Surviving in a wife-less world.

Monday was a slow day and after a dog walk I put the fresh linen on the bed in the apartment and laid out the towels ready for our guests to arrive from Germany later that day.

I have to be honest, writing this part of the blog over a week later I can't remember in the slightest what else I got up to on this particular day, I've checked my phone for photos and my messages back and forth from friends and Helen for the day and can glean nothing from anywhere as to what I did, it almost seems I ceased to exist for the time between lunch and going to Vellano for dinner with Dave and Sarah and their guests so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with that...there's plenty more to come though.

I met Dave and Sarah at Manero's in Vellano for dinner, it was Monday night and I was first to arrive and walked in on the chef having dinner with three friends, so sat myself down in front of TV until an Aperol Spritz arrived for me.

It wasn't long until the rest of the gang arrived and we moved into the dining room for the usual feast of antipasti, pasta and grilled meats with side orders abound.

As we left we crossed a couple of locals on their way in for a drink, It seemed I hadn't received the email with the dress code.

Apparently Monday is Grey Hoody night at Ristorante Manero..

Tuesday was a lovely clear and fresh day so I decided to start the day with a brisk walk along the track that starts near San Quirico, a track that winds up the hill for almost 5km before arriving at a refuge.

We have avoided this tracks for months now and particularly in summer as it is very popular with mountain bikers, not one of Reggie's favourites but figured it now being October we could give it a try...what I hadn't banked on was the volume of Mushroom pickers lurking in the woods, there must have been a car parked on the side of the track every 200 metres, after passing the 12th car and more still passing us on the way down after picking I decided it best to turn back, soon after which Reggie found one picker deep in the woods barking at him until I could call him back, I can only imagine the look on the person's face...from shock and fear to annoyance that their secret spot might have been found.

San Quirico looking splendid in the Autumn sun.

After getting home and a bit of lunch I went to pick some veg down in the garden so that I could take it to Amanda for sale in her shop.

Peppers and Aubergine still cropping well into October.

It was only the second time this year we had taken more than Amanda felt she could sell so I headed home with a few spares to make a start on the homework Samantha gave me to leave with, there was more of it than I realised and before I knew it, hours later most of the afternoon had vanished.

More than two hours spent doing homework..Samantha was very apologetic when she realised.

Wednesday started with the usual Johnny lesson but in an unusual fashion it this week it was only Johnny and me, Helen obviously still being in Denver and Dave and Sarah having guests until later that day.

After initial concern of having nobody to hide behind we had a great lesson which ended up being conversationally based in which I felt like I'd learnt some really helpful stuff and the fact it was just me and that I was trying to converse it highlighted my weak areas, really useful so that I can now try and concentrate a little more on that outside of group lessons with Samantha.

After lunch I spent the afternoon down in the neglected veg garden making a start on tidying and the always present activity of weeding.

Except for one bed of brassicas the garden is starting to wind down for the year, the last few tomatoes can be picked soon as can the last peppers and aubergines, after weeding all the beds and removing the spent plants we will need to mulch with some form of material as is the no-dig method of gardening, to keep smother the weeds,  nourish and condition the soil and stop any rainfall compacting the soil and leaching away useful nutrients, also leaving in tact the network of

Mycorrhizal fungi that should hopefully be now building beneath the soil.

Sprouts seem happy on the right, as do the other younger brassicas planted at the end of summer.

After a sweaty few hours amongst the black fabric of the garden I retired indoors to shower and after dinner I spent a couple of joyous hours catching up on the American football highlights from the first three weeks of the season that I realised the BBC had acquired this year...thank you iPlayer.

Thursday again started with a dog walk but yet again I have a blank in terms of what I did for the gap after the walk and before Samantha arriving, I'm sure it was something productive but I couldn't tell for a moment what, you're just going to have to take my word for it and be thankful the blog is a little shorter.

Samantha arrived at two for our lesson, again it was one on one and again I was nervous of the situation but having a heap of homework to check through first I soon eased into it finishing by translating a story about a wounded dolphin (which turned out to be a dead dolphin by the end) and answering multiple choice questions to assess comprehension, this took us up to the end of the lesson, another very fruitful and useful one but next week will be back to normal.

After Samantha left I changed into dirty farm clothes and took the tractor up the newly cleared donkey track to start cutting things down and moving fallen trees to the quarry for seasoning for next winter.

Two new chopping blocks off to the quarry!

More wood for winter 2017

After a very enjoyable afternoons work in pleasant Autumn weather I headed indoors to have an hour with Reggie before abandoning him for the evening to go for dinner with Paul, Kathy and their guest Simon at an Agriturismo that I'd up until now only seen signs for and heard about.

The place was very Italian and unfussy, by that I mean a TV in the corner and overly bright lighting but it was comfortable nonetheless and we sat down to a table already adorned with wine, salumi and bread, an excellent start.

I'd been told by Paul and Kathy the menu never changes and for that reason there is no physical menu, shortly after starting the cured meats a plate of crostini with warm chicken liver pate arrived.

This was followed by mushroom tagliatelle which in turn was followed by a ravioli with ragu.

For main course we had thinly sliced roasted beef with a side of white beans, followed by roast chicken and rabbit with chips, followed by wild boar stew with fried porcini mushrooms!!

It didn't end there, we each got a chunk of their own cheese, a combination of goat and sheeps milk made at the farm, followed by a small portion of cake with coffee and finished with the obligatory limoncello, all for €25 per head...staggering..or should I say rolling out of there before midnight to head home.

Friday I took Reggie for a walk before depositing him at the house so that I could do the food shopping in town as was my normal routine.

After that and a bit of lunch I headed up the donkey track again but this time with the wood chipper attached..it was time to really put the chipper through its paces.

There were a few piles like this to chip my way through.

Chipper did an admirable job...as did the sure-footed tractor

I chipped my way all down the track.

The chipping took me the rest of the day before which I showered and changed before heading back down to Pescia for dinner at the Phillips household, people seem to assume Men alone cannot feed themselves but I wasn't about to argue.

Saturday I decided to take Reggie somewhere a little different for a good lengthy walk so headed right up to the top of the valley and to Stiappa having identified an as yet untried track that goes into the woods from the village.

Having suffered a whiny Reggie in my ear the entire way I found the roads littered with cars, so many there was nowhere to park, scuppered yet again by mushroom hunters? Wasn't sure but I didn't want to try walking the dog in the area even if I could find a spot to leave our car, so poor Reggie had to endure a descent down the other side of the valley before I decided to try a track we hadn't used for a while which headed up towards San Quirico from an old abandoned mill at the roadside.

It wasn't long after crossing the bridge to the mill that a couple of mountain bikers came at us from the hill we were about to ascend, shouting as they passed that more were coming...it wasn't going to be a good day for doggie walks it seemed but we clambered around in the woods the other side of the river trying to find a path to Aramo instead which gave Reggie enough of a leg stretch for us to turn back and head home for lunch.

Stage three of the weeks work was to now swap the chipper for the box and go and collect the chippings and shreddings so that could go to the compost piles.

Off to the compost bays with you!

With that done it was off to Vellano for dinner with David, Sarah and Donatella, tonight though it was Chinese on the menu, Szechuan to be more precise using the second of Sarah's spice box deliveries.

We have not yet had a chinese style curry from the Spicery but it was very good, as always it felt authentic when compared to what you get in the U.K. lots of the dishes had viniger in to give the sour part of the sweet and sour combo typical of food from the Szechuan region, the main two dishes were a noodle dish with tahini and peanut and Aubergine in a thick, dark sticky sweet and sour sauce.

Sunday was a slow start and I allowed myself something of a lie in but rose to take Reggie for a walk during which we encountered no foragers but I did have an epic boot failure which cut the walk a little shorter than planned.

Severe boot failure! 

Walk done it was compost time...after fixing the chute to a more permanent position I set about shovelling all the material down to the bins below.

Chip chute fixed in place so it's no longer a moving target!

Time to build the pile!

SO one full bay at last...three to go.

At four in the afternoon Paul and Kathy picked me up to head to the chestnut festival in vellano.

The festival had been going for a couple of hours by now so we had to park some distance from the village and walk in from there, during which the lovely afternoon started to turn decidedly wet and by the time we arrived to but donuts from Donatella, David and Sarah who were selling them at the Circolo it was heavy rain indeed.

After about quarter of an hour and a brief reprieve in the weather we headed into the village to look around the mining museum but it was clear that everyone with a stall was giving up on the festival for the day so after leaving the museum we headed straight back to the car and were Pescia bound.

There was a street food festival on which had previously been rained off also so we were interested to see what was on offer...the answer we soon found was not very much, we guessed some had packed up early also because of the rain that day.

We headed instead to 'last chance motel' in the form of a beer festival in a restaurant tucked away off a little Piazza, we were too early but the setting up looked encouraging so we headed to trusty old Bar Pulter for an hour for a couple of drinks before heading back to the festival.

As the picture bleow shows...third time lucky! My first ever real pretzel which are a huge improvement over the snack type pretzels and a huge lump of pork on the bone, washed down with a couple of red German beers before heading home for a relatively early night.

German beer festival in Pescia and my first REAL pretzel.

With the week behind me and another starting I went out to fix a water supply problem in Vellano with David during the morning and after replacing a leaky t-fitting and using some magic mortar that sets in running water it seems that we may have finally fixed this ongoing issue once and for all.

So much water now it's back flowing.

If you need mortar to set under water then you need MasterSeal 590!

The rest of the time between lunch time and leaving for the airport to collect Helen on Tuesday afternoon I busied myself cleaning the house top to bottom and doing laundry and linen changes as a little surprise for when she got back.

After collecting a tired wife from the airport we went home for dinner, doggie cuddles and the first fire of the season.

First of the season but one of the last in this old wood burner.

Mommy cuddles!