The move to Tuscany : Edging towards spring?

Here in our part of the world we seem to slowly, slowly be thawing out and warming up. The days are getting milder (we even registered 21.7C in the sunshine one day last week!) and for the last couple of weeks the nights have more often been above freezing than below. Of course, we could yet have another cold snap (we reached -8C at night time last Feb), but it feels as if we are easing our way towards spring.

There is plenty of work to do at this time of year, and the prospect of the start of spring evokes both anticipation and dread in almost equal amounts. The dread comes from the nagging knowledge that as soon as Mother Nature gives the order to advance, everything will spring into action, with grass growing and needing cutting; weeds growing and needing, er, weeding; trees growing and needing pruning; tree prunings needing to be burned prior to the weather warming up enough to make bonfires dangerous (or forbidden); seedlings needing to be planted; the apartment needing to have its pre-season spruce-up, and so the list goes on.

As tempting as it would be to dedicate all our time and energy to trying to complete all our pre-spring tasks ahead of the onslaught, the rather tiresome but essential fact of the matter is that, like everyone, we need to earn money to pay our bills - we haven't retired to Italy, we're not sitting on a big pot of cash, and as much as the cost of living is cheaper here than in England, we do still have lots of outgoings (rather too many at times) - so for most of the last fortnight we have both downed tools (that is, downed tools on our own property) in order to dedicate appropriate time to earning those essential pennies. Stuart has done some work with David in Vellano and some plastering in Pescia, while I, of course, have sat at my computer doing desk work as usual. I've tried to make enough time to get outdoors for an hour or so each afternoon before the sun goes down though, as not only does it help us move things forward (albeit at a glacial pace), but it feels good for the soul to be in the outdoors and to be physically active, even if only for an hour or two.

So there's not a lot to report in this instalment - some progress on tidying up the wood storage area in the quarry by the gates, a little more firewood stacked on the pile for next winter (from which we may or may not need to "borrow" should we have a very cold snap in the next few weeks!), and Stuart has made great inroads into learning how to use some of the tools Dad has handed down to him (which were delivered safely all the way from the UK by our kind friends Paul & Kathy).