or gelato. In one town during a major soccer match, someone hauls a television out into the piazza and people pull up chairs to watch the game together.

Mayes befriends people involved in the Slow Food movement, which promotes small-scale food producers with high-quality products that reflect local culinary traditions.

I found parallels in the Tuscan daily life to life in Lancaster County. We may not have the hillsides of Tuscany, but we have our beautiful farmland.

We, too, boast of our locally grown and produced food. We might not be picking up local wine in tubs for our supply of uncorked house wine, but we have our own traditions from farm stands to pick-your-own fruit.

When we go antiquing, we might not find an arm from an Etruscan statue, but we can pick up some worthy gems.

No, we can’t drive to Florence in an hour and a half, but we can make it to a museum in Philadelphia.

Getting to know our neighbors, sharing meals and shopping locally, we can build a community to rival those in the Tuscan piazzas.