Rain rain go away, I haven't put our wood away!

It hasn't actually rained a drop today, but it's forecast to start at around midnight and we had a huge pile of wood to move and get under cover before then.

Before I could start on that though, I had to head to the courier depot in Pistoia to retrieve the long lost wormery that the Italian courier was claiming was 'insufficiently addressed'. So, after my breakfast I left Helen working in the office and took Reggie out for a ride.

Off to Pistoia we went with some scribbled directions and the mobile phone, heading for the industrial zone east of the city. Both Google and Bing maps had me believe that my trip wouldn't involve having navigating through any of Pistoia itself, and thankfully, they were both right (otherwise I think I'd have been going home empty handed, especially as Reggie is a rubbish navigator - I can never quite tell the difference between when he says 'left' and 'right'...).

Anyway, I found the depot without any trouble and walked out with my completely CORRECTLY addressed parcel (Ggrrrrrrrrr!). (When our friend Donatella learned of the parcel saga yesterday she said that it's not uncommon for this to happen to us rural foothill folk as the time-pressured couriers often don't want to make the lengthy detour away from the city so simply blame a poor address - seems she was absolutely correct.)

When I arrived home, I unpacked the contents and checked to see how the tiger worms were doing in their breathable bags of soil. I could only see two or three through the bags and they seemed motionless, so I opened the bags and sieved the contents to find out exactly what the situation was... I could count 14 or 15 worm, only four of which were alive, and they were hanging onto life by a thread - there should have been around 300!! Either someone back at the suppliers in Devon was poor at counting or in desperation some cannibalism had been taking place.

Our address, in full, on not just one but numerous labels!

Four worms living in luxury... For now!

I emailed the very helpful Cindy at www.originalorganics.co.uk (as she had asked me to) to let her know what state the parcel was in. I reported a broken lid on the food caddy and that the worms seemed a bit low on numbers - she confirmed that worms eat all organic matter, so it wasn't poor counting after all.

Cindy kindly offered to send out some more worms and a replacement lid immediately, so I've suggested she address them to Frateschi's in the hopes that we can avoid the same happening again.

Before we leave the subject of wormeries, what a great educational idea for a birthday present for inquisitive kids!? (In fact, I don't see why we don't all have one to process all of our kitchen waste - they even eat cooked food, they reproduce in the wormery, and literally all you have to do is find a home for the compost they make. If you want one, go to Original Organics!)

After a warming bowl of Tuscan bean soup for lunch, Helen headed back to the office and I went to the terraces to start moving all of the split wood which so far had made up one terrace but it still needed to go up another terrace, then onto the lawn and be sorted into wet and dry wood before being wheel-barrowed to the respective wood piles.

I lost count after having thrown 680 split logs up towards the house but I think in all it must have been well over a thousand pieces of firewood - not bad for two trees is it?

I managed to get two thirds of the pile up and onto the lawn before Helen appeared, ready to help. She still had office work to do, but knowing that we were racing against time both in terms of daylight and against incoming rain, she took a break from the office for a couple of hours to lend a hand. Helen took over throwing duties while I put my trusty moisture meter to good use. Never before has it done so much testing and I'd say that it has now earned its keep and some. I tested each piece of wood before sorting it into two piles: one for burning now, and one for next winter's pile. The throwing, testing, sorting and barrowing went on until almost 7pm, at which point I couldn't even see the digital readout on the meter and had to use the audible beeps as a gauge for the last couple of barrow loads.

At five to seven, I dragged my aching limbs indoors having got all of this winter's wood under cover before the rain arrives later tonight. The equally large pile for next winter can stay exactly where it is for a couple of days now and will get moved early next week when the sun comes back to play.

As the week draws to a close, Helen has gone back into the office to do another couple of hours' work while I get the fire going and write the blog, and Reggie snoozes on the sofa next to the fire.