Desertification continues

Another week, another blog, and still no rain!!

With our handy new weather station, we can say this for certain...

PLEEEEEEASE rain soon!

As the lack of rain continues to turn everything brown and ever more dusty, the temperatures still keep clambering on up the scale, exacerbating the problems - and in fact the local papers are full of reports of emergency status having been declared in other parts of our region and the towns West of us being without potable water. 

...and the temps keep climbing!

On the plus side, our now plumbed-in solar thermal panel is giving us hot water at temperatures touching 60 degrees, which hopefully should see our electricity bills plummet over the coming months.

Every cloud.....!

For me, Monday, in the main, was a day of work on the built-in wardrobe in the spare room. Mom and her friend Yvonne were due to arrive on Saturday and we needed the room in a habitable state. Having started the project last week, the room was currently far from habitable, let alone presentable.

A kind of 'deconstructed' wardrobe.

The plan was to get the inside of the wardrobe plaster-boarded today, then skimmed on Tuesday with shelves to be fitted Wednesday so that I could put the room back together in time to clean thoroughly at the end of the week.

After a morning in the office, Helen and I ate lunch outside before I went back to the bedroom and Helen went out to cut some of the firewood piled alongside the drive and cut down a couple of elderflowers that were threatening to encroach upon the view from the apartment lawn - they will soon be chipped and composted, being mainly new growth I hope they will be an excellent ingredient in the heap, with a good balance of carbon and nitrogen.

On Monday evening, our guests, Colin and Lisa, joined us for a drink. Having not seen them for three days we were keen to find out what they'd been up to and where they had been, knowing that, despite the heat, they'd been planning a hike or two in the hills between here and Florence.

They had indeed hiked in the heat, once in the countryside around Vinci, and another time in the hills north of Florence. The latter was a walk from a book they had bought with them that promised beautiful views of the city from the peak - apparently the view delivered, but what they hadn't bargained on (and what wasn't mentioned in the book) was the large number of flies that accompanied them up there, which saw them taking a very quick photo and abandoning their picnic in favour of a dash back down the hill.

The following day I was out early to my new job of cleaning the pool and watering the plants at the house in the village before the guests arose. Sadly, the pool cleaning was cut somewhat short that morning by the failure of the pool net.

Whoops!

After getting home and dispatching breakfast in a still cool morning, I headed down to the veg garden to harvest some lettuce before lunch with my sights set on plastering the wardrobe in the afternoon.

With the heat hovering as it has done these last few weeks (almost two months, in fact) at around 34 degrees C, our lunches have been anything but lazy affairs. We eat in the shade of the pergola but even there it feels quite stifling so there's no hanging around and, keen to seek out the shade and relative cool of the house, we're straight back indoors afterwards. This, of course, helps with productivity and I was soon back indoors with a bucket of plaster and trowels.

Putting the plaster on the walls didn't take long at all - maybe half an hour to cover the 12 square metres before cleaning the tools and settling in for the familiar wait for it to dry. Thankfully, with the aforementioned weather, the expected 4-6 hour wait became a two-and-a-half hour wait, meaning I was finished in time to be sociable when we had a visit from David & Sarah and Julie, David's sister-in-law, and her daughter Sophie.

They were of course greeted by the usual mouthful of noise from our Reggie until we all sat down, at which point he settled and allowed us to chat for an hour or so on the patio before they headed up the valley for dinner.

The next morning, we waved our guests Colin and Lisa off, who had reached the end of their holiday and were heading back home to the cooler climes of Scotland but with a promise of a return visit in the not too distant future - we do hope they come again.

After coffee, I took Reggie out for a walk and headed down to the small river that borders our land to the East. It's a tricky descent to the river bed itself - for me at least, for Reggie on four legs it seems only a little more tricky than flat ground and he bounded around and splashed in the cool mountain water while I scrambled my way down.

I spent over half an hour walking up and down the river bed that morning until I heard Reggie barking way up above me on the opposite bank. I could only imagine what he'd found and there was absolutely no way of me reaching him where he'd gone, so I had to resort to shouting and calling him while all sorts of images went through my head of him having found wolves or wild boar to fight with (I didn't tell Helen this bit).

Thankfully, after the second call I heard rustling and all of a sudden he appeared from behind me... it was time to move on and away from whatever it was he had found.

Blurry dog in a wet river.

Despite no rain for two months it's still wet.

I found a crayfish in this little pool.

There's quite a lot of firewood lying around.

Once home, and with his tongue a full stretch at the corner of his mouth, it seemed a fitting time to put his new cool vest on him. David and Sarah had brought it round last night, after having acted as courier for us, bringing it back from the UK. Last night Reggie had eyed it with extreme suspicion and, with new people in the mix, it hadn't seemed like the best time to try it out. The vest is very lightweight and, after it has been soaked in cold water then gently wrung out, really does feel remarkably cold to the touch. Despite its cooling properties, Reggie clearly isn't a huge fan (perhaps it's the colour, or the fact he looks like a member of a girls' netball team when wearing it) and once it was on he sulked and went off to hide in a hole he'd dug in the gravel beneath the pergola.

Cool, but not cool.

"Really not cool, Dad."

All of this had happened before 9:30 am that morning (amazing what you can get done when you rise early!), at which point Johnny arrived for our Italian lesson, which once again was on the dreaded and confusing conguintivo.

After the brain-frazzling lesson and an early lunch, I went out to run a few errands before coming home to clean the apartment so that we knew that all that would be needed would be to hoover the floors and put the fresh linen in before Yvonne arrived at the weekend.

Before we knew it, the end of the week was upon us - I made another pool-cleaning/plant watering trip, installed a new outside tap onto the side of our shed to facilitate the watering of our many potted plants on the patio, and I spent several long hours tidying and cleaning the spare room so it was fit for habitation. (The wardrobe is not yet finished, but at least everything is much tidier!)

The fallout from the new wardrobe project was a heap of chipboard, formerly masquerading as furniture. I had used some to make the shelves of the new wardrobe, but there was still a boot load of it, as well as an old single mattress to get rid of, so as the "bulky bin" was in San Quirico that day, I headed up the valley to dump it all.

Friday afternoon was filled with last-minute tidying and cleaning in a heat and humidity that had us both dripping with sweat from even the merest of movements, let alone busting a gut with a vacuum and a mop, but the day ended in an early night as I had an 04:25 alarm call on Saturday for a check-out at the pool house.

I duly got up in the dark and went to do my duties, and by the time I had finished and got home, it was 7:30am, Helen had already exercised herself and taken Reggie for a walk, so we headed out for coffee and pastries before making a quick shopping trip to Montecatini.

What was left of the morning when we got home was filled with hoovering and washing the car, while Helen started on some strimming - during which she noticed a forest of tomatoes growing inside the now empty chicken enclosure.

Maybe I should clean this before the airport run.

The legacy of the chickens...

... a tomato forest!

Having had such an early start, we were more than ready for an early lunch that day, so we shared a cold beer along with a delicious fish, pink peppercorn and chick pea salad from Amanda.

After lunch, I finished the apartment by putting on the bed linen and doing a final hoover while Helen headed straight back to the terraces, and after a brief visit from Paul and Kathy to buy some of our garlic, I joined Helen high up on the terraces strimming in a bid to finish the cut for June between us... Paul thought we were 100% certifiably mad for strimming in the afternoon heat, and after two hours I agreed with him and couldn't get my strimmer off quickly enough to head for the shower. By the time we called it a day, Helen had completed almost four hours of strimming - yes, definitely mad!

Feeling hot, hot hot.

Pre-strim.

Post-strim.

We had a late night ahead of us, as Mom and Yvonner were due to land in Florence at around 22:30 that night, so after my shower I took to the bed for an uncharacteristic nap while Helen soldiered on cleaning the bathroom, watering the veggies, doing the washing up, and finally harvesting our first ever plums from the tree we planted two years ago.

Watering the precious vegetables.

Plum harvest!

All showered and power-napped, and cooling down ready for a quick dinner out with Donatella, David and Sarah before the airport run, I decided to check the flight status before we headed out... only to find its status as CANCELLED!!

I immediately called Mom, but she wasn't able to talk with me for very long as she and Yvonne were at that very moment being escorted by airport security from air side departures back out, having already checked in and gone through to departures.

No reason was given for the cancellation of the flight, but our general suspicion is that it was simply a lack of numbers, as Mom informed us that it was only them and two other people waiting for the flight in Birmingham.

Back here, we frantically hopped on the computer to search for alternative arrangements and were able to book them onto a Ryan Air flight that was leaving from East Midlands airport the next morning. Thankfully, with Yvonne's daughter kindly picking them up to take them home from Birmingham airport and then driving them to East Midlands airport the next morning, disaster was narrowly averted!

After the drama, we headed out for our dinner with our friends, now able to relax and enjoy it without having to dash off to the airport until the next day!

On Sunday we had arranged to meet some of the gang at Sandrino's for coffee, and we whiled away a couple of hours and coffees chatting and playing table tennis and table football, before all heading home for lunch, It was a lovely morning indeed, and I suspect we might fall into the habit of a regular Sunday morning catch-up now that the bar at Sandrino's is open for the summer.

Competitive Sunday morning.

After lunch, it was time to head to Pisa to collect Mom and Yvonne, after having checked and double-checked that their flight today was running, and was on time - a huge relief all round! It was lovely to see them arrive at the airport - they seemed remarkably calm and relaxed, no thanks to BA, and we soon had them loaded into the car and were Pescia-bound to do a little shopping in Esselunga.

On the way into Pescia after leaving the autostrada we had to pull over to allow a bike race to pass - the same bike race, in fact, that we'd had to pull over for on our outward journey to the airport. The cyclists had clearly been looping around the hills while we were travelling to and from Pisa, as by the time they passed us for the second time, the field was a lot more strung out, with several exhausted looking stragglers at the end.

First the motor bikes.

Then the break away.

And then the peloton.

After stopping at the supermarket for Mom and Yvonne to get some supplies to top up what we'd already got at home, we headed into the piazza to introduce Yvonne to Aperol spritz, before heading home for an evening of Prosecco, salad, cured hams, cheeses and chit chat under the guest pergola.

St. Johns Wort

Beautiful agapanthus finally in full bloom.

Butterfly month, aka palm tree moth, aka Paysandisia archon.

Pollen! Brought to us by Alain, the owner of the hives currently at our gate - he had collected some from his hives in Aramo, further up the valley and called in to see if we'd like some.

Pretty nine-spotted moth, aka yellow belted burnet.