Know your onions

The week started with Stuart heading to Brunetta's (the owner of the pool house) in the next valley over, to finally complete the painting of her loft conversion - after to-ing and fro-ing several times there in the last couple of weeks it was good to know that it was finally completed.

After lunch, Stuart headed down to the river at the edge of our land to play around once again with the ram pump he had constructed and various lengths of pipe, while I (after finishing work in the office for the day) did some weeding of the veg beds, some harvesting, and watering.

Tuesday morning saw Stuart back at the pool house early in the morning before heading to Vellano to spend a morning tracing water pipes through the woods with David - this time in an attempt to find a fault with the water supply at the house they look after. With the pipe running several hundred metres through rough terrain, woodland, underneath fallen/logged trees and through brambles, it was a little like finding a needle in a haystack and promised to be a laborious task. Certainly by the time Stuart got home (without having solved anything) he was soaked to the skin in sweat and in need of a power nap after lunch to re-energise.

Energy was a particularly important consideration that day as we were heading to Lucca in the evening to go to a concert as part of the annual Lucca Summer Music festival. We'd last been to a concert in Lucca two years ago, and this year we were spoilt for choice in terms of the artists we would love to go and see there (Imagine Dragons, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure & Robbie Williams, Kasabian, Green Day...). In the end, we had decided on a concert featuring the British artist Rag n Bone Man and the American singer LP, and my lovely sister, Rach (& family) had kindly paid for tickets for us to go as birthday presents for both Stuart and me.

As it happened, our friends David & Sarah had also bought tickets for the same night, so we travelled to Lucca courtesy of a lift from them and spent a very enjoyable evening together.

Two years ago we had been to Lucca to see Paolo Nutini and had been bowled over by the whole event - the open air concerts take place in one of the city's piazzas, surrounded by historic buildings, and you are free to wander around the area immediately surrounding the piazza to buy drinks and ice creams from the shops and bars that border the piazza, giving the whole thing a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. While the seating/standing/capacity arrangements differ from one night to the next (depending on the artist performing), you are never far away from the stage and this venue is a far cry from the stadiums that many of the artists might be more likely to spend most of their time performing in - making it a privilege to see them in such a venue, and perhaps a pleasure for them to perform in as well.

After having had such a good time the last time we went to the music festival, and not being quite so well acquainted with the music of the two artists we were to see (we had heard both of them played on Italian radio a lot, so knew about 3 or 4 tracks from each artist), I was a little apprehensive as to whether it would live up to the last concert. I needn't have worried. Rag n Bone Man opened the show - which may come as a surprise to many Brits, who will have seen him rise to quite a level of fame in recent months and who probably haven't heard of the other artist, LP. The minute Rag n Bone Man opened his mouth we knew we were in for an amazing show. What. A. Voice! His performance was understated and humble but his voice did all of the "talking" (as it were) - we were blown away by his talent and wondered if we should just leave once he had finished as we weren't sure anyone could match it. But once again, we needn't have worried. And once again, the minute LP (an American singer-songwriter who has written songs for the likes of  Cher, Rihanna, the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera, and now seems to be doing her own stuff in her own, very distinctive style) opened her mouth we knew we were in for another incredible show - her voice, and her energy (not to mention her unnatural talent for whistling) were just astonishing.

It seemed we had picked another great night at the festival, and by the time the concert finished at a little past midnight, and we left to walk through the quiet streets of Lucca back to the car, we were buzzing from the evening's performances.

After a late night on Tuesday, it was with slightly bleary eyes that we greeted Johnny for our weekly Italian lesson on Wednesday morning. With Sarah heading off to Norway for a few weeks' work, and David driving her to the airport, it was just the two of us in the lesson this week - we spent our time looking at indefinite adjectives (each, some, any, many, none, other, lots etc.).

After the lesson, Stuart hot-footed it into town to visit Coldiretti, the agricultural organisation, to see if he needed to pay them any money for tax purposes, but once again the answer was 'not this month' (long may that continue!). 

Later in the afternoon, after finishing work in the office for the day and after Stuart had done some more chores around the place, we packed up the car with cans of fuel, safety equipment, strimmers and hedge cutters and headed up to Vellano to meet David for an evening's grass/vegetation cutting. The grass at the holiday let David helps look after was in desperate need of cutting, and a wall of bramble was encroaching on the terraces, and with guests arriving in the not too distant future, the plan was for us to spend a couple of hours in the "cooler" evening air doing the work. Well, come 6pm it was still well over 30C, and the three of us spent a very hot two hours strimming and cutting and whipping the terraces into shape, leaving us feeling utterly spent! 

What we felt like by Wednesday evening.

Thursday wasn't much of an easier day for Stuart, at least - while I plugged away at my work in the office, he headed up to Marliana, a village beyond Vellano, to do some strimming at another house there. After lunch, it was time for another Italian lesson with Samantha - nothing as "easy" as indefinite adjectives this time though - it was back to the baffling congiuntivo and the rules for when and when not to use it.

As if that wasn't enough, while I went back to work after our lesson, Stuart headed up to Castelvecchio to meet with Paul and pick up some beautiful old stones that our friends Simon and Susan no longer had space for at their house and wanted to rehome (Stuart being sure that we will find a use for them here, somewhere). Paul had offered to help with the transporting of said stones, which turned out to be a whole lot heavier and more back-breaking than either he or Stuart had bargained on!

Post-stone moving.

Friday was a much more ordinary day - pool cleaning, apartment cleaning, office work, a bit of lawn strimming, supermarket shopping, and then welcoming our latest set of apartment guests. Or should I say welcoming them back? Our guests, Mike and Cath, are our second set of repeat-visitors, having first come to stay here back in May last year. It was lovely to see them again and once they had unpacked and settled in we spent a very enjoyable couple of hours catching up with them over a glass of wine under our pergola.

Saturday started the way most of our weekends tend to start, with a coffee at Sandrino's cafe in their lovely garden area. After that, we decided to go on a bit of an impromptu car-shopping expedition, and ended up at the Fiat dealer on the road to Lucca. We had a look around at some methane-fuelled Pandas, and talked to the guy about what we were interested in, asking if we would be able to part exchange our Doblo. While he didn't have anything suitable in at the time, he looked on his computer and found a car that seemed to fit the bill perfectly, that was currently in Lucca. He said he could arrange to have it brought to the showroom during the week, and we left him with our phone number so that he could call us when it came in.

Excitement over, it was time for Stuart to go to the pool house to clean the pool in anticipation of imminently arriving guests, while I cooked up a batch of carrot soup for the freezer.

Once all the pool cleaning and check-in at the pool house had been done, Stuart came home and joined me for an afternoon of tidying and tending to things in the orto - including harvesting our onions. While there were some losses to the dastardly voles, in all probably only a dozen were eaten by the little varmints, so we not too bad a score really.

Know your onions!

After finishing up in the orto we cleaned ourselves up and got ready for an evening out. We had decided to try the recently re-opened bar at the San Lorenzo/Santa Caterina hotel just down the road from us that had advertised doing aperitivi. We asked our guests, Mike & Cath if they would like to join us, and David and Donatella were to come down later. So the four of us headed to the hotel, where we found a very pleasant bar and seating area and had a lovely couple of hours chatting with Mike & Cath and later David & Donatella as well. By the time aperitivi were done with, it seemed too early to call a halt on the socialising, so we invited everyone back to our patio, with a stop-off at Nerone on the way home to buy pizzas!

Reggie was a little perturbed by the sudden influx of people interrupting his quiet evening on the sofa, but once he realised he knew everyone, and that there were six pizzas and six pizza boxes coming his way, he soon settled down next to the table under the pergola, waiting for pizza crusts and other goodies to come his way. All in all another great evening!

We started Sunday, of course, with a coffee in the garden at Sandrino's cafe, before coming home in time to meet David here - who was coming to assist with the laying of pipe from the river through the woods, hopefully to reach and deliver water to our irrigation tanks!

The three of us spent the morning traipsing through the woods and battling with uncooperative pipe that wanted to do anything but lay straight, and by lunchtime we actually had a trickle of water coming into the irrigation tanks - all the way from the stream in the woods below.

A giant slinky.

Finally wrestled into lying flat.

Water!

Just a trickle, but enough!

We celebrated the achievement with a lunch of three different salads (farro with grilled veg; carrot, chickpea and pine nut; tomato and cucumber with mozzarella and pesto) and a bottle of wine, and took the time to relax for an hour or two.

With David then hot-footing it off to go and do some painting elsewhere, we turned our attentions to the quarry area at the end of the drive (having tried to think of something we could do/somewhere that would be in the shade!). While I cut banks of bramble and piled up the clippings ready to be chipped, Stuart took the earlier pile of chippings to the compost pile, turned the compost, and cut a cherry tree (a "hard pruning"). After an hour or so, we headed back to the house and while I took Reggie for a walk and then watered the orto, Stuart added another few stones to our work-in-progress herb garden, finishing off a productive day and a busy week.

Compost from the leaf bins!

(Still) a work in progress.