First port of call was a return visit to the agricultural merchant 'Sorini' to get that new pair of welly boots I talked of getting recently as after another walk along the river in my current pair last week and getting home with sodden feet I decided it was time to retire them and get a new pair.
It was a quick exchange, trying on both a 43 and a 44 and making sure I had winter sock space, I left with the 43's very pleased that these were yet another acquisition not only from a local store but that that they were also made within the bounds of the country within which we live, i'm still amazed at how much is still manufactured over here unlike back in England where a few years back I quickly gave up the idea of producing a website to list items made in England (for people wanting to not only reduce the carbon footprint of what they buy but to try and keep their money in their own economy) because I could find very little that was now manufactured in the U.K. other than some plastic buckets at that time sold in Wickes!
So, with wellies on board I dashed down the road to fill up the car as I was now just a stones throw away after which I made an about turn and headed back towards Pescia stopping at the garden centre to see if they had any garlic left for planting as the last bunch we bought but hadn't quite got around to planting had already gone soft and mouldy! I don't think they enjoyed living with the dehumidifier in the utility room
Luckily they did, although not many showing just how late it now is for planting garlic but there was enough for us this year as having been too late to plant any at all last year anything was a bonus.
On a roll and feeling motivated to work outside in the sunshine in the veg garden this afternoon I headed for the other agricultural store we frequent to buy another box of 250 large steel 'staples' used for pinning down the ground control fabric that we have around most of the veg beds, in which we clearly have too few as the winds of late had got underneath a lot of the fabric and unpinned it for us damaging a couple of the remaining artichokes that had survived the heatwave of last year.
With a heavy box of staples in the boot and the time approaching midday I headed home feeling very pleased with my mornings procurement with a plan of an early lunch so that i could get outside without delay to make the most of what little working time I was going to get this week.
After a lunch of egg mayo sandwiches on fresh crusty bread with our own free range eggs Helen went back to work in the office and I headed out onto the lower terraces with the box of staples to carry on pinning the fabric back down and coiling up the irrigation tubing so that we can prepare the veg beds.
It wasn't long before my hoody was off and I was working in a t-shirt for the afternoon and I plodded away draping lengths of fabric and stapling as I went eventually breaking into a sweat...a sweat in winter..IN A T-SHIRT!
I got to a point mid afternoon where I had pinned all the fabric back down meaning we were back to where we were before winter and had the irrigation coiled up so now we were a baby step forward, any progress at all is good around here some days!
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| Starting to look tidy again! |
Once the garlic was done the daylight was soon starting to dim and the sun was heading earnestly in the direction of the hills opposite promising to disappear behind them in the next hour so I headed off up the terraces behind the house into the olive trees to do a little more pruning until Helen finally emerged from the office looking more than a little disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to see the day out swinging an axe into acacia logs, this was largely my fault for not having cut any more logs from the trunks we had lying on the driveway.
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| Garlic! |
Tuesday was a complete turnaround and the English weather arrived, grey, completely overcast and raining, so it was a day for us both to inhabit the office and while I dove into the heap of paperwork and emails that had been waiting for me since building the desks before christmas Helen did some real work, work that paid money, money that meant we could be here doing what we're doing.
We broke from work for lunch after which we gave the house the usual quick tidy before Samantha arrived for Helen's lesson, I say Helen's lesson but since I have been getting homework from Samantha as well for the last two weeks (i'm still not sure quite how that happened) I've been joining in at the beginning to get my homework checked, eating into Helen's lesson time, not that she seems bothered by my joining in, in fact the opposite this week as she encouraged me to stay and parrticipate for a large chunk of the lesson while we covered pronouns some more, I really wish I'd paid more attention in English at school as i'm finding my complete lack of understanding of grammar something of a hinderance when learning Italian as this new language we're wrestling with is ALL about just that...grammar.
As Samantha was leaving Donatella arrived with a lump of handmade butter for us, not made by her but bought by her for us to try, it comes from a farm north of us in Tuscany near the ski resort about an hour away, let me explain a little more...
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| Lovely artisan butter, amazing on toasted sunflower bread! |
Once we'd taken the butter from Donatella, and Reggie had had chance to put muddy paw prints all over her coat she left along with Samantha and Helen and retired indoors for a little more office work which ended quite late by our standards at some time around seven.
The fire having been lit at lunch for the lesson needed little encouragement to get going again and we settled into dinner and another bit of TV in the form of 'Endeavour' which felt like a real luxury.
Wednesday brought with it yet more rain and another damp reminder of the weather we thought we'd left behind although we soon banished the cold from the house by lighting the fire, not something we normally do on a Wednesday morning as we're normally heading up tot Vellano for our group lesson but we had finally got around to offering to host the lesson this week.
Johnny was the first to arrive having found us without problem and even managed to negotiate our still lumpy entraceway in his Panda.
As I greeted him Dave and Sarah arrived and we walked along the back of the hoouse to see how Reggie was going to be with the new face, at first he didn't notice Johnny as he was too excitied to see Dave and Sarah but when we opened the gate to walk in he went nuts, Reggie style, barking his head off and running around in circles along the fencing refusing to get too close to Johnny.
We all went indoors for coffee and Johnny ignored Reggie as suggested but it didn't stop Reggie barking at him making it all the more difficult to ignore him as it was hard to hear a word of conversation above Reggie and his lungs.
He slowly started to settle approaching for a crafty sniff of our new guest occasionally but then retreating into the garden for a bark, this wasn't going to be easy.
Reggie eventually ended up in the boot of the car with a bone so that we could get down to business, the business of yet more pronouns, it was a slow but very good lesson, and I'm now convinced that if I could get these pronouns fixed in my head it would make a massive difference to my language skills in both constructing sentences and understanding people, more so the latter but for now I'll have to be happy picking my way through tables of pronoun options and labour over the sentences they need to be inserted into until I figure out the right option...is it ci or vi or li or ti or la or lo or gli, I think you can see the problem.
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| Amazing sunflower seed loaf from Sarah. |
The afternoon was spent in the office as the rain hadn't let up, well that was Helen and I spent the afternoon in the office, Reggie spent a large portion of the afternoon letting himself out into the garden and barking into the woods towards the old stone quarry, a part of our land we don't visit often, I have no idea what it was that had annoyed him so much but this was the second day he'd been doing this with no sign of letting up, in fact as I sit here right now he's out doing exactly the same again...in the dark this time, it's a good job we have no real neighbours to speak of.
Thursday was a complete change in weather and by the time I got up at half eight it was clear blue skies, the sunny weather originally forecast for the weekend having got impatient and edged it's way into the tail end of the week.
Helen having finished her usual morning exercise went for a shower after which we ate breakfast and then loaded Reggie into the car for a walk in town choosing for a chicken run walk so that we could take in a couple of the very good cappucini served at Bar Delice near the parking spot.
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| Sunny walk beside the river. |
By the time we got back home it was almost noon so Helen finished packing and we sat down to lunch and all too soon it was time to get into the car to take Helen to the airport for her trip back to England for a whistelstop visit of family and friends.
After a teary goodbye at the airport I left her in the queue for security and left to head home to see what mischief Florence and Reggie had been up to while I was away, but was pleased to see nothing was out of place when I got back and think Reggie had probably been sleeping the entire time I was out.
I had already given up on the idea of squeezing in an hours work outside and instead lit the fire and sat in front of the computer for a while to start typing up the blog for the week, a task I later found was on a to-do list left for me on our bed by my thoughtful wife who was now 1000 miles away in England.
After the majority of the blog was done and the laptop battery died I cooked dinner (vegetable fajitas for one) and then sat in front of the TV to watch a film with Reggie although Reggie slept through most of it, I think he lost track of the plot within the first two minutes so gave up and I have to admit to getting to the end of the film and couldn't explain what was really happning either, it was an old film by David Cronenberg called Naked Lunch from back in 1991, complete madness!
After the madness had ended I headed up to bed to see Florence and get stuck into a book but it wasn't long before lights out as I didn't want to wake up too late tomorrow as the plumber was due to deliver the solar panel!
I awoke around quarter to nine when Florence finally started asking for breakfast, either that or she wanted to go out, either way I jumped to it and she followed me downstairs hopping through the catflap, the noise of which started Reggie complaining to be let out and after charging outside to see if he could see Florence he charged back in for his breakfast.
Before I knew it Anton the plumber had arrived with one rather large solar panel,they look much smaller up on the roofs of houses!
After making a space around the back of the house and helping him move it into place Angleo arrived and together the three of us walked around the house an apartment planning how to run the pipework so that work could start in the next couple of weeks, work that I'm sure Reggie will hate if today's behaviour was anything to go by, he barked almost without stopping to breathe for over an hour until they left, after which he went in for a drink and a lie down.
It was now 11am already so after a quick bowl of cereal I started work on the remainder of the waste pipe work in the hope that I could tick this rather important job off my list today finally, a job that I'd been leaving until Helen had left for England so that she didn't have to endure any more disruptions.
With renewed enthusiasm for the task and knowing all too well that not only after half six today would I not be able to buy any further bits I may need and that more days of rain were due to arrive in the morning I had a short window of opportunity to get the house connected back to the septic tank.
It wasn't long before I had fitted one of the remaining three inspection ports and was feeling very optimistic for the day, even as the church bells chimed midday.
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| A walk in the woods amongst the clouds (earlier in the week). |
After our lovely walk in the dappled sunshine we headed home for lunch after which I headed out to Frateschi to buy the repair joints as well as half a dozen bags of render and some 25mm water pipe that I had decided would be good to run from the rain catchment tanks along next to the waste pipes and out towards the veg garden so that I could then bury it along with the other pipes, this pipe being much more sturdy than the current garden hose would be.
Paolo sent me home with a whole 100m roll of this pipe and told me to bring back whatever I didn't use on Monday or Tuesday and pay him for the amount I had taken, very trusting and much better for me as I can lay the pipe out and cut off exactly what I needed which I did after fitting the last two inspection caps.
So finally with all the inspection caps finally fitted, the mains water for the house re-routed along the same route, a new rigid pipe for the new irrigation system and the electric cable for the security lights all run along side each other I could start work burying the section I needed to and making the place look a little more tidy finally. BIG TICK!
By the time i'd finished and feeling quite filthy after messing with soil pipe all day I headed indoors to light the fire, shower off the days grime and sit down in comfort with a glass of red to finish this very blog post for you all.
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| Did we mention our bee hive arrived this week! |
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| Here come the daffs! |
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| Not wanting to be outdone by the daffs the Iris make a show. |
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