Yesterday morning disappeared all too quickly. Helen was up and out on her bike around the usual 6:30am but I slept in a little longer in a bid to banish the tiredness I've been feeling slowed down by all week. By the time I'd got up and walked Reggie along the road to Vellano for an hour or so (in an attempt to tire him out and thus reduce his barking during the day while guests are here), got home and had breakfast, it was gone 10am. As Helen was still feeling the tiredness too, we both sat on the patio and drank small strong coffees for half an hour until Diane and Ernest came up to ask a few questions before heading out for the day. We were amazed and immensely proud to witness, as Diane and Ernest headed through the little garden gate and across the lawn, Reggie running over to them, tail wagging, but without uttering a peep, not the slightest little bark. Clever boy! The four of us sat and chatted for a while, and by the time they went out it was 11am. Helen headed back into the office, but as I hadn't picked up a tool yet today and could see little point in doing so before lunch, I took the chance to do a little admin indoors, hiding from the heat.
We had lunch at noon prompt in the hope it would rejuvenate us for the afternoon. After lunch, we spent half an hour or so thinking about our menu. For a while, we've toyed with the idea of offering meals to guests, but it's a project that's a little way down the list at the moment. Today, though, we were encouraged to make a start on it as Ernest remarked how much they had enjoyed the lentil ragu that Helen had made for their arrival and asked if she would cook more for them. It's always great to get some genuine feedback (even better when it's positive!), so we put some thought into getting this additional service up and running. We now have something resembling a menu, but have yet to cost the meals properly and put more thought into the logistics of such a service.
When Helen went back to work, I headed down to the lower terraces for the afternoon where I weeded the radish patch before sowing another, slightly smaller crop and sowing more beetroot, some parsnips (both in the ground and in a plastic box between damp paper towels, which I'm told is a more reliable way of germinating troublesome parsnips so it'll be interesting to see the comparison), more carrots, more leeks (this time in pots), and more cucumbers, and planted out the remaining nasturtiums and a dozen marigolds around the house in various spots.
This took me until almost 4pm, at which point I turned my attention to Helen's slipping bike gears for an hour in the hope I could pack up my tools and water everything before the Phillips family arrived at around 5.30pm. Since we were still car-less, Sue was picking up Helen to take her to their Italian lesson while dropping off Chris and the boys here with the aim of Chris taking a look at our non-functioning electric fence. Chris brought their own fence unit and a charged battery in the hopes that we would be able to identify the problem by process of elimination.
So, as the girls headed off into town and Reggie had his usual welcoming bark at Chris, Henry and Erik (which didn't last very long at all, surprisingly), we sat and had a beer on the sunny patio and then a little glass of red before we started work on the fence. But before we could drain our glasses we heard the sound of a car door and Reggie barking. I wasn't expecting anyone, our guests had not long left (on foot) for Pietrabuona so wouldn't be back for a while. Just as I was wondering who it could be, Helen and Sue reappeared with a back of shopping!
It transpired that Rita had not been at home when they arrived for their lesson, so they made an about turn and at Helen's suggestion went and bought some ingredients to cook dinner for everyone. A lovely impromptu evening ensued, and as Helen and Sue cooked dinner and the boys watched 'The Matrix' (for the first time ever!), Chris and I took the bottle of wine, our glasses, Chris's fence unit and battery, and headed down to work on the fence.
We set Chris's fence unit up and hooked it up to our fence, which produced the same poor voltage as we've been getting all these weeks. We then had a walk around the perimeter to check for vegetation that might have grown up and be touching and shorting the fence, but there was nothing (Helen and I have been quite hot on removing encroaching creepers and the like). We then unhooked the unit from the fence and tested it directly - which gave us 4000-6000 volts so that was fine. Something, somewhere was wrong with the fence, but what?
Next we cut and separated the top two ropes so that we could test each individually. As it stood, the two lines were one length that ran around the perimeter twice, crossing over at the fence unit. I figured that the fewer breaks or joints in it the better, and after we reconfigured the fence and tested both middle and top ropes independently we got different voltages on each - a clue at last! We set about taking another look around the perimeter for maybe a broken rope clip or whatever it was that was affecting one rope and not the other. It wasn't long before we found that one of the steel posts had been twisted 90 degrees or so (quite probably when the potato thief climbed through), and this was allowing the rope to touch the steel post and short the circuit. On further inspection, we found a couple more posts that had done the same. All posts corrected, we hooked Chris's unit back up and we got a 4000-6000 volt reading from the entire fence!! I couldn't quite believe that, with all the focus on everything green shorting the fence, I'd not noticed this before. We unhooked Chris's unit and hooked ours back up. I held my breath, switched it on, hooked the tester up and got a reading of 4000-6000volts!! What a joyous relief! Not only should our potatoes be safe now, but I would be saved the trip to the shop to try and explain the problem and deal with all that followed it.
Feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves, I grabbed the fence to make absolutely sure and got a big zap from it in return - much stronger than anything I've felt from it before and so strong that I have no doubt that any but the most determined pest will look elsewhere for their feast from now on (I'm sure I'll be eating those words very soon however, it can't be that easy, can it?).
With a few tweaks planned for the fence tomorrow, we headed up to the patio to light the fire pit, finish the bottle of wine and get stuck into dinner: pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce, which went down very well indeed, with all but Erik having seconds, and some thirds! The Phillipses eventually left to get the boys home to bed, after a really enjoyable and satisfying evening. I'm quite sure that if it hadn't been a school night, we'd have happily whiled away several more hours (and several more bottles of wine to boot).
This morning, we repeated the same routine as yesterday, although Reggie's barking while Helen was in the shower got me up promptly today. He seemed to be in one of his barky moods this morning, so after breakfast I took him out for a walk to try and tire him out - but it wasn't long before he turned us both around and charged back towards home! I think he was still quite tired after yesterday evening when he spent a good while chasing around the goose enclosure. Henry had offered to put the geese away for us, and Reggie slipped through the gate onto the terraces with him. Since Henry had not done the geese-putting-away routine before, it took him some time to corral them into their house (which earned him a bite on the hand from the ever feisty gander, but thankfully no blood drawn on this occasion). Reggie, for his efforts, almost ran himself into a grave - he was so hot and panting so furiously that Helen took to dousing his head in water to stop his little brain boiling. I'm sure this extra curricular activity was responsible for his early about turn this morning, which was fine by me. Despite it being a short walk we still had to deal with six vehicles on the road - but I think Reggie's car lunging is reducing - he only went for two out of the six today, so let's hope that trend continues.
Once again it was mid morning by the time I got home and we sat in the sun drinking coffee before heading off to our respective offices for the rest of the morning.
While Helen worked away at her computer I was insulating the 50 or so steel fence posts to stop any future short circuits. This involved unscrewing two of the plastic rope hangers from each post then slipping pieces of old garden hose over the posts in between each hanger before using a grip that Spock himself would have been proud of to tighten the hangers back up and re-threading the rope through... By the time Helen shouted down the terraces to call me for lunch, the fence was three quarters done.
For lunch today we finished off a quinoa salad (with avocado, grated garlic, lemon segments from our tree and home grown radishes from our veg garden), along with some fresh and still warm bread that, unprompted, Sue had delivered us this morning before disappearing with half of our recycling.
After a very pleasant and slightly cooler lunch today (no need for the umbrella, it felt under 25°C today), we went back to work. Just as I was finishing the fence, I had a call from Izmet, the guy we've asked to collect and deliver these water-collection tanks for us. I'd sent him a text message at lunchtime to let him know that they were ready and we managed to establish that the tanks had to be collected at 2pm, not later, or before, and that he knew where the company was in Pescia. He offered to collect them tomorrow, so after a quick call to Donatella, who called the guy supplying the tanks, we agreed on a 2pm meeting in Pescia with the four of us: me, Donatella, Izmet (with his truck) and the guy selling the tanks. It's been a complicated thing to arrange and has taken far too long to get sorted, and we're extremely thankful to Donatella for her help and patience over the last couple of months to get this sorted and saving us 100s of euros in the process.
With that sorted and the fence upgraded and zapping away happily at over 4000 volts, I went up to the lawn to start putting training wires into the garden wall so that we can try and train what we think are a couple of old grape vines we found up the wall. How exciting that would be to reinstate some really old grape vines and encourage them into fruiting again!
When I ran out of eye hooks I called it a day to go indoors and keep Reggie quiet during Helen's 3pm conference call while at the same time catching up with the blog posts.
It was almost 4pm when Helen emerged from the office and headed out to try and find Lucca with a worried look on her face - worried because he's been in the habit over the last few weeks of asking to be let back in around lunch time for a snack and a little snooze but today there had been no sign of him. Normally that wouldn't be much cause for concern, but not long before Helen had heard cats fighting down below the house somewhere and as Florence was indoors it could only be little Lucca getting into trouble with one of the tough-looking heavy weights that we see around here. Although he's much better at standing his ground than our diminutive Florence, is he's not a fighter so we hoped he was just hiding somewhere.
She eventually came in looking relieved, with our little black cat following closely behind her. Panic over.
With Chris coming to our rescue again at 5.30pm to drive me to the car dealer, I decided now was a good time to hop on my bike and ride down to our local farmacia. Donatella had very helpfully ordered us some heartworm tables (for Reggie) to be delivered to the village pharmacy - what a star! We had no idea this could even be done and were waiting for the car to be returned to take Reggie to the vet to get the tablets, thanks again Donatella!!
I had the call this morning to let me know that, apparently, our car is ready. I find it hard to believe, but for now I can only give them the benefit of the doubt I suppose. Time will tell!
So it's been friends to the rescue over the last couple of days (and indeed over the last week) - how much more difficult life would have been without them!
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