Doing tine on the terraces

Although the last couple of days have been rather out of the ordinary due to exceptional circumstances (rather like having a couple of 'snow days' back in the UK), it was still nice to wake up knowing that it was Saturday today, the start of the weekend. There was no weekend lie-in this morning though, I was up just before 7am feeding the cats, taking Reggie for his morning toilet trip and going to release the geese... AND... collecting our second goose egg! We had started to wonder whether one egg was all we were going to get from them, as it had been four days since the first one arrived, but to be fair, the stormy weather might well have put Mrs Goose off her stride, and it was with almost as much excitement as when I found the first one that I collected this one and took it back inside the house. This time I refrained from running upstairs to disturb Stuart from his slumber though. I figured he would spot it on the kitchen worktop when he got up.

After a shortish exercise session - during which I was joined briefly by little Winry - I went inside to shower and then have breakfast with Stuart, Holly and Zach. We left Zach, Holly and Winry to tidy up the dishes while we headed out for the weekly supermarket trip. We found both Lidl and Esselunga blissfully quiet this morning and were amazed to find that we were leaving the supermarkets behind, fully loaded with shopping, less than an hour after having arrived in town.

We still had errands to run though - our next stop was the garden machinery shop from which we bought the backpack strimmer. Stuart ran into the shop while Reggie and I waited in the car park. He showed the guys in the shop the broken flexible drive shaft and told them he needed a new one. Shortly afterwards he came out of the shop bearing the new drive shaft - mission accomplished.

Next, we headed for Davide's ferramenta shop. We were after a new rake and a new pitch fork so that we could get more hands on deck in the task of the raking the terraces. Davide greeted us with warm handshakes and kisses and asked us if we had fared OK in the storms. When we asked for a rake and a pitch fork, he told us that we would have to come back on Wednesday (it's always Wednesday with Davide!) for a pitch fork - but warned us that it would only have three prongs (or tines - never say that Rom-Coms don't teach you anything, anyone who's watched Pretty Woman more than a couple of times will be able to tell you that the prongs on a fork are called tines), not four. After reassuring Davide that we would be happy with three tines, we left with a new rake and a promise to return on Wednesday for the three-tined fork.

After that we headed in the direction of home - although not before stopping off at Da Nerone, the café next to Frateschi's, for a quick cappuccino.

Once home, we unloaded all of the bags of shopping, quickly checked to make sure Zach and Holly were OK on the terraces, then headed back out again to take Reggie for a walk. We decided to re-visit the quiet track that starts at the quarry just above Vellano, so headed uphill.

As expected, we found quite a few obstacles on the track, with trees and broken branches lying across it in places. Reggie bounded ahead, running under or leaping over the tree trunks and branches and turning back to wait for us slow coaches who had to limbo underneath them.

He had another good old bark at the stream, just as he had done the last time we walked this track, and had a great time sprinting after pine cones that we threw along the track for him.

After a lovely walk, we headed back home to make some lunch for our hard working helpers before pitching in on the terraces ourselves. While our walk had been somewhat chilly, especially in the wind (and we even found a puddle that was still frozen), we found the weather back at the house to be positively scorching. Well, definitely warm and definitely weather for dining al fresco! We therefore called the guys up from the terraces and sat on the patio to enjoy a lunch of delicious soft boiled eggs courtesy of Alex and Donatella's chickens, more bean dip, meats, cheese and bread, and even followed it up with a satisfying cup of coffee.

Lunch all dispatched and cleared away, it was time for us all to head to the terraces. Zach and Holly were assigned the task of burning the piles of bramble and clippings they had spent so long raking - a task they seemed to relish, almost biting Stuart's hands off in eagerness when he suggested they might like to do it. Meanwhile, I headed for terrace no.8 beneath the house with the hedge trimmers to finish off clearing it, and Stuart (once he had replaced the drive shaft) donned the backpack hedge trimmers and tidied up the edges of the upper terraces, uncovering more terracing beneath the car park area.

After a hard afternoon's work (a hard day's work for Zach and Holly), we ended the day with the lower terraces really starting to look pretty good, even if we say so ourselves. The difference Zach and Holly have made by raking up the cut bramble is fantastic, and we're excited to see what it will be like when all the terraces have had the same treatment.

After making sure the cats were safely indoors and packing away our tools, Stuart and I took Reggie for another chance to stretch his legs, walking up the donkey track. We counted 5 enormous pines that have fallen in the woods above our drive, one of which is on our land. Reggie once again enjoyed a run about, although we nearly lost him when he seemed to started digging to Australia! He often sniffs and snorts in the garden and in the woods, but this time he clearly got the scent of something in the ground that was really interesting. He dug and dug, and stuck his nose in the ground, snorting like a pig, and dug and dug some more until we could barely see his head. In the end he did, thankfully, give up on whatever it was he thought he had found, but it remains to be seen if he puts some more work into his tunnel the next time he goes up the track!

After our short walk, we came back to the house to light the fire and prepare for a relaxing evening at the end of a very satisfying Saturday.