The weather this week has been an exact replay each day: very cool and fresh first thing in the morning (so Helen tells me), warming slowly to 20-22 degrees with bright blue skies and sunshine in the middle of the day, then cooling slowly until we lose the sun at around 4.10pm, at which point the temperature drops and we have another hour of cooler daylight working hours. Today was no different.
After breakfast, Helen went to the office for a morning's work, while Noah and I started by going back to Frateschi's for one more drainage channel and grill, some bags of pre-mixed bagged concrete, and a large bucket to mix in.
Before hitting the builder's merchant though, went out to the Metano station to fill up on fuel first as we had been getting rather low, but we were soon back at the builder's yard where it was all happening at the usual pace. Paulo told me to help myself to what I needed and pay afterwards, so Noah and I drove around filling the car up then went in to pay before heading home.
By the time we got home it was almost time for our mid-morning coffee break, so we had an early coffee before getting stuck into digging. We filled the wheel barrow full of tools, dropped the concrete channels along the drive in the car, and left the car 'roadside' of the first channel so that we wouldn't have to drive over it and damage the setting concrete.
I've mentioned before that the name of our nearest village, 'Pietrabuona', translates into 'good stone', I can now tell you that the person who named it such had obviously never tried digging into the soil! We dug most of the channel out quite easily, but one end was full of very hard stone - and it took us about an hour to break it up and remove it using a pick axe and a sledgehammer.
Once we were happy that the three lengths of channel sat happily in the gulley we had dug, allowing room for concrete all around, it was onto mixing and barrowing duties. Fortunately, I had decided that we should do the nearest one to the house first, so it wasn't too long a walk. Each time, we mixed a 25kg bag of concrete, put the bucket in the barrow and pushed it up hill to the 'site'. It took six bags of concrete to bed in three channels - more than I had hoped, but I didn't want to scrimp on this and have to re-do the job later, so I'm hoping this will be enough now.
By the time we'd cleaned up and packed away after having set the one channel, it was time for Noah to clock out. Having seen that Helen was up on the terraces raking more piles of tree waste down towards the drive, I decided to grab the old strimmer and give it a test drive by giving the newly uncovered terraces their first going over with a metal blade before switching to cord.
An hour later, daylight was fading fast and I needed to get some more concrete before the morning if we were to have any chance of putting in two further drainage channels tomorrow - wet weather is forecast from Monday onwards, so time is critical now.
I left Helen raking in the dimming light and headed off down to Frateschi's, only to realise that I'd left my wallet at home! A quick about turn and a reverse down two thirds of the drive later, I ran into the house, grabbed my wallet and went back out. Fratsechi's was nice and quiet now, so I loaded up and paid without delay before making a quick stop at Amanda's for yet more bread, some parmesan and a salami.
I decided to reverse down the drive again to make the unloading of the ten bags of concrete easier in the morning - but this time it was dark and the only illumination was that of the reversing light! It was a bit of a slow process, and the clutch was less than happy about getting up the bumpy entrance to the drive with all the extra weight in the rear, but I got there in the end.
As I walked towards the house, I saw Helen approaching the geese with a bag of lettuce, so I quickly joined her for the daily herd. They almost went in of their own accord this evening, but when Helen made to shut the door they shot out again, all the while with the gander having a good old hiss at us.
I got involved with my usual herding poles and we quickly got them in. This time, even the goose (female) helped by giving the naughty gander a peck on the back to nudge him inside, much to Helen's amusement.
Time now to light another little fire and to heat some home-made ragu for pasta this evening - we'd promised Noah some meat would appear in some form at some point, so it's time to make good on our promise!
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