Ants in our pants.

It was an altogether quieter night last night, thank goodness. I knew Stuart would need a good night's rest after his hard day's work yesterday and with another one to come today, so was thankful that the weather gods decided to give their banging and crashing a rest.

I got up early to feed the cats and ventured outside for my morning's exercise session in the hopes that Stuart would be able to grab a few more minutes' sleep.

Just as I was finishing up with the kettlebells, Stuart came down to the apartment to check the dehumidifier - he looked absolutely wrecked, and sounded as tired as he looked. I must admit I was worried about him having to face another full day of strimming, and he didn't look too thrilled at the prospect either, but off he went, with his sandwiches, bottles of water, sunscreen and fly spray.

I headed to the office, where before starting on my work I replied to the email from our soon-to-visit-us guests. That done, I hit the 'proper' office work.

Stuart phoned at just after 9am to let me know that he'd arrived at work safely - although the road in the village was closed this time, so he'd had to abandon the car and walk the last half mile or so of his commute.

I felt a little happier with my home-alone status today than I did yesterday. Whether that was because I'd got through the first day already, or whether it was because I knew that Stuart will be back working at home again for the rest of the week, I'm not sure. I was also lucky enough to have company in the office throughout the day today - Lucca joined me, although he slept soundly and solidly all day, so there wasn't much by way of interaction!

I stopped for some lunch at 1pm - the weather today was lovely, with brilliant blue skies, and there was an incredibly pretty cloud formation waiting for me when I ventured onto the patio for my first 'home alone outdoor dining' experience (yesterday I ate at my desk).

Pretty clouds. Beautiful blue sky.

Stuart called again to check in on me just after lunch - by which time I'd already been to check for post (none - just a post box full of ants) and checked in on the dehumidifier (still going).

Come late afternoon, my number of office colleagues doubled, although I don't think they quite get the concept of efficient working and maximising productivity:

Not exactly helping.

I threw in the towel with the office work at around 5.20pm and went to get the hedge trimmers out - Stuart had thoughtfully left them topped up with fuel so that I could get straight into it.

I went to make a start on cutting back some of the brambles that border the edge of the garden and guest patio. I had barely been going for 5 minutes when - clunk - that was a tough twig. Except it wasn't a twig at all, but a thick metal wire that wedged itself firmly between the trimmer blades and stopped it from cutting. Brilliant. I turned the trimmer off and tried to prise the metal out of the blade, but it wouldn't budge and, worried in case I did more harm than good, I decided that I'd have to abandon that idea and hope that Stuart would be able to dislodge it when he got home.

It wasn't going to budge - at least not for me.

This left me somewhat grumpy, as I'd been looking forward to getting stuck into some manual work, so I stomped inside, boiled a kettle to do the washing up, and chopped up some vegetables in preparation for dinner. As I was doing so, I thought of some other jobs I could occupy myself with, so once I'd finished in the kitchen, I got the compost and packets of seed from the shed and planted up some radish seeds and some basil seeds, then moved on to attempting to clear some more of the debris and general building detritus from the lower tier/path that we'd started to clear at the weekend.

I was on my fourth wheelbarrow load (there are still easily another six or seven to go) when I heard the car pull up and a rather tired Stuart arrived home.

He opened up the car to reveal a boot full of logs - excellent, as we'll be needing those to fuel our log burners in the winter. The downside was that as well as the logs, he'd also transported all of their inhabitants (ants, spiders, you name it) from Lanciole with him in the car. There was nothing else for it but to get the hoover out - which is easier said than done when you need to work out which extension lead will work, and which switches turn which outdoor sockets on.

Stuart eventually rigged the Henry hoover up to a working extension lead, and I hoovered as much of the dirt and wildlife out of the car as I could, given that Henry was feeling a little full. We've been unable to find replacement hoover bags for Henry (who we inherited from the previous owners) since we got over here - I don't think Henry is a native of Italy. In the end, Stuart decided to take matters into his own hands and decant some of Henry's innards into a rubbish bag to make some more room. On opening Henry up, however, he discovered exactly how the previous owners had managed to continue to operate Henry - rather than knowing about some secret stash of Henry bags at a local shop, it seems that they simply operated him with no bag inside at all... Explains a lot!

We finally sat down together to enjoy the last of the evening sun just before 8pm. As we sat soaking up the warm evening air, something caught our attention on the walls of the house. What?? An enormous crack in the render right the way across the side of the building?!!! Er... no, hold on a minute, the line is moving. It's alive! Yes, it was an army of ants (maybe more than one army) marching back and forth across the building. Slightly better news than a crack in the render, but actually still quite worrying!

It's alive!

They were making two approaches to the window...

They seemed to be going in both directions, and we couldn't quite work out where they were coming from/heading for - other than the fact that our bedroom window seemed to be one point of interest on their journey. (What you can't see from the photos above is that the line carried on past the window to the other edge of the building.)

We thus headed indoors to find the ant powder and administer it carefully to the bedroom window (although the fly/bug screen does help, smaller ants are actually tiny enough to get through the mesh, besides which they seemed to have found some large gaps in the wooden window frame - helpfully left there for them by woodworm at some point in the past - and were starting to infiltrate the bedroom). It'll be a hot night for us tonight, as we have been forced to close the window to stop any more coming in. We hope that by tomorrow, the ant powder will have done its job and made our bedroom window considerably less interesting to them all.

By the time all that was done, time was getting on, so Stuart headed for a well deserved hot shower and I sat down to write the blog.

Stuart took my phone to work with him today, so that he could take some photographs. Must admit, some of these make me slightly envious - it certainly looks a lovely place:

The house in Lanciole.

The former site of a hot tub! Overlooking the village of Crespole.

The pergola.

The 'legal' (but impassable) driveway to the house. (Beautifully strimmed by Stuart.)

The passable (but illegal) driveway to the house.

Before strimming.

After strimming.

And so there you have it - another day's work under our belts, and some new challenges. I hope I can sleep tonight without being too disturbed by the idea of ants in our pants!