Is 'real' summer on the horizon?

Last week was another busy one here at numero 182 (at this time of year, I'm not sure that it ever isn't busy).

With our apartment guests still with us until the middle of the week, Stuart helped them out on Monday by taking them to a bicycle hire shop in Pieve a Nievole on the other side of Montecatini. We are surprised not to have found anywhere closer by that offers cycle hire (that's not saying that there isn't anywhere closer by, of course, just nowhere that advertises itself well enough for us to have found it!). We do offer our own road bikes (or mountain bikes) for guests to hire when they are here, but of course their suitability depends on how similar in height our guests are to us, and in this case, with Lisa being petite and me being taller than average, and Stuart also being taller than Colin, that just wasn't going to work.

I'm pleased to say that despite some torrential rain at times (interspersed with lovely warm sunshine), our guests made the most of their two-day bike hire and tackled all the hills in our valley, managing to get around all 10 of the dieci castella and enjoying both the cycling and the views.

Our bike rack hadn't seen any action in a while!

As a thank you for helping them out with a few things during their stay, Colin and Lisa very generously offered to take us out for dinner on Monday evening - and of course we said yes! We had a good meal and a very enjoyable evening at Ristorante Da Carla in Sorana - another opportunity to spend time chatting with them both, feeling lucky to have yet another set of really lovely apartment guests that we've genuinely very much enjoyed meeting and getting to know.

Lisa and Colin left us on Wednesday morning - shortly before the water in our pipes dried up. Again. To be fair, it had been a whole six months since we last had problems with our water supply, so perhaps it was too much to expect things to continue to flow problem-free...

Thankfully, we were without water for only around 5.5 hours this time - and judging by the amount of shouting and general noise going on in the woods to the side of the house, we think that some work must have been going on on the supply pipe. Theoretically, when work is going on, we should be notified of any outages, and the work should at least be listed on the water company's website - neither of these things had happened, which left us in a state of uncertainty, but thankfully when the noises and shouting abated at around 5.30pm, so the water returned to the pipes. Relief all round!

Thinking that we may be facing an undetermined period without water, Stuart went to fill up some canisters from the local fountain. It seems that these plastic water canisters are not resistant to UV rays - this is what happens if you leave one out in the sun for too long!

On Wednesday and Thursday, Stuart constructed our long-awaited pergola - the pergola for which we had to have permission to build from the superintendent in Florence. He bought chestnut poles from an agraria near Chiesina Uzzanese, and almost lost them (and possibly the car as well) when on the way home they decided they didn't like being on the roof rack and as as he took a corner near home the whole lot slipped from the roof to the side of the car:

Thankfully he was almost home at this point, and thankfully Stuart, the beams and the car all made it home in one piece - without even a mark on the car (which is more than can be said for later in the week, but more about that in a minute).

Following a technique he'd seen on the internet, Stuart dug holes for the poles, concreted in a section of leftover soil stack pipe into each, then once that was dry, put a couple of inches of gravel inside each pipe, before putting the posts in place. The theory is that the gravel in the bottom of the pipes should allow water to drain away easily, and when the poles eventually need replacing, they will be easy to remove without having to dig out all the concrete. To finish the job, he will fill the pipe with mortar in order to stabilise the poles.

Reggie shows exactly where he would like the pergola to be.

Waste pipe concreted into hole.

Waste pipes awaiting poles.

Poles...

Pergola!

And now the pergola is built, Reggie sits on the patio...

For the time being, the roof of the pergola is covered with some old olive netting - we are trying to decide whether we will try to grow something over the roof or whether we want a solid, water-proof covering.

So anyway, back to the car. Whereas it survived the chestnut pole exodus of Wednesday unscathed, the same could not be said for the strimming incident of Thursday. On Thursday morning, Stuart and David headed up to Lanciole to do a much needed morning of strimming at the house up there that Stuart helps out with. When they came back, the poor car was somewhat worse for wear. While strimming in the car parking area, a piece of gravel had been kicked up by the strimmer, hit the car and shattered the back window:

A sorry state.

I suppose you could hardly blame the car for subsequently having had two more episodes of not starting in the days that followed. Thankfully, on one occasion we were just leaving Donatella's house and David and I were able to push the car a short distance to start it off on a roll down the slope of her drive so that Stuart could bump start it. On the second occasion, we were just leaving Mara and Franco's house and we had to ask Franco to tow the car backwards up their short driveway so that Stuart could roll it down and bump start it again. Needless to say, the tow rope doesn't leave the car these days!

Together with David, we spent a lovely day on Friday at Donatella's, doing our best to try and help her out with a few things around the place in memory of Alex, the great friend we lost a year ago, and hopefully giving her some support and friendship and even laughter on a difficult day. Donatella had made us a delicious lunch, after which we set to with our tools, David mowing grass and cutting trees, me cutting hedges and cutting back overgrown acacia and brambles, Stuart putting up a beautiful shelf that Alex had made but had never got around to putting up in the kitchen, and cutting trees. By the time we finished it appeared as if we'd left more mess than anything - in the form of hedge clippings and logged wood - but hopefully what we'd done was some help!

We'd intended to dedicate Saturday to our own garden, but we spent less time in the garden than planned as we ended up going over to our friends Mara and Franco's to give them some advice about worms.. and ended up staying for lunch and most of the afternoon. Mara has just got herself a wormery for composting and, as we have had one for a little while (we are by no means experts!) she had asked for some advice. Mara's wormery is ingeniously made from a very standard set of plastic drawers, with a tap put in the bottom of the bottom drawer, and holes drilled in the bottom of all the drawers above it, allowing the worms to move between the levels and creating exactly the same sort of environment as our purpose-built wormery.

After some worm-talk, and showing us the stall that Franco is in the process of building for the two 'nano' sheep they are soon to acquire, Mara cooked us a delicious lunch and we spent a leisurely few hours eating, drinking and talking with them both - flexing our (rather weak) Italian muscles as Franco insisted we stick to Italian (quite rightly!), and even gave us a mini-lesson himself (the more lessons the better!).

We are so pleased to have met Mara and Franco - not only are they warm, generous and friendly people, but they are also interested in the same things as we are and an absolute fount of knowledge. One of the many interesting topics we talked about was the infestation currently affecting the sweet chestnut trees in the area.

When out and about on our walks we'd noticed a large number of chestnut trees with strange swellings in their leaves and had wondered what that was all about. It turns out that, for several years, the chestnut trees in the area have suffered with an infestation of a Chinese gall wasp. The chestnut crop for the last few years has been very poor indeed, and in an area in which sweet chestnut has such historical, economic and cultural importance, this is quite a crisis.

Chestnut infected with gall wasp.

We had heard that last year's harvest had been an improvement on the previous few years and Franco explained that last year, for the first time, a form of biological warfare had been attempted with the introduction of the Torymus wasp - a parasitic wasp that attacks the problem-causing gall wasp. Only a small number of these parasitic wasps were introduced, and only in a very small area, because it's quite a costly process and funding only comes from apiculture groups (as chestnut flowers are important for bees), hunting groups (as wild boar feed on chestnuts), artisans who make chestnut flour and other chestnut products, and a few environmentalists. Time will tell how successful the introduction of Torymus has been as it is likely to take up to ten years for the full benefit to be seen, but hopefully it will be a success story.

We did eventually make it to our vegetable garden - which is now protected by an all-new uprated fence energizer: 8000v should keep our potatoes safe from thieving creatures now we're mains powered!

Hopefully it works for more species than shown on the box...

We harvested our garlic this weekend - our first attempt at growing it, and we seem to have a good crop. As long as we can get them dried properly, they should keep us going for a long while.

Garlic harvest.

Once this is dried it should be enough to keep us going for a few months.

Zucchini, nasturtiums, tomatoes, artichokes all doing well.

Bean corridor.

After putting in some hard graft in the garden on Sunday, we finished the weekend with what felt like a well earned pizza at the Circolo in Vellano with David and Donatella.

The forecast for the week ahead finally looks as if some more settled weather might be coming our way - and a sustained rise in temperature with it. We've had some lovely weather intermittently in recent weeks, it just hasn't really stayed around for very long, and this has been the wettest and windiest spring in the area for a long time, so some warm, dry, settled weather will be welcomed by many people - we'll wait and see how long it is before we all start complaining about the heat!