For the rest of the day, while I worked in the office, Stuart made a start on building a wardrobe in our spare room, similar to the one he had constructed in our own bedroom a few month's back. Since moving into our house over three years ago, we have been limping along using a very tired looking (and never attractive in the first place) flat-pack style wardrobe in the spare room, that has been bursting at its seams (literally - the doors wouldn't close) with all the spare towels and bed linen we've crammed into it, as well as a selection of winter coats and jackets that quite frankly, right at the moment, I can't even begin to imagine ever needing again (it being 34C right now).
Anyway, the wardrobe project has been an ongoing feature of the last week or so, with the frame starting out on Monday:
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| (The mirror clearly is not intended as a permanent feature!) |
Tuesday was a bit of a different day. In many ways. Most importantly, it was our wedding anniversary - five years since we said "Sí" in the beautiful town hall in Siena and had such a wonderful time celebrating with our friends and family. It was also the third anniversary of us becoming proper owners of our house here in Tuscany (or, less romantically, the third anniversary of our mortgage :-/).
The day started out slightly dramatically when, on the dot of 9am, all the electrics went off. A power cut. We had awoken at 7am to the sound of multiple chain saws in the vicinity, and realised that there were workers cutting trees underneath a power line just across the way from us, so we wondered if the two things were connected, but remained in the dark (both literally and figuratively).
We had no time to think about it though, as at 9:30am we had to drive to the village to see a lady about a house. Something like that anyway. Samantha had been asking us if we would be interested in a small job looking after a holiday house - a job that would involve cleaning the pool and watering the plants three times a week, as well as overseeing the check-in and check-out of guests. We had pondered the idea but come the weekend Samantha was pressing for an answer, telling us that the owner of the villa was desperate to have someone who lived very close by (in the village) - because of course another aspect of the job will be to go up there at a moment's notice if/when guests have any sort of problems. After a little thought, we'd agreed to take the job on, and on Tuesday the owner of the house, Brunetta, wanted to meet us and show it to us.
The house is probably 0.5km away from our house as the crow flies, but being on the other side of the small hill directly in front of our house, it takes slightly longer to drive there. We duly met with Brunetta, she gave us a whistle-stop tour of the pool and the cupboards that contain the pool cleaning equipment then we parted, agreeing that she would do the first cleaning with us, to show us the ropes, later in the week.
We got home to find the electricity still off, so instead of settling down at my computer, we went on a family dog walk - Stuart, Reggie and me - after which we harvested some lettuce, artichokes and beetroot to take down to Amanda's shop to see if she was interested in buying any. Since there was nothing for me to do at home, I accompanied Stuart on this little errand, which included going to get some strimmer fuel and gas bottle refills before calling in at Amanda's shop for a chat and €7 of veg sales!
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| Today's harvest. |
Back home, the electricity was still off - in fact, on our way back up the road we passed our neighbour, Valerio. As his house is the closest to ours, and even closer to where the woodsmen were cutting trees than our house, we pulled over to see if he was also without electricity or knew anything about it. Well, as seems to be the way with our lovely neighbours Valerio and Rosanna, we seemed to have a conversation in which we understood about 20% of what he said. Indeed, we were pretty sure that the first thing he said to us was "the spark plug is broken" - local lingo meaning electricity? or just our incapacity to understand? Who knows! Anyway, we were pretty sure that he was also without electricity (he talked about how it had happened at 9am precisely, which tied up with our experience) and we thought he'd said that it would come back on at 4pm.
So, computer work was definitely off for the morning at least, so after a quick lunch, Stuart and I headed to the orto to plant beetroot and chicory, do some weeding, watering and tidying. At just before 3pm, Stuart suddenly called out that the electricity had come back on - the electric fence (which we usually unplug while we are coming and going across the veg terraces but hadn't done on this occasion as there was no need - it runs from the mains) had just kicked back into action.
I took that as my cue to head back to the house and boot up my computer for the first time that day - thankfully a little ahead of schedule. The return of the electric supply also meant that Stuart could get on with cleaning the apartment. With guests arriving the next day, we needed to get it done, but he needed the electric for the hoover, not to mention the lights to see where he was dusting!
Midway through the afternoon, the guys from Fattorini arrived with our new chest freezer on the back of their little three-wheel Ape. Unfazed by Reggie's torrent of barking, the father and son team carried the freezer from the car park to the house, leaving it for the time being in the kitchen as we hadn't yet made room for it in the utility room. Such a great service - they left, telling us that they would call as soon as the fridge came in to arrange delivery, expecting it to take about a week.
Reggie - who isn't a fan of change - was quite upset by the new large white rectangular object that was now sitting in the doorway, and spent the next hour or so barking at it, telling it in no uncertain terms that he didn't want it there.
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| Don't worry Reggie, it won't be staying there. |
When we'd finally finished our respective jobs for the afternoon - Stuart had finished in the apartment, and I had put in a few hours of work at the computer - we decided to celebrate our anniversary properly, changed into smart(ish) clothes and headed to Montecarlo for a spritz. We were disappointed to find out that our favourite haunt in the pretty little town was closed on a Tuesday - as in fact was the wine bar. So we had a drink at another of the restaurants on the main street instead, and while we did so, hatched a plan to go out for an impromptu meal. We very very rarely dine out here when we are on our own, but what better occasion than our anniversary to treat ourselves?
Instead of staying in Montecarlo, we headed for Borgo a Buggiano, where we were interested to try and find a pizzeria that our friends David & Sarah had recently been to and told us all about. Luckily it was easy to find, and they had a table free, so we sat down and rounded off a very enjoyable day with a feast of a selection of bruschette followed by a pizza each. It may sound quite ordinary, but everything about this place, from the decor to the ambience and - importantly- the food was just that bit different from all the other restaurants around here. We loved it, and with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options on the menu we will definitely be going back.
Wednesday morning was our Italian lesson with Johnny. With David & Sarah in the UK this week, it was just the two of us, and we had another look at the dreaded congiuntivo. Several coffees later, and with heads spinning (from the coffee as much as the lesson!) Johnny left us to get on with our day and, after finishing off the last bits of making the apartment guest-ready, Stuart headed up to Vellano to go and do a small spot of plastering in the holiday rental that he and David do some strimming for - handily, right next door to David and Sarah's house, which also gave him the opportunity to do some veg watering for them while he waited for the plaster to dry.
It seems that Italian plaster dries in its own sweet time, and Stuart made it home at about 6:45pm, just about 20 minutes before our guests, Colin and Lisa arrived! Colin and Lisa are our first ever repeat guests in the apartment - they came last June and enjoyed the area so much that they decided to come again this year. We thoroughly enjoyed their company last year, so it was great to see them, and we invited them to join us for a drink after unpacking their car. We spent a very pleasant evening sitting under the pergola catching up with them, moving inside once the light faded and the temperature dropped just enough to feel a cool edge.
Thursday morning was Stuart's first day at his/our new job - pool cleaning and watering. He left me to my morning exercise at around 7:30am and headed to the house to meet up with Brunetta to be shown how to clean the pool, coming home later with a page full of instructions.
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| Pietrabuona from an entirely different view. Not a bad pool view! |
After that, Thursday was a fairly mundane day - office work for me, more work on the wardrobe for Stuart, an Italian lesson with Samantha, not much more to report.
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| The wardrobe takes shape. |
Friday started a little differently from usual. We were both up early and instead of doing my usual exercise, I walked Reggie (who seemed quite surprised to be going for such an early morning walk) while Stuart loaded the car with tools and fuel and equipment. With Reggie safely back in the house with his breakfast, we headed out, stopping at Da Nerone for a quick cappuccino for breakfast. Even at 8:30am, the heat of the sun was scorching as we sat on the pavement drinking our coffee. Once we'd had our caffeine and a pastry for sustenance, we headed up to Vellano and spent a couple of hours strimming. It was high time we attempted to start to repay some of the debt we owe David & Sarah for the many, many times and ways they have helped us out, so we'd decided to go and strim their terraces before they got back from the UK. Thankfully their terraces are shorter than ours and with both of us strimming at the same time it only took two hours, after which, melting from the heat, we piled everything back in the car and headed home for showers and a more usual type of afternoon: Stuart went and did the supermarket shopping while I booted up my computer and put in my work hours for the afternoon.
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| Everything you need for a morning's double strimming. |
During the afternoon there was a ring on the gate buzzer - it was the man from the hardware shop on his moped. Stuart duly let him in and waited for him to arrive at the house. It turned out that the fridge had already arrived (we had been expecting it to take about a week and we'd only ordered it on Tuesday!) and they had tried phoning us but been unable to get through - so he had ridden all the way up to the house on his moped to check that we were in to take delivery, following which he rode back to town to pick up the fridge, his son and the Ape and within the hour they were back again delivering the second item of the week! All service free of charge.
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| A proper utility room! |
Friday evening we had been invited to Mara and Franco's for a curry. Mara had bought a box of recipe kits from The Spicery, the company from which we get our curry subscription, and this time it was her turn to cook us curry! They had also invited a friend of theirs, Barbara, for dinner, and we had a great evening - a slightly different dynamic from when it's just the four of us, and for a lot of the evening we sat back and listened to the banter between the three friends. Amazingly, we understood most of it, even if we weren't always able to contribute, and it was another lovely evening with our friends, and even warm enough for us to have spent the entire evening sitting at the outside table.
Saturday was a properly early start for us - we were up at 5:30am (yes, the time real farmers actually get up!) so that Stuart could go and do pool cleaning and watering while I exercised and walked Reggie so that we could then head into Pescia in time for an 8:30am appointment. Without dwelling on the detail, it was one of those regular 'women's checks' that us girls all hate and dread, but force ourselves to go to because we know how important it is. Despite feeling ridiculously anxious about it (mainly because of the language), the whole process was smoother and less taxing than any medical appointment I've been to here, and we breezed out of the clinic just 15 minutes after arriving.
Duties done, we headed up the valley to Sorana for a coffee in the garden at our favourite summertime cafe Da Sandrino. After that, we took the road up to Vellano to pop in on David & Sarah's second orto and give everything a quick water, before heading home.
That was when the day turned stressful! On arriving home, Stuart had a call from Anton, the plumber. He had already tried the gate about 10 minutes before we got home and was wanting to come and plumb in our solar panel. Apparently he had messaged Stuart the night before, but Stuart hadn't received it... so it was panic stations as Stuart frantically cleared accumulated planks of wood, guttering and other assorted items from the area in which they would need to work, and five minutes later, the gate buzzer rang.. and Reggie kicked off an epic four-hour round of almost non-stop barking.
Of course, having the solar panel plumbed in (finally!) is great news, after we've had it for over a year (and I think, originally, both of us had imagined ourselves having solar heated water within six months of moving here - oh the ignorance!). However, Saturday morning was well and truly hard work and stressful. Stuart helped out with digging channels for the pipes to run across into the shed to the water tank, while I chased Reggie around desperately trying to calm him down and reassure him. He seemed to manage to calm down for about three minutes before starting back up again. Meanwhile, the sun was beating down, we were all being deafened, and poor Reggie was exhausted, but with no intention of stopping his protests. Thankfully our guests had gone out for the day so they didn't have to listen to a soundtrack of barking all morning, unlike the rest of us!
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| Plumbed in! |
Having arrived just after 10am, the plumber and his assistant finally finished up and left at about 2:45pm. Feeling frazzled from the early start and from the heat and the stress, it was time for us to have a quick cold beer and bite of lunch before I turned my attentions to tidying up and prepping food for dinner and Stuart spent the afternoon tidying up and putting the shed back together.
Thankfully, we were in good shape by the time 7pm came around and were able to welcome Donatella, Paul and Kathy for a lovely evening - our second curry in a row! We'd always planned to cook curry (one of our Spicery kits) for this evening, and Mara's invite for curry had come after we'd already planned it, not that we minded of course!! As always the Spicery kit came up trumps and we ate a delicious south Indian green curry with side dishes of spiced beetroot and spiced cucumber. Donatella had kindly brought some really tasty artisan beers for us to drink with the meal, and Kathy had made a delicious lime meringue pie for pudding. It was a great night, great company, lots of laughs, and once again, we ate outdoors and spent the whole evening outside.
After a light lunch (leftover curry - yum!), we decided to try to be clever and stay indoors during the heat of the day, heading out to the orto at around 4:30pm. Which, it turns out is actually the hottest part of the day. Not so clever.
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| Feel the heat rising. |
Nevertheless, we headed to the orto for its weekly thorough weeding and watering, also finishing off putting up the tomato supports and pallets for the squash plants to climb along, and we finished the weekend with another evening of drinks with our guests Colin and Lisa, hearing about what they had been up to for the last few days and what else they had planned for the rest of their stay.
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| Stuart tried his hand at some garlic plaiting. |
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| Pretty good, eh? |
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| We should be safe from vampires for a while. |
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| Our little tiger. |
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| Pears on the newly freed pear tree at the top of the terraces. |
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| Teeny cucumber. |
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| ...a purple cauliflower! |
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