R&R

There's not much to report today. The forecast was for rain, and if we're honest, for once in our lives we were willing the rain to start so that we would be able to spend the day relaxing (or at least taking our foot off the pedal) with impunity!

Since both the cats and Reggie started making their usual early morning demands at the usual early hour (oblivious to the fact that it was Sunday morning), it was an early start to Sunday for us. After finally giving in and getting up, we had a porridge breakfast and then headed to Montecatini to go and buy some wood stain and some pieces of wood from Obi. The stain is for the shelves in the apartment - Monday and Tuesday are both expected to be damp this week, so staining shelves seems like a good rainy-day task for our helpers - and the wood is for constructing cold frames by means of upcycling the five sets of old windows that are now sitting outside the house after having been replaced with superior, double-glazed ones last week.

From Montecatini, we drove straight back up the valley, past the end of our drive and on through Vellano to the cava (quarry) track for Reggie's morning walk. With the exception of people coming to fill their water bottles from the fountain at the start of the track, we have not encountered any other walkers on this track before, so Reggie really gets to feel comfortable with running around and enjoying himself. Today was no exception - there were water-collectors at both the start and the end of the walk (who got a good shouting at from Reggie), but otherwise he was in his element chasing up and down the path.

After our walk, we headed home so that Stuart could take Holly and Zach into town for a supermarket dash - they were running low on groceries, and as there were a couple of items we also needed, he had offered to run them to Esselunga. While he did that, Reggie and I stayed at home and made a start on cooking up a batch of leek and potato soup for the freezer.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful: after lunch, Stuart split some more wood, then we decided to settle down to a lazy afternoon in front of the TV - a rare luxury for us. It has to be said that each of us had some inner turmoil over how to spend the afternoon - while we were both drawn to the idea of chilling out and relaxing, there was another part of each of us saying 'but what have you actually achieved today??'. Happily, the former part won through. Having a glass of prosecco (Aperol spritz to be precise) helped dull the niggling thoughts, and at about 3.45pm (three quarters of an hour later than predicted), the pitter-patter of rain on the skylight eased our consciences further.

When we opened the door to let Reggie out for a bark and a toilet trip later in the afternoon, the fresh, ozone-y smell of rain on warm soil was so good you could almost drink it.

The afternoon ended with me getting a rather painful bite on my knee courtesy of Mr 'Just-Call-Me-Mike-Tyson' Goose. Thank goodness I was wearing jeans - but even still, when I inspected the damage immediately after getting back into the house, there was a big bruise already coming up!

We plan an early dinner and an early night tonight - today is all about the R&R. Before we leave you though, here are some photographs of the terraces and my flight of tyre steps. It may have been yesterday's work, but I'll settle for that for the time being: