First crop!

For some reason, today felt like an uphill struggle for both of us. I guess we had quite a tiring weekend, and the heat sapped a lot of our energy. Of course, for me, getting up at 4am to dash to the rescue of our whining pup didn't help. Poor Reggie had rather an urgent need for a toilet trip, but thankfully he came straight back in and settled back down again after he'd done his business and I'd traipsed back upstairs to bed.

Stuart started his morning finding some posts to support a net to cover the potato bed (in an attempt to prevent any further potato thievery), but was soon side-tracked by our guests who needed a little help with their hire car and its broken wing mirror. He spent a little while calling around Avis offices and explaining the minor accident that had happened, but other than 'call in at your nearest Avis office' (which is in Lucca), he didn't get much out of them. Stuart was going to offer to go into Lucca with them to help with communications, but since nobody from the company seemed all that bothered about what had happened, our guests chose to leave things for now, with the option of going into Lucca later in their stay if they decide to. Instead, he wrote down a few useful words and phrases for them to take with them when they went out, as they planned to call in at a couple of garages to see if they could get a spare part.

I, of course, spent the morning at my desk, but really didn't feel like I had much get-up-and-go on the work front today, and was more than ready to take a break for an early lunch at 12pm.

We ate lunch under the shade of the garden umbrella - the first time we've opted to put the umbrella up when we haven't had company with us, which means it must have been hot today!

After another stab at work after lunch, I decided to call it a short day and both Stuart and I headed down to the veg terraces to do some work.

I spent a couple more hours digging out roots from the newly dug bed - once again it was back-breaking work and still those darned roots kept appearing! - while Stuart weeded all of the established beds, which was a not inconsiderable task as the weeds really have taken hold over the last week or so.

Come 5pm we were both wiped out, so retreated to the patio and sat under the shade of the garden umbrella for a while. While doing so, Stuart tried calling the car dealership to find out the status of our car - we'd been told that the mechanic would update the dealer on things either last Friday or today, and we still hadn't heard anything. The chap he spoke to told us he was just talking with the other guy in the office and would call back. Needless to say... he didn't. This being without a car thing is really starting to wear thin!! If I were being optimistic, I might think that the fact they've had it for so long must mean that they are repairing it and will have it back to us soon. Having had a fair bit of experience with these guys though, I suspect that the reality will be yet more frustration and inconvenience.

While Stuart went down to the guest patio to see how Ernest and Diane had got on today, and enjoyed a long chat and a Belgian beer with them, I got on with making a start on dinner, washing up, feeding the animals and watering the plants. We then both went to the vegetable terraces for our very first harvest: a full crop of radishes!

Needless to say, tonight's dinner will involve radishes as we have rather a lot to get through! (Lesson for next time: sow roughly half the number of seeds as we did first time around - it's all a learning process!)