After the exertions of half a day at Lanciole yesterday, we were both feeling a little lacklustre this morning - so much so that when Helen came back into the bedroom after feeding the animals and offered to babysit Reggie while I stayed in bed, she was actually looking for an excuse to skip her workout this morning. Had I been more awake, I might have picked up on this call for help, but as it was I misread the signals completely and hoisted myself out of bed to enable her to do the very thing she was hoping to avoid. I'm sure there's a moral to that little tale somewhere!
After breakfast, Helen worked in the office and I busied myself with little more than a few household chores really - Donatella was coming for coffee at 11am, and I didn't want to disappear into the woods before she arrived, so instead I went to see Amanda for a loaf of bread and a bag full of the red fruit cantuccini that Sue had introduced us to last week (we can't decide if there are cranberries or cherries in the delicious little biscuits, but Amanda just calls them 'red fruit').
Once back home, I filled the bird feeders with stale bread, washed up, swept floors, took the wood crates outside to wood pile and generally tidied until Donatella arrived. Reggie greeted Donatella as he does all visitors - with a hearty volley of loud barks, but it wasn't long before he was eating out of her hands, so to speak.
We sat out on the patio for an hour and a half drinking tea and coffee, catching up on news and exchanging stories in the beautiful warm sunshine - it really was positively spring-like!
It was great to catch up with Donatella, but lives and chores and lunch beckoned all too soon and she left us at around 12.30pm. We felt relaxed and happy in the sunshine - almost in holiday-mode - and we definitely didn't want to move from the patio, so we prolonged our spell in the glorious sunshine by having lunch outside. But once lunch had been dispatched, we could procrastinate no more and Helen went back to the office while I took the splitting axe down to the pile of cut logs waiting down on terrace no.3 beneath the house. I'd decided that the most efficient way to move all this wood uphill (without a tractor) was to split it in situ, and we could then carry it a short journey way along the terrace to a place where it could simply be thrown up onto the next terrace without fear of it all rolling back down hill again (and then repeat the throwing until it reaches the garden level).
So there I stood, jacket off in the dappled light of the surrounding trees, and set to work splitting the wood, piling it higher and higher. I got into a steady rhythm and before I knew it a huge pile of firewood had built up. Just at the right time, Helen appeared, ready to get stuck in - she had both had enough of being indoors on a beautiful day like today and was mindful of the fact that we need to get all of this wood up to the wood pile and under cover before Saturday, when rain is forecast. I think she'd also noticed that I was getting more than a little weary, and the additional (wo)manpower was much appreciated.
By the time the sun sneaked behind the hill opposite, we had between us moved about two thirds of the pile of split wood up onto terrace no.2. It was hard going for both of us, but when my steel-toe-capped boots became too heavy for my legs, we called it a day and went and sat on the guest patio for half an hour, taking in the view for a while (and deciding which trees below still needed felling).
When the temperature dropped, we headed indoors to put the wood burner to work while I tried to find out where on earth the wormery I've ordered has got to. For those who are unfamiliar with wormeries, a wormery is a form of composting unit that converts kitchen food waste into a rich organic compost, all through the natural action of the worms that live inside it.
According to the supplier, it was posted (in the UK) on Monday last week using Parcel Force. I was told that delivery to Europe normally takes five days - and sure enough, using the online tracking service, it looked like it was going to be delivered last Friday. Except of course it wasn't. That would be too easy.
Since then, both the supplier (Original Organics, who have been very helpful) and I have been trying to find out exactly where my box full of worms is. The tracking service said that there was an issue with the address being incomplete and that the delivery had been stopped and held at the depot.
Having contacted Parcel Force a couple of days ago, they replied today, saying that Italian courier company GLS now has the parcel, and that I should track the delivery with them, using a new consignment number. Parcel Force also supplied me with a phone number for GLS in case I wanted to call them, but of course the phone number didn't work. Instead, I went to the GLS website to enter the consignment code, which confirmed that the parcel was being held. I tried calling the number advertised on the GLS website (bear in mind this is a national company covering 140 areas with ten hubs) - but of course that one didn't work either!
All I could do was to fill in the online form and wait who knows how long for a reply (if I ever got one at all). Much to my amazement, I got a reply within 15 minutes! This time, I was given a third consignment number and a local phone number... which worked! Having called the number, I established that I now need to go and collect the parcel myself... from Pistoia. So it looks like a road trip is in store for the morning - with nearly two weeks passed, I'm not expecting there to be (m)any worms left alive!
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