Rain, rain go away!

After a damp weekend we were due more of the same for the start of the week, which would mean yet more delays to outside work - but that mattered little on Monday as we had an apartment guest arriving so my day was to be spent turning it from a Christmas-decorated gym back into a decent and hospitable accommodation proposition.

I'm over dramatising a little - all of the decorations apart from the twinkly icicle lights that I'd stapled to the centuries-old chestnut beams had been taken down and put away shortly after Christmas, and all that was in there on the gym front were two bikes, one turbo trainer and two dumbbells. My first job was to remove all of the above before I could start working my way through our 'turnaround checklist'.

I busied myself until lunchtime, having done all but the floor mopping and bathroom cleaning, so we were in a good state of readiness at that point as we weren't expecting to collect our guest, Laura, until 4pm from Pescia train station.

As I stopped for lunch with Helen the rains arrived, meaning that after lunch, in order to keep the apartment clean, a second pair of footwear was needed so that I could change at the door when going in and out! By 3pm all was done and the gas heater was on to raise the temperature in there by  a few degrees ready for our guest's arrival.

Reggie had missed his window for a walk today, which wasn't ideal as he's always more vocal when he hasn't had a walk, but that was the way it was today and soon I was heading off to collect Laura from the train station. I soon spotted her exiting the station lugging a large holdall, so I pulled over in a very Italian way to load her bag into the car - by which I mean I parked diagonally across chevrons right outside the station doors.

After taking Laura to Esselunga to grab some supplies, we headed back up the valley to install her into the now warm and dry apartment.

Tuesday morning was surprisingly dry - the rain in the night had been quite heavy at times, so when her alarm went off Helen took the chance to head out for a bit of exercise, having all but written the idea off before turning lights out to sleep.

Once up, I plodded around in the house before taking Reggie out for a much needed walk: I checked and watered the garlic, which is now living in the poly tunnel, collected some wood for the fire and went up to see the chickens.

Garlic loving life in the tunnel.

Our white Livornese (leghorn) was in the nest box so couldn't collect any eggs, but I threw a handful of grain down for them as they really enjoy eating from the ground and nowadays get excited at the prospect when we go to see them.

It seemed the grain bin had had a visitor overnight, and a very determined one at that!

A very determined visitor.

One more night of this kind of behaviour and they, what ever they are, will be in and bathing in grain, so I guess we're going have to find a more robust receptacle very soon. It seems it's very easy indeed to underestimate the wildlife here and its determination - I can see it will be a constant feature of rural life in the hills in some form or another.

After doing the rounds, I loaded Reggie into the car and headed to the chicken run to give him a chance to run along the river which he did with gusto, chasing off a cormorant and the same pair of mallards three times, and another dog that was out walking itself.

There was a fairly strong breeze this morning but no rain, and it seemed likely to stay that way until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, so after our walk I went to the nearby garden centre 'Natali' for a couple of large sacks of compost for seed planting and some small plant pots, ordering more for tomorrow.

Once home it was time for lunch and lighting the fire not to mention tidying up a little in readiness for Samatha's weekly visit. This week, Samantha came prepared with a large hunk of bread for Reggie which seemed to do the trick very well and he was almost putty in her hands.

Wednesday morning it was group Italian lesson at Numero 182, so with the fire lit and coffee pot on, we awaited our guests and wondered how Reggie would respond to Johnny this week. Sure enough, Johnny was barked at, like last time, but the arrival soon afterwards of David and Sarah seemed to serve as a small distraction, and we were soon all inside and seated. This time we suggested that Johnny should sit furthest away from the door (and sofa) to give Reggie a little more space to come into the house. This seemed to work really well and soon Reggie was fast asleep in front of the fire having had a few sneaky sniffs of Johnny's knees beneath the table - a huge improvement over last time when we'd had no choice but to put Reggie in the car for the morning. Onwards and upwards we hope!

After lunch it was back to work and while Helen headed for the office I went down to the poly tunnel with a range of power tools and wood to see what I could fashion from the bits and pieces behind the house to act as shelves so that we could get on with some seed planting.

By the end of the afternoon and after many trips up and down the terraces for yet another drill bit or piece of timber I had our first set of shelves constructed. The shelves are free-standing so that should  the poly tunnel ever take flight in the strong winds we get here, the shelves and plants need not necessarily go with it.

Let the planting commence!

With tools put away and Helen having done her office work for the day we loaded Reggie into the car for a quick walk at the cava before the light faded. After that we headed home to light the fire and cook dinner. As our wood pile for this winter starts to noticeably diminish we wonder how many more fires are left before the warmer weather arrives - it's only mid February, but from memory the fire was out of action sometime in early April last year.

On Thursday morning David had offered to come down and help out again for a couple of hours, which he did, but not before a few kisses from Reggie and coffee first. David and I then spent a couple of hours working in the car park area while the electricity board's helicopter worked in the valley delivering materials to the car parking area down in Pietrabuona (not that we heard it much over the noise of the chainsaw).

Spot the helicopter.

I was logging more of the acacia for Helen to split later in the afternoon, while David worked on finishing the steps I had started toward the back of the house.

Looking good David, thank you!

By lunchtime the steps were finished and looking rather splendid and there was a huge pile of logs ready to split for Helen so we retired to the patio in just T-shirts to have a cold glass of white wine, such was the glorious weather today.

Once Dave had left and after Helen and I had a quick lunch, Helen changed to come outside and while she spilt logs I continued with some more logging until the daylight started to fade.

On Friday morning I headed out with Reggie for a walk while Helen got a bit of work under her belt before Sue arrived for coffee around 11am. Reggie and I arrived home just before Sue got here, so I lit the fire and put some coffee on as we all caught up with each others dramas and happenings over the week. Our most notable drama of the week was the arrival of Mr and Mrs Rat (and probably Ratty offspring), as by this time we'd worked out that our very determined visitor(s) gnawing through the chicken feed bins were the Rat family. As the saying goes, you're never more than a few metres away from a rat, no matter where you live, but in urban settings they're generally largely invisible, setting up home in the sewer system. In a rural setting, however, especially one with livestock and their associated foodstuffs, it's an occasional occurrence that one has to deal with - and now seems to be our turn.

After a quick coffee I left Helen and Sue chatting while I went to see Paolo at Frateschi to see what he had in stock for dealing the ratty situation. I rummaged around the shelves for about ten minutes while some Italian chap bent Paolo's ear over a new spade handle (not literally). Once the guy left Paolo made a sigh of relief and rolled his eyes - it seems this level of chat was extreme even by local standards.

Paolo apologised for not having any bait traps in stock but said he'd order some urgently for us. While there and having Paolo's ear to myself I decided to try and explain our rain water collection system to him to see if he had any useful bits and pieces so that I could finally get on with the next stage of the project, having now had our six collection tanks standing empty for about 9 months.

As it stands, I have put down concrete pads for the tanks to rest on, Kerys and Ben painted the first three tanks (black to cut out light to reduce algal growth) in the summer, and they the tanks have been sitting proudly in place on the pads for several months. However, before I can go any further I need some way of allowing air to escape the lower tanks as the water fills them from the tanks above - otherwise the air inside would effectively act as a massive airlock.

First three tanks sitting as they have been for months now.

Either my Italian was excellent this morning (which of course it wasn't) or Paolo had supplied parts for exactly this problem before, and he dragged me upstairs to the plumbing room. After giving me three 90-degree elbows, he left me rummaging through a box full of random washers while he went to serve the next customer who had just walked in.

Air release elbows.

I made it back home with my bag of elbows, washers and connectors in time to chat a bit more with Helen and Sue before Sue headed back into Pescia, leaving us to have lunch.

After lunch I headed up to Castelvecchio to see our friend Paul - not to only help him set up his inherited chain sharpener but to have a nose around the building works they're having done at their place. We chatted over a mug of Yorkshire tea and then traipsed around the muddy build site before playing with the chain sharpener in his man cave. The guys Paul has working there seem to really know what they're doing and I've no doubt the end result will be top notch - I'll be looking forward to going back and seeing the finished work.

We could have chatted well into the evening, but as it was I'd told Helen I'd be home around half three so that we could go and do the food shopping so I headed back down the hill to collect Helen and head to Esselunga.

Having done the food shopping last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed having the entire weekend to ourselves without the trudge around the supermarkets hanging over us, we'd decided to do the same again this week, especially as we'd been promised a couple of dry days this weekend - a good chance to get some work done together outside.

With the shopping done we headed home to start the weekend with some wine and a toasty fire.