Hot damn! / Damned hot!

It's been another week of punishing hot temperatures here. We are learning to adapt: 1. If we know we need to be outside to do physical work, the best way to tackle it is to start as early as possible, when the weather is cooler, and allow ourselves to warm up with the day - that way, the searing heat is a little easier to deal with. 2. If possible, avoid being outside between around 2pm and 4pm. We often assume that the hottest part of the day is midday, when the sun is at its highest, but in fact it really seems to knock the heat up a notch or two (or five) in the middle of the afternoon. 3. Avoid sitting in the sun, walking in the sun, doing anything in the sun - basically the complete opposite of the way our British brains have been trained over the years (i.e. making the most of every tiny glimpse of the sun). 4. Use fans. We have a fan going in the bedroom at night time, and I have a fan on my desk in the office which gets switched on shortly after lunchtime when the sun gets around to that side of the building and the room heats up. 5. Put the bottled water in the fridge. We only recently started doing this, and it's proving a challenge for us both to remember to replace the bottles in the fridge when we empty one! 6. Drink lots of water. 7. Stop worrying about being sweaty. Everyone is sweaty (well, almost everyone, I've still spotted uber-glamorous Italian women walking around looking effortlessly beautiful with not a hair out of place while I am feeling the sweat trickle down my legs and peeling the damp hair off my face).

The Heath Robinson cardboard window blinds really don't seem to have made the slightest difference; our bedroom is still routinely 27-28C - but then, talking to other people around here, they aren't convinced that the shutting the blinds during the day trick has much effect either. We've now taken to leaving some of the windows closed, but opening others just so that we can catch a through draft should one happen to blow in. When they do, they're always warm though!

The forecast for the next 10 days is more of the same, although there is a chance of rain (still 33C though) in 10 days from now. Perhaps that will be a break in the weather, who knows?!

It's been a busy week, with lots of office work for me, as we're fully into conference paper season now, and I am routinely spending 6-8 hours at my desk each day. Not fun! I found it especially hard to go back to it this week after having taken a day off office work on Monday to go to Donatella's and help with clearing the terraces. It was such a satisfying day, such a sense of achievement and so good to be working with really great people, and to hopefully be helping Donatella out, that it was a huge come-down for me to plonk myself in front of my computer again on Tuesday morning. Nevertheless, there are bills to be paid, so office work remains a necessary evil.

Stuart, meanwhile, has had a much more active week, although quite possibly would have happily swapped to spend time in the slightly cooler office. On Tuesday, he spent a lot of the day trying to fit a new valve to our water pipe so that, should we ever have a problem with an air lock again, it will be a little easier to find and fix; on Wednesday, he and David were back at Donatella's trying to find a stop cock (which involved more scrambling through woods and looking under fallen trees) so that the plumber could fix the problem she was having with a loss of pressure, and they followed that up with cutting some trees for one of Donatella's neighbours; yesterday, you will be thrilled to hear that not only did Stuart COLLECT OUR CAR OWNERSHIP DOCUMENTS (yes, Really), but he also managed to find another tractor to buy. Well, actually not a tractor, but a dumper, which actually works out slightly less expensive, but more on that another time.

This morning, we both got up at a little before 7am. When I realised that my bike had a flat back tyre, I needed no further encouragement to switch my usual exercise routine to one that was more productive (or maybe destructive?), and instead changed into work clothes and joined Stuart to go and tackle the upper terraces.

After spending the day working on Donatella's terraces on Monday, we had both been itching to get back to our own terraces, which had really started to look ragged and, frankly, wild. We decided to start with the upper terraces (the lower ones will have to wait for another day), so I headed to the top ones to tackle the forest of acacia trees with the hedge trimmers while Stuart started strimming from the bottom.

I was SO disheartened to find that the uppermost terraces that we had uncovered had completely disappeared. Once up there, I didn't even recognise the terraces and couldn't orient myself as to which terrace I was on. The acacias were anywhere between 4-6 ft high - these really are triffid trees. I got stuck in with my hedge cutters though, and after about an hour, I was pleased to find that I could recognise some of the topology of the terraces, and they began to look a bit more familiar. I managed an hour and a half before reluctantly heading indoors to start my office work day. Stuart, meanwhile, ploughed on with his strimmer until lunchtime, even managing to make a start on some of the lower terraces. I have to say that the terraces he got around to doing look fantastic. There is still a lot of work to be done though - I need to get back up to the top terraces to cut more acacias, we need to rake all of the acacia clippings up so that those terraces can be strimmed, and we need to tackle the lower terraces before the bramble engulfs everything again (whereas on the top terraces the main problem is acacia, on the lower terraces the bramble just about outweighs the acacia). It really is terrifying (not to mention disheartening) just how quickly nature takes hold and undoes all the good work you've done - you really can't afford to stand still for a moment in a place like this!

Beautifully strimmed terraces (with pumpkin tumbling down the bank on the left) - just don't look at the topmost ones which are an acacia forest!

Nature is fighting back on the lowest terraces and around all the sides!

There's even a tiny acacia trying to take hold in the lawn.

We had two social 'events' this week. On Tuesday, we were invited to David and Sarah's house, along with Donatella and her Mum for dinner. David and Sarah live in the middle of Vellano in the most beautiful house, which they rent from another couple of ex-pats. I 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed as Sarah showed me around their beautifully appointed rooms, the two stylish bathrooms, and then gasped at the views when she opened the shuttered windows. It felt like being in the lap of luxury for an evening with such lovely surroundings, and that feeling continued with the most incredible spread of food (we have officially been out-cheffed), and really wonderful company. By the time we staggered out of the door (complete with tupperware boxes of leftovers for the next day's lunch), we felt warm with the glow of burgeoning friendships (not to mention the heat).

It was slightly more established friendships that we celebrated yesterday when the entire Phillips clan came round in the afternoon for coffee and a catch-up. Although we'd seen them after they got back from their holiday, they'd been up to a lot since then, so it was good to catch up. All six of us, plus Reggie, opted to sit in the living room rather than adopting our usual habit of socialising in the outdoors, purely because it was too darned hot to sit outside. We had a lovely couple of hours catching up, but it still didn't seem like enough! However, they were heading off to a house they look after in Sorana, and we indeed had work and other chores to get on with, so we had to break up the party. Amazingly, we didn't consume a drop of wine/beer/prosecco on this occasion - could this be a Phillips/Smith/Martin record?

Stuart has also managed to meet two more of our neighbours this week - the people who live in the pink house by the bridge, which is also the house behind which we have to drive in order to access our water meter (it was while he was to-ing and fro-ing from the meter that they met), and the man who lives in the while house below us with an amazing, beautifully flat, beautifully trimmed (and beautifully green, at the moment) lawn and an outside kitchen that we always covet every time we drive past! By all accounts both neighbours were very friendly, and the people from the pink house might even come up to see us next weekend.

I think that pretty much covers our week (in brief, at least), so I'll leave you with pictures of our bountiful harvest (we have given produce away, sold some to Amanda, and Stuart even sold some to someone who was in Amanda's shop the other day. but still we are overwhelmed!)

Cucumber harvest.

21 green cucumbers sitting on a worktop, 21 green cucumbers sitting on a worktop, but if one green cucumber were accidentally to be eaten... There'd be 20 green cucumbers sitting on the worktop... etc.

No, that's not a marrow, it's a courgette. How do they get like that so quickly?!