Still here...

(This blog post covers the period 20/09/2017 to 11/10/2017.)

Yes, we're still here! Time for a mammoth catch-up this week, after the last few weeks having been way too full of work (of various kinds) to find a spare moment to keep the blog updated. The last couple of weeks have seen me preparing to go away, first to the UK for a short family visit, then on to Madrid for a week's work at the annual VB conference, and Stuart having to hold the fort and manage things (and animals) at home, while at the same time putting all his time and energies into building a new kitchen.

A whistle-stop photographic round up of the last three weeks follows:

A dog walk in the rain.

We picked chillies from the plants Paul & Kathy bought for us from a local chilli festival and attempted to dry them.

We started planting some herbs in the new herb garden.

And bought some pretty heather for the pots.

There are cyclamens carpeting almost every inch of the ground in our woods, and in this case even growing halfway up a tree trunk!

Reggie and his collection of balls.

We harvested a whopper of a squash - the biggest so far!

While I was away, it was nice to know that Stuart was being looked after - he was treated to dinner with Paul & Kathy, dinner with Mara & Franco, lunch with Donatella, dinner with David & Sarah, and a barbecue with our apartment guest Phil and Ruth. It was strange being so far away knowing that he was doing the rounds of all of our friends, but lovely to know that they were looking out for him. 

I was surprised to wake up on my first morning in Bristol to find the sun shining brightly. I had a lovely few days just being with Mum & Dad and spending some time with my sister, brother-in-law, nephew and nieces. Living here in Italy is wonderful, and I wouldn't change it for the world, but I do wish someone would hurry up and invent a teleporter that could take me quickly and easily to see my family at any given moment (and then back again)!

I was greeted by sunshine in Bristol - an unexpected bonus!

Naomi feeds a nene.

Hannah feeds a needy duck.

On arriving in Madrid, it was something of a shock to find it still very warm - averaging around 30C during the day and not dropping a great deal at night time. After having switched into fresher, more autumnal weather in Italy, and having spent a few days in the UK (where the weather was on the whole pretty decent, but a couple of degrees cooler than in Italy), the heat of Madrid felt quite oppressive and since I hadn't packed any warm-weather-appropriate clothes, I was happy to stay out of the heat in the relative cool of the hotel. It was a long, busy, and tiring week but the conference was a great success (despite the best efforts of the hotel to place spanners in the works) and, thanks to the hard work of a great team of people, the event ran like a well oiled machine.

A far cry from my usual daily life - where I can often go for nearly a week without seeing another person other than Stuart!

The dream team - the end of a long week and another successful VB Conference.

Homeward bound finally - sunrise over Madrid airport.

Meanwhile, back at home, Stuart was taking the opportunity of my being away from home to make a lot of noise and mess... and build us a lovely new kitchen. In the three-and-a-half years that we've been living here, we have probably had a working oven for only about six months, and we'd decided it was time we rectified that, along with re-fitting the kitchen. The units that we'd inherited from the previous owners have never really been to our taste, and their positioning on the wall had been a source of enormous frustration ever since we arrived - when standing at the sink to wash up, you had a cupboard quite literally in your face and couldn't see what you were doing. The sink unit itself was pretty grim (rotting wood, gaps that mean that water ran down the back of the unit from the draining rack), and with the oven not working, the best solution was to rip everything out and start again. We decided to keep the cupboard units, with a view to maybe repainting them or finding new handles for them, but to re-hang them in a more suitable, less literally-in-your-face, position.

Goodbye old kitchen.

Gone!

Wall prepared.

Frame for the base units.

Cupboards re-hung, new shelf fitted and hob in.

Relief all round to have the hob working again - beans for dinner.

Sinks in.

€8 aluminium bowls upcycled into matching sinks.

Base units ready for plastering.

Plastered.

Oven in.

Base unit doors on.

Pan hanger in action.

After 10 days of working on the kitchen day and night, I'm told that things had got a little messy in the house (I can only imagine), and the day before I returned home, Stuart was offered some help with the great clean-up operation: the A team of cleaners mobilised, with David, Sarah, Paul and Kathy all rolling up their sleeves and helping to put the place back together again. I am thankful that I didn't see the full extent of the mess that had accumulated while work was in progress, but I bet it took a mammoth effort to get everything ship-shape. What great friends we have.

After 10 long days away, it was bliss to come home, not only to find a sparkly, shiny new kitchen but also to be greeted with blue skies, warm sunshine and a lovely freshness to the air. Our beautiful view was as stunning as ever (if not more so, for not having seen it for 10 days), and I was surprised to find that, since going away, the olives had started to turn.

Yep, the view is still there.

Olives have started to turn.

Doggy in the sunshine.

I like to think he was happy to have me home, but he probably didn't even notice I'd gone!

We celebrated my return and christened the new oven by making pizzas for dinner - it feels like such a luxury to now have the option to cook things that require an oven!

Our first meal cooked in the new oven - pizza!

This week has been a case of slowly getting back into a routine, although not as hectic a one as it has been of late. 

On Monday, we took a rare day off and decided to go for a short walk at Croce a Veglia, a stunning spot at the very top of our valley that we've visited just once before. The terrain at this high point is markedly different from the rest of the valley, with rocky outcrops, large swathes of bracken, grazed pastures, and some spectacular views, both back down into the Valeriana and over the top towards the Garfagnana and the "proper" high mountains in the distance. The sounds of cow bells, sheep and goats echo all around, making it feel as we really had gone somewhere completely different.

We were on the hunt for some remains of WWII bunkers that formed part of the German Gothic Line - my Mum and Dad had been walking in the same spot a couple of years ago and said they had spotted some evidence of such structures, and a (fairly) detailed map of the Gothic Line itself suggests that there were indeed bunkers that, according to the map, should have been very close to the path.

Unfortunately we failed on the history-seeking front, but we enjoyed the fresh air and the scenery nonetheless and after a tip-off from Dad, we will know where to look next time!

Croce a Veglia 360 degrees.

This tree looks like a good place to shelter in bad weather.

Porcini? Or not. These had either been dropped or abandoned by mushroom pickers. We weren't about to do a taste test to find out!

Incredibly flaky shale.

(At this point we were thoroughly relieved we had left Reggie safely at home on the sofa!)

A lightning strike?

Penna di Lucchio through the trees.

Almost certainly not edible! But beautiful.

The rest of the week has been a slow return to normal - office work, Italian lessons, pool-house cleaning, lots of strimming to whip the upper terraces into shape, a dinner with our neighbours (where, once again, we understood about 40% of what they said, if even that much - we've come to the realisation that there are always going to be some people that we struggle to understand, and our generous, but fast-talking neighbours take the prize in that category), dog walking, the start of some work on our pergola area, a trip to Pistoia to buy a new phone - only to find out that the shop didn't have the one we wanted, despite their website having said they did (I guess we momentarily forgot we were in Italy...), and the preparation for the arrival of guests tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we welcome our great friends Allison and Q for a week - we're really looking forward to it, and so far, the forecast for the week ahead looks great, so hopefully it'll be a decent week of cycling for Q and a week of working on the terraces in the sunshine for the rest of us, not forgetting plenty of Aperol spritz, wine, good food, great company and relaxation. Can't wait!