Taking it easy(ish)

This morning started abruptly at 2.40am when I awoke to the noise barking and howling downstairs. I pulled on Stuart's dressing gown and hurried downstairs to let Reggie out into the garden, who almost seemed to me to be hopping from one foot to the other as I fumbled with unlocking the front door. But rather than going straight to his toilet duties (which I had imagined he needed with quite some urgency), he ran straight to the lawn, barking his head off, and stood at the fence barking into the night. Only when he stopped to take a breath did I hear a response - a deer clearly barked back at him from somewhere in the woods. This went on for a little while and I had visions of us being up for the rest of the night in some sort of bark fest, but thankfully Reggie eventually gave up, emptied his bladder, and ran back up the steps to the house. He went straight back to bed, and we didn't hear another peep from him until we got up.

It being the Easter holiday weekend, we decided to have a bit of a lie-in this morning, and didn't venture downstairs until nearly 9am. This was thanks to both the cats and Reggie being reasonably quiet - we were treated to the cats' usual attempts at getting us up, including Lucca jumping up onto the chest of drawers and deliberately knocking items off it, and Florence jumping onto us and over us and onto the bedside tables to rattle the lampshades, but we remained resolute and ignored them until we were ready to get up.

After a quick breakfast, we decided to head out to Sorana for a walk with Reggie. We wanted to try and find the footpath that leads to Lignana, an abandoned village on the hillside.

We found the start of the path without any problem, but the familiar red-and-white markers that indicate designated footpaths soon disappeared, and we were faced with various unmarked forks in the path and turnings, as well as the now painfully familiar sight of fallen trees blocking the path.

Despite not being able to find the right path, we had a lovely walk with some very pretty scenery. We saw some sheep complete with bells around their necks (clearly belonging to someone), lots and lots of frog spawn (which Reggie did his best to render non-viable either by thundering straight through the middle of it at the speed of light or by sticking his face in it and trying to eat it), and Reggie also had his first face-to-face meeting with a deer (actually two of them). We were walking along the track, Reggie running up ahead of us, when we heard a rustling in the leaves and footsteps behind us - I was confused at first because it sounded exactly as if Reggie was coming up behind us, yet there he was ahead of us. Turning around and expecting to see another dog, I was amazed to see two large deer running across the path and off into the woods. Reggie spotted them too, and gave chase. Thankfully, the deer were way too quick for him, and he soon lost them and came back to us. It left him very excitable for a while though, and he spent a long time sniffing the ground for traces of the large beasts that had evaded him.

 

Excitement of the chase over, we headed back to the car and drove back to the house, where Stuart spent half an hour splitting logs while I prepared a lunch of soft-boiled goose egg (a whole one each for the first time!) with steamed asparagus. Delicious.

Despite having intended to take it easy this weekend, our plan for the afternoon was to head to the upper terraces and "tidy up" - strim, collect up the olive prunings and cut down more acacias. Stuart donned the backpack strimmer, leaving me with the old handheld strimmer and off we went. I managed five minutes of strimming before I had to stop to refuel the strimmer, followed by 10 minutes before I had to stop and get Stuart to re-thread the cord, followed by another 5 minutes before I had to ask him to do it again. When the cord snapped and disappeared for the third time, I took it as a sign that strimming was not for me today. I decided to switch to my trusty hedge trimmers to go and cut down some of the bramble that was still clinging tenaciously onto the banks of the upper terraces. We then both spent some time raking the clippings and olive branches down from one terrace to the next, the plan being that we will gradually end up with a pile that can be burned at the bottom level.

In a nod to the fact that this is Easter holiday weekend, we decided to throw the towel in at about 4.30pm - it was meant to be a relaxing weekend after all - so we packed up the tools and opened a beer on the patio, sitting in the warm late afternoon sunshine, marvelling at the wonderful view, and feeling incredibly lucky to be where we are, doing what we are doing.

A little while later, we heard the geese honking and wondered what had got into them - we didn't have long to wonder though, as Chris and Henry walked through the garden gate shortly afterwards. They were full of praise and admiration for the clearing work we've done and the vegetable beds that Zach, Holly, Mum and Dad have helped make, which was lovely to hear and it was great to see them and have a quick catch up. They stayed for about and hour before leaving us to it and heading back down the hill to Pescia, at which point we fed the animals, put the geese away, closed the cold frames and retreated indoors before it got too chilly.

Tomorrow is forecast to be wet, so that will force us to slow down somewhat - although of course we have the usual weekend chores such as supermarket shopping to do, and we both have lists of admin tasks to complete.