Racing through winter and a spring-like day

Yesterday was the final day of Dave, Sarah and Ollie's holiday here with us - a sad day for all. We've had such a lovely time catching up with them and really enjoyed their visit, but duty calls us all and they had a flight to catch in the afternoon. We therefore made no plans for the day - just a leisurely-paced morning with as much of a lie-in as Ollie and the animals would allow.

When the Wattses did appear upstairs, the sun came with them, so Helen put her office work on hold for an hour so that we could all sit outside on the warm terrace to drink coffee while Ollie amused himself.

It wasn't long before the church bells in the village opposite struck noon, so we retired indoors for lunch - more or less a re-run of last night's dinner: bread; Tuscan blood salami (mallegato); prosciutto; cheeses with honey (yes, we've finally discovered the incredible honey we had at our wedding which tastes amazing with cheese!); lentil, pepper and roasted garlic dip; marinated garlic cloves and a couple of pâtés.

Noon soon turned into 1pm, which meant it was time to start loading the car. I went down to the apartment to help with the bags only to find that Dave and Sarah had cleaned the place for us, leaving it spotless, rather than relax on their final day (thank you so much guys!).

We said goodbye to Helen, who stayed at home with Reggie and her office work, while we drove off in the direction if Pisa.

I took the Wattses into the terminal to make sure all was well and sat with them for a quick coffee to fuel my drive home before waving goodbye and returning home for a quiet evening in front of the fire.

This morning, our weekend started with a trip to the two supermarkets with Sue - who is still waiting for car parts and thus still without transport. We picked her up at 9am, dashed around both Lidl and Esselunga before they got too busy, stopped off at the hardware shop for Sue to swap her empty gas bottle for a full one, and by 10.45am we were drinking coffee in the little cafe in the San Francesco quarter. Two cappuccinos and a really good chat later, we dropped Sue home and headed up the valley to unload our shopping before loading Reggie into the car and doing a return trip into Pescia for his daily walk.

We umm'ed and ahh'ed about where to take Reggie for today's walk, but decided that if we went back into Pescia and walked him by the river, we would be heading back to the car just about at the time the fruit and veg market was ending - meaning that we could collect a few more plastic fruit crates for our growing collection (they usually just get collected by the council's waste lorries at the end of the market). This was the first time we've actually ventured into the fruit and veg market since being here, and we wished we hadn't left it so long - the Piazza del Grano was full of stalls selling amazing looking produce, beautiful artichokes, enormous apples, and the smell of oranges filled the air! We made a pact there and then to come back and buy fresh produce from the market very soon.

The fruit and veg market in Piazza del Grano.

After collecting seven more free crates (which we are currently using as a tidier way to take & store firewood in the house, but will also use for planting in - thanks to Sue for both tips!), we headed home again in what was now a ridiculously warm day - while walking the dog Helen even had to stop twice to remove layers of clothes, it must have been around 20C and we couldn't wait to get home and make a start on some work in the beautiful spring-like weather.

Reggie enjoying the sunshine (and the ball donated to him by the Wattses).

Spring?!

After a quick sandwich each, we headed out with chainsaw and hedge trimmers onto the lower terraces with the bit between our teeth.

Beautiful day for a bit of power tool-ing.

I spent an hour cutting up more of the felled oak into movable sized logs before realising that the chain on the saw had just reached the point where it needs sharpening, so I moved the cut logs to the wood pile ready for splitting and swapped the chainsaw for the back pack brush cutter to join Helen on the terrace clearing.

Cut logs.

As I returned, I found that Helen had by now uncovered the previous owners' vegetable garden on what is now the second terrace beneath the house - a very wide terrace, it turns out. As well as the vegetable garden was all manner of associated rubbish - two garden forks (both broken), a rake, bag of tools and hand trowels, old raised beds and what looks like an old electric fence. As she battled deeper into the undergrowth, I started strimming the terrace above it - the one that had the septic tank sunk into it.

Buckets, crates, a rake, garden forks (broken), hand trowels, watering can rose, loppers, hose pipe connectors... 

An hour later, I had strimmed my way along the septic-tank-terrace and found a place to drop down onto the lower terrace and then cut my way back towards Helen. From where we'd cleared we could see at least another three or four terraces below -  really exciting progress for an afternoon's work, it doesn't show quite so well on photos... yet - but once we've moved the rest of the felled oak tree and cleared around that, it should start to look amazing down in front of the house. Quite where the terracing finishes down there we still have no idea - we guess there may be a total of eight to ten terraces, but until we've cleared the huge swathe of bramble covering it all we we can only guess.

Here, you can just see me on the terrace that Helen has just cleared - once the felled oak has gone you will be able to see the terrace in its full glory.

More and more old raised beds uncovered (as well as a broken garden fork).

At the end of the terrace.

A brand new (to us, that is) terrace!

As we both ran out of fuel in our respective power tools, we decided to called it day. We had both thought how good and quiet Reggie had been all afternoon while we'd been working on the terraces - on going back up to the house, we realised why: he had kept himself busy shredding an empty milk carton that he'd pulled from the recycling bag - which that was now in tiny shreds and littering the patio.

Reggie's afternoon's handiwork.

After clearing up the aftermath of Reggie's destructive afternoon, we put the geese away, lured the cats inside and retired indoors to light the fire before the temperature dropped too much.

Tomorrow promises to be another sunny day and with no shopping to do, we plan to put in another solid few hours of work to see what else we can discover. Watch this space!