Calling Noah

The last week has been a fairly quiet one, but it ended with a rainstorm of epic proportions - Noah would surely have been readying his arc to set sail down the River Pescia if he could have convinced any of the animals to leave the cosiness of their houses.

I'm not sure we've every seen so much rain, for such a prolonged period of time. It started at around midnight on Friday night and continued, non-stop for 48 hours.

Reggie really wanted to stay indoors in the dry, but he also wanted to know what was going on outside, so he opted for the half-in, half-out position:

Shortly after that, though, we decided, in our infinite wisdom, to brave the weather and take advantage of the fact that no locals would be crazy enough to walk their dogs in rain of such Biblical proportions, and we headed to the river in Pescia with Reggie. Reggie couldn't believe his luck - it's been a while since he's had a walk along the river, and he clearly wasn't bothered by the rain at all once he was out in it. Other than two soggy joggers, we didn't meet anyone else, and had a quiet, but decidedly wet walk. By the time we got back to the car, Stuart and I were both soaked to the skin from waist down - but rather than heading straight home we had the weekly supermarket shopping to do, so we dripped and squelched our way around Esselunga before stopping off at Amanda's shop to collect our weekly bread order and homework from Samantha. The girls laughed at us when we walked in the shop and asked if we had just got out of the shower...

Finally it was time to head home, change into dry clothes, light the fire and spend the afternoon sitting by the fire, starting to prepare a Sardinian Mirto (myrtle berry) liqueur from some dried myrtles and a recipe given to us by Donatella, and catching up on Italian TV - Bake Off Italia, the Italian version of the Great British Bake Off, has become our guilty pleasure: good practice for our Italian, yet straightforward enough (and a familiar enough format) for us to follow easily and without it feeling too challenging.

Reggie made the most of the relaxing afternoon by the fire.

Sardinian myrtle berries steeping in 96% alcohol.

As I said earlier, there was simply no let-up in the rain whatsoever, and after a night of listening to rain drumming on the skylight, wind rattling through the trees and the odd clap of thunder and flash of lightning, we awoke to another cloudy wet morning on Sunday.

We decided to treat ourselves to a coffee and pastry for breakfast, so headed for the other side of Pescia to Bar Delice. It proved to be a bit of a long-winded journey after finding the main road out of Pescia blocked by what looked to be a burst water pipe, but we made it eventually and enjoyed our coffees and morning pastries while looking at reports of localised flooding and other weather-related dramas in the local newspaper. 

The day's forecast would have us believe that the wet weather was due to ease up during the afternoon - the forecast even showing a sunshine-with-cloud icon from around 4pm onwards. After having had what felt to us a very sedentary day on Saturday, we were both itching to do something productive on Sunday. But what to do? After an appropriate amount of indecision, we finally decided that Stuart would make a start on constructing a much-needed new wardrobe space in our bedroom to replace the unsightly and insufficient wardrobes we inherited, while I would tog myself up in a raincoat and brave the weather to go and tend to the vegetable garden (all the while expecting the rain to be light, and gradually easing).

In fact, our usually reliable weather app let us down on this occasion, and the rain continued all afternoon. Thankfully it wasn't cold though, and once I was out in it, I decided to make the most of it and stayed out until the light faded at around 5.30. The afternoon's activity for me consisted of harvesting the very last of the summer veg and taking the spent plants out of the beds to compost them and leave the beds clear. I won't say that the veg garden looks much tidier now, but I did fill an entire compost station with what I'd taken out, and I harvested two butternut squash, a pumpkin, three courgettes and an enormous haul of peppers and aubergines:

By the time I squelched my way back to the house I was soaked through to my underwear and covered in mud. I was pleased, therefore, to find Stuart lighting the fire when I got back to the house and when I went upstairs to change I found he had made a great start on the construction of an all-new, better functioning and better looking wardrobe space in our bedroom, with stud walls now in place:

Needless to say, the rest of Sunday evening was spent sitting by the fire and wondering how the forecast of a sunny, dry day on Monday could possibly be right. (Spoiler alert: it wasn't.)

So that's how our week ended - prior to that, the week had included some more wood chipping after having rolled branches, brambles and vegetation clippings all the way down the terraces from where we'd cleared last weekend (and a couple of piles from where we had cleared last spring!), and more building up of our firewood stock for next year.

Can you spot what's wrong with the picture below?

Spot the mistake.

 

As relative rookies at the firewood gathering, storing, and seasoning game, the mistake here is that we put a cover over the pile of wood that is intended for next year. Apparently, for it to season (lose its sap) properly, it needs to be exposed to all the elements: sunshine, wind, rain. Only once it is fully seasoned and a couple of months before it will be used should it be covered to keep it dry. 

Early in the week we also had a quick visit from Alain, the beekeeper who had initially been interested in putting some hives on our land back in the spring, but due to unfortunate timing of events (with work starting on our driveway and gates) didn't end up doing so. Anyway, he had been doing the rounds of people he knows in the area and came round to drop off some jars of honey for us - a lovely gesture, especially considering we didn't host his bees in the end. 

He gave us four types of honey: two large jars of the strong flavoured castagne (chestnut) honey, a jar of very darkly coloured abete (fir tree) honey - which is made not by the bees collecting nectar from the tree's flowers but by the honey bees 'milking' aphids which feed on the trees - and finally a smaller jar of tiglio (lime tree) honey. Time for a cheese and honey party perhaps?!

L to R 2x chestnut honey; the very dark fir tree honey, and the pale lime tree honey.

At the end of the week, we headed out to our friends Mara and Franco's house across on the opposite hillside. It had been a while since we'd seen them socially, and it was lovely to spend an evening with them. We went over early so that we could assist Mara in setting up an advert on the Air BnB holiday website for their recently finished guest room. It was nice to be the ones giving advice for a change, and even with everything being written in Italian (initially at least), we were able to give her some tips and pointers. After that, and a quick call round to say hello their neighbours Silvia and Franco, so that Stuart could have a look at some re-plastering work that needs doing in their bathroom, we settled down to a leisurely dinner of round after round of delicious home-made (by Mara) pizza and lots of interesting and sometimes hilarious (thanks to our fumbling with the language) conversation with our lovely friends. 

So there you have it, a relatively productive week despite what the weather threw at us. We're hoping for a drier week this week, but we'll let you know!