Week two gets underway

After a beautiful day yesterday, we awoke to similar weather again today:clear blue skies and sunshine, but a touch cooler courtesy of a firm breeze.

After breakfast, Zach and Holly grabbed their tools and headed down to the lower terraces to get their working day and their second working week with us started - after Helen and I sat down yesterday evening to decide how best to move forward with our vegetable plot this year, we decided that, as spring seems to be getting started early and time is marching on, we should fence off a smaller area spanning just four terraces this year, rather than trying to finish clearing (and raking) the entire set of terraces before embarking on fencing. The fencing is required to protect whatever we grow from the boar and porcupines, as without it, we'd almost certainly end up feeding the local boar and porcupine population rather than ourselves. After hearing the latest plan, Zach and Holly were super-motivated this morning, knowing that they have a project to get their teeth into over the next two weeks (finishing raking the four terraces then helping fence them in and create some vegetable beds), rather than endless soul-destroying raking and burning of cut bramble.

So while they went off to start a fire and Helen retired to the office, I went out to repair the woodpile shelters after last week's storm had ripped them to pieces.

The morning flew by, punctuated only by a short coffee break - short because Zach and Holly we keen to get back to work. They figure that it takes a day to clear a terrace, so after today it will only take two more days to finish clearing our designated area, after which we can move on to felling a few more trees before erecting a fence, the promise of which has them very excited.

We sat out on the patio for lunch and disposed of leek and potato soup with salami, cheese and bread before we all returned to our respective jobs.

It was nice to see so much of the cats today. Since the wood shelters are outside of the 'doggy zone', Florence and Lucca spent most of the day keeping me company and asking for a bit of fuss from time to time.

As 4pm approached I finished off the work on the wood shelter - not only had I repaired it, but I'd also doubled its length in readiness for a heap more firewood courtesy of the storm last week.

Helen, Reggie and I then hopped into the car to head into Pescia for a walk along the river banks. The river banks were considerably busier than normal, due in no small part to the lovely weather, I'm sure. 

After putting Reggie back in the car, we went to see Andrea our geometra. Both he and we had received a copy of a letter from the comune regarding the 'sanatoria' (amnesty) for the illegal windows and exterior painting with an instruction to pay the fine within 30 day. Happily, the fine was a few hundred euros lower than we had been expecting - still a sizeable amount, but we'll take every victory no matter how small.

We had been instructed to pay either at the bank or post office. Andrea suggested that the post office was the better idea as the Comune had provided no bank details(!). When I asked if we could pay by means of cheque or cash, he said that we couldn't pay by cheque, and in fact we wouldn't be able to pay by cash either as the maximum you can pay in Italy with cash is €1000! So we now need to visit our bank to see how they can help - which seems like it might be a bit of a complicated task, so that's a job for Wednesday morning.

After finalising the last changes on the set of plans to submit to the comune (finally agreeing once and for all that we aren't going to build an extension, but still needing permissions for the solar panels, a new woodshed, pergola and polytunnel), and agreeing for him to visit us on Thursday to get precise measurements for the positioning of the pergola and polytunnel, we left for home to get the fire started along with dinner and yet another batch of soup for lunches.

So a productive day all round really, but no photos to show as with the dash into town last thing we missed the chance to take any before the sunlight faded. Dusk is getting rapidly later and later here, and it feels as if we have daylight until about 6.30pm at the moment - so when daylight saving happens in a couple of weeks' time, it will fell like winter is well and truly behind us! Although it hasn't felt like a long winter, we'll welcome the change of season despite the sense of panic it will bring... we need to get planting!