The regular downpours and warmer weather means that the surrounding greenery is growing at breakneck speed and our 'monthly' grass cut is needing to happen every three weeks - no small consideration when it takes 16-18 hours of strimming to cut everything each time.
It was just before our next guests arrived that we finished the recent cutting so all was looking as good as it could for when they arrived, although, it being their third visit to us we didn't feel the pressure that we might with first-timers descending upon us - another benefit of having repeat guests. It was great to see Colin and Lisa again and over the course of their stay we spent some enjoyable time sharing a couple of drinks with them of an evening, catching up on life since their last visit.
The weather suddenly switched into a rare settled and hot spell the day Colin and Lisa arrived, which was timely not only for them but also for the many events that were planned in the local area for the coming weekend to coincide with the Festa della Repubblica - the national holiday that commemorates the institutional referendum held in 1946, in which the Italian people were called to the polls to decide on the form of government, following the end of the Second World War and the fall of Fascism - with 12,717,923 votes for a republic and 10,719,284 for the monarchy, the male descendants of the House of Savoy were sent into exile and the Republic was born (thanks Wikipedia).
June 1st heralded the start of the 'Sgranar per i Colli' festival, a relatively new annual event on the local calendar, but one that we were keen to see as it is held at the amazing Villa Bella Vista near Borgo a Buggiano, just a few kilometres away from us.
Ever since we first stumbled across this Villa during the first few months of arriving here (when we took a wrong turn, trying to find Obi for the first time), we have been keen to learn of its history - it's an incredibly ornate and elegant building, not to mention imposing, but no matter who of our local friends we have asked, nobody has seemed to be able to tell us anything of the place - which only serves to deepen the intrigue.
With a busy weekend ahead we decided to head over to have a look around on Friday, opening evening of the event, after doing our supermarket shopping.
Sadly, we learned very little new to add to our existing knowledge of the place - which is that currently it serves as a national centre for the fire service (possible for training?), and that during the earlier part of the Second World War it was used as a hospital for the Germans, later serving the same purpose for the Allied Forces as the final push north was underway.
 |
| Villa Bella Vista. |
 |
| Not a bad view from the Villa. |
 |
| Flower stalls in the entrance hall. |
 |
| Incredibly ornate decoration. |
 |
| Painted ceilings all over. |
 |
| Fire brigade helicopter. |
 |
| Fire brigade amphibious vehicle. |
 |
| View from the "back door". |
After leaving the inside of the Villa and having made a lap of the grounds we sat and enjoyed an artisan ale from one of the stalls operated by a brewery from nearby Vinci while listening to the end of the sound checking for various events that were scheduled to take place over the course of the weekend including a cooking demo, before heading home to enjoy the last part of the evening's sunshine on our newly acquired garden armchairs.
 |
| Double IPA |
 |
| Italian Fresh Hop. |
On Saturday we had arranged to meet our group of friends in Pescia as the annual street food festival (another relatively new event in the local calendar) was taking place in the main Piazza all weekend. We didn't meet until 4pm that afternoon so it gave us time for breakfast in Pescia followed by some work on the terraces, before cleaning up and heading out to sample the delights of this year's offerings.
Arriving mid afternoon meant that we had the square almost to ourselves while the rest of the town were obviously still busy with their post lunch slumbers. This meant we could commandeer a large table right in the centre of the Piazza and take it in turns to make forays to various stalls to taste whatever took out fancy.
We tried all sorts, from South American sandwiches with the 'bread' made from corn, through to fish and chips, and pastrami with sweet mustard sandwiches, washed down with a good selection of craft ales.
 |
| A different type of grill! |
 |
| Street food. |
 |
| Pastrami sandwich. |
After a couple of hours of enjoying the food, with no room for a single morsel more, Helen and I headed into the smaller of the town's two Piazzas, where the Pescia comics and games festival was happening - an event organised and run by our friend Emanuele from the local Circolo in Pietrabuona.
As well as wanting to say hello and show our support to Emanuele, we had arranged to meet Samantha and Mario there, as Mario's son was performing that evening with his newly formed post-punk band. It wasn't really our sort of music, but we were glad to have been there to show our support and to have a chat and catch up with Samantha and Mario (as well as the rest of the family who were also there to lend support).
Sunday was an earlier start than we're used to at the weekend as Helen had arranged a day out with our friend Cristina (who we've met through our English evenings) and her son Alessandro in Florence, and I had offered to taxi them to and from the train station.
By all accounts Helen had a lovely, if somewhat exhausting, day in Florence. Having spent the entire day from 08:30am until 6:30pm conversing in Italian, she came home feeling frazzled not only from the heat (it was a 30C+ day) and from the overworking of the brain, but it was well worth it and she'd really enjoyed herself.
 |
| The Arno from Ponte Vecchio. |
 |
| Views from Forte Belvedere high above the city |
 |
| Cypress trees, olives, and gentle hills. |
 |
| Hills around Florence. |
 |
| You can't beat that skyline! |
 |
| Forte Belvedere. |
While they were in Florence, baking under the hot Tuscan sun, I started on the task of 'sorting out' the first part of the shed behind the house. With so much stuff rammed into it and doors on inadequate hinges I'd been putting off this fairly low-ranking job for many months, but over winter it had jumped up the priority list due to it now housing at least one rodent, which was (or were) beginning to make a bit of a mess.
It wasn't pretty in there once I'd emptied the entire shed compartment, but by that evening I had cleaned it all out, disposed of three dead rodents, put in new shelving, and most importantly closed up all rodent-sized gaps to the outside world and the adjoining shed. One compartment down, two to go.
 |
| One tidy section of shed. |
After Helen had got home, showered and changed, we relaxed with a well earned glass of wine on our garden sofas, and were shortly joined by Colin and Lisa on what was sadly their last night here at 182 - at least for this visit (we hope they will be back)!
Monday morning had in store a trip to the car mechanic as I had finally booked the car in to have its squeaky suspension sorted out, having learned that it was simply a case of new 'boccole' rubber bushings. Colin had very kindly insisted that he follow me into Pescia to give me a lift home again while he left Lisa packing their bags back at the apartment, I accepted and took him for coffee on the way home as small recompense.
That evening was another late night for us with our English evening at the Circolo, once again with a good number of us, including David & Sarah, Paul & Kathy - it's always great to have extra English speakers! This time, though, Helen and I had started our evening at the circolo at the earlier time of 18:00 in order to fit in two hours with three 10/11-year-olds: the daughter of Daniele, the son of Marcello, and one of their friends. Daniele and Marcello have both spoken about how poorly English is taught in schools here, and had expressed an interest in us trying to help their children - so this evening was something of a test to try to understand what level the children are at. Once we'd encouraged them to find their voices they were pretty good, and we had a fun, if somewhat tiring, couple of hours with them before moving onto the adult part of the evening at 8pm.
 |
| English evening in full swing. |
We finally left the Circolo sometime after midnight - possibly not the best foot to get off on at the beginning of a new week, but it was a good evening, and we are benefiting in all sorts of ways from the new friendships and contacts we are making through this venture.
Tuesday brought with it our friend Dave's birthday and we were invited up to Vellano for drinks and nibbles on their patio in the evening. The weather was perfect for it, and we enjoyed a lengthy evening eating a substantial number of nibbles that really equated to dinner. It was nice to have the gang together without the need for tools for a change, all except for Donatella who sadly was otherwise engaged.
The following day we were still on the 'Russian mountain' as they call them here (commonly known in the English language as a roller coaster), of social activities: it was our sixth wedding anniversary, so in a rare fit of extravagance we booked a table for dinner, just the two of us. It's possible that the last time we ate out alone together was exactly 12 months prior, or at least so long ago that I cannot remember, and so it was that after digging out some suitable attire we headed over to Montecatini and to the restaurant called 'Fishing Lab' for the second time, having gone there recently as guests of my mum and Yvonne.
 |
| Anniversary dinner! |
On Thursday I had arranged to collect some more olive trees from the agricultural school in Pescia. Paul and Kathy wanted a handful of new trees, and we still had space for more after planting the 21 we bought back in April, so having arranged with Luca during the English evening to go and find him at the school, Paul and I headed over to see him. We found Luca working on the irrigation tanks beneath an 80-year-old lime (Tilia, not citrus) tree that was in full flower. The smell was out of this world!
 |
| Lime tree in flower, heavenly scent. |
Paul and I loaded up 14 olive trees and then headed across the school to find Andrea, the teacher at the school that Luca had suggested we visit to see if he could help us identify a worrying problem David and Sarah have with their olive trees this spring.
 |
| Poorly olive tree. |
 |
| More poorly olive. |
The big worry was that the olive trees might have succumbed to a deadly bacterial disease known as Xylella fastidiosa, that which is currently tearing through and destroying ancient olive groves in the south of Italy as well as parts of Spain and Southern France.
There is currently no treatment for this enormous problem, although many seems to working on it. The last thing I read on the matter was a very controversial plan to eliminate a band of trees from coast to coast north of Puglia to act as a kind of 'fire break' to stop the spread, but this was not well accepted (to say the least) as to do so would involve destroying a huge number of acres of currently healthy and ancient trees.
Anyway, fearing the worst, Paul and I headed across the school grounds to find said "Prof", as the kids called him, who had his class under the shade of a large tree discussing something.
He soon abandoned his class in favour us, clearly happy to have someone interested listen to him. After looking through the photos on my phone, he decided we needed to head to his lab - which we did, with the entire class in tow.
We then spent about 45 minutes with him and his laptop in his lab while the kids all amused themselves with their smartphones. Paul and I felt guilty for having seemingly disrupted an entire lesson for the students, but Prof didn't care - he said he'd bought them all focaccia a little while ago and therefore they didn't want to do anything on the account of their full stomachs!
We were shown some branches that had recently been pruned by the students at the school, which had suffered the same rate as the trees up in Vellano. This finally secured us a diagnosis of too much water and cold, together causing a fungal fancier type infection to open the tree bark and allow in a bacterial infection of another sort that was killing the branches.
The simple solution, we were told, is to spray the trees with copper spray to stop any further bacteria entering - but to do so only once the fruit has set, otherwise the copper will kill the flowers and with it any chance of fruit.
We finally walked away with a few website addresses where we could monitor agricultural diseases and their spread in Italy, as well as sign up for SMS alerts should we find the correct link on the site and a link to a PDF created by the University of Venice on the topic of 'fitoalimurgia' - in short, the foraging of edible plants, not to mention the personal mobile number of the Prof for any future agriculture-related questions!
And so the week ended with the prospect of a good weekend of weather ahead, and the opportunity to get some work done around the place.
As mentioned at the top of this post the grass had been rampant, meaning that the first set of terraces to have been cut last time around (a week ahead of the rest) were now at their third week post-cutting and needed cutting again... so together we spent an afternoon doing just that.
Otherwise the weekend was taken up with various tidying jobs, Helen down in the veg garden getting on top of the weeds while I tidied in the immediate vicinity of the house, determined to get on top of the two grapevines growing against the wall of the lawn which had already grown to the length of almost four metres since spring started and were now looking quite messy.
On Saturday afternoon we had a mini road trip with David and Sarah: after putting a post on the local sell/swap/exchange Facebook page I had managed to procure, for free, five large plastic barrels to use as water butts for both us and David and Sarah, so a road trip was called for to go and collect them (in convoy, of course, as two barrels was the most we could expect to squeeze into a Panda!).
After some skilful navigating form my co-pilot, we found Luigi at his home in Montopoli in Val d'Arno (about 35km south of us) and after a brief chat we loaded up the swag and headed back home with enough time for a quick drink to celebrate on the way home.
On Saturday evening we headed down into Pescia for dinner with Samantha and Mario at their house. It was a lovely relaxed evening, and despite Samantha saying she was only going to put out a table of cold food so that we could relax, she had cooked huge fillets of salmon and roasted potatoes too! We left a little after midnight feeling stuffed but happy to have found such lovely and patient friends to pass the occasional evening with.
 |
| The new garden furniture is a hit with Reggie. |
 |
| The mushroom log watering system seems to work. |
 |
| Giant mushroom on the drive: day 1... |
 |
| ...day 2 |
 |
| ...day 3 |
No comments:
Post a Comment