WOO HOO...RAIN!

No... we're not going mad and we're not in the middle of an unseasonal drought - the reason for our welcoming today's promised rain is that it meant we could have a long-awaited day of doing very little - something we were both in need of.

Despite the weather hampering our efforts, we managed to get up and leave the house shortly after 9am for the supermarkets in Pescia. We were pleased to find Lidl very quiet for a change, meaning there was only a short queue for the tills, so after half-filling a trolley we were soon loaded and heading for Esselunga... where it was a much different prospect!

We have never had to park as far away from the store in its enormous car park as we did today - in fact, we've never even seen vehicles in the section we had to park in this morning. This didn't bode well for the scene inside the shop, and indeed it was heaving - Christmas, it turns out, has nothing on Easter (or Pasqua as it's called here).

Due to the long (two-day) closures that follow today, there was a virtually apocalyptic scene inside the shop, and trying to move around with a trolley was near impossible. Often, Helen would disappear and hurry off down the aisles, returning to me and the trolley with items rather than us moving along together, as is normal supermarket custom. How there were no scenes of trolley rage I'll never know (mainly, I suppose, because I personally managed to keep a lid on it).

On the upside, on going to the checkout we were faced with another new sight: all of the tills were open, so although we had to queue for a while, it didn't actually take any longer to get out of there than usual. (Note to selves: shop on the Friday next Easter!)

After a quick visit to 'Mr Chicken' to pick up a sack of goose food we headed back up the gloomy valley towards Pietrabuona where we made a short pitstop for a quick cappucino in the local coffee bar next to the builders' merchant. Despite the damp weather, we restrained ourselves to just the one coffee each before heading home to unload the shopping in preparation for taking Reggie out for a walk.

As it was a bit damp, with plenty more rain due, we decided that we would head for the refuge track today, guessing that there wouldn't be many walkers or mountain bikers out for Reggie to worry about (or worry) today.

The sight that greeted us as we drove up along the track was amazing: the tree felling and logging that had been going on since we last visited in the wake of the big storms was on an industrial scale. It appears that the Diocese of Lucca has given permission to a logging firm to remove all pines from along the trackside, with huge swathes of hillside that were previously heavily forested now being clear - clear, that is, except for the enormous stacks of wood at the roadside.

The rain hadn't yet started in earnest here, although it was very damp under foot, but the walk up the track was heavenly - there was nothing else for the senses other than the heady scent of pine from the recently felled trees, a gentle refreshing patter of rain on fallen leaves and birdsong, it was true bliss.

We also had the momentous occasion on our walk that was the first time Reggie raised (or attempted to raise) his back leg while emptying his bladder (sorry if you are eating your supper/breakfast or are of a sensitive disposition...). Whether or not this was a coincidence, we're not sure (it only happened once), but maybe he is starting to get the idea!

Sorry Reggie, we hope this doesn't make you blush too much. (His left back leg is raised in the air, albeit only half-heartedly.)

The walk back down was a little less tranquil, so as one or two motocross bikes seemed to be in full throttle somewhere across the valley and the rain made a more determined start, so with gravity on our side we marched back down to the car.

We arrived home knowing the rest of the day would be spent indoors - a rare pleasure. We lit the wood burner and sat down to lunch - a lunch that was the work of a genius (my wife, not me). We feasted on lovely silver anchovies in oil, sweet green peppers stuffed with cheese, sun-dried tomatoes wrapped around a tuna filling, gooey gorgonzola, and something called a 'Russian medallion', which was a small pot of potato and vegetable salad topped with sliced egg and prawns. All of that was washed down with a good glass of Chardonnay (we really pushed the boat out with wine from a bottle rather than from a box today - although it still only cost €1.70 for the bottle...).

After lunch, we moved our both of our computers into the kitchen/living area so that we could enjoy the warmth of the fire and we whiled away the afternoon (and long into the evening) with Helen working on updates to our website while I spent some time redrawing the Pescia Rugby Club logo for Chris, making it fit for the new kit being printed, before turning my attentions back to my epic Excel spreadsheet for vegetable planting and care.

Come 8.40pm, we were still happily working away at our PCs and suddenly realised that we really ought to see to making some dinner (a nice, simple scrambled egg on toast) and turning off our computers for the day. Definitely a relaxing day, thanks mainly to the rain!

Taking it easy(ish)

This morning started abruptly at 2.40am when I awoke to the noise barking and howling downstairs. I pulled on Stuart's dressing gown and hurried downstairs to let Reggie out into the garden, who almost seemed to me to be hopping from one foot to the other as I fumbled with unlocking the front door. But rather than going straight to his toilet duties (which I had imagined he needed with quite some urgency), he ran straight to the lawn, barking his head off, and stood at the fence barking into the night. Only when he stopped to take a breath did I hear a response - a deer clearly barked back at him from somewhere in the woods. This went on for a little while and I had visions of us being up for the rest of the night in some sort of bark fest, but thankfully Reggie eventually gave up, emptied his bladder, and ran back up the steps to the house. He went straight back to bed, and we didn't hear another peep from him until we got up.

It being the Easter holiday weekend, we decided to have a bit of a lie-in this morning, and didn't venture downstairs until nearly 9am. This was thanks to both the cats and Reggie being reasonably quiet - we were treated to the cats' usual attempts at getting us up, including Lucca jumping up onto the chest of drawers and deliberately knocking items off it, and Florence jumping onto us and over us and onto the bedside tables to rattle the lampshades, but we remained resolute and ignored them until we were ready to get up.

After a quick breakfast, we decided to head out to Sorana for a walk with Reggie. We wanted to try and find the footpath that leads to Lignana, an abandoned village on the hillside.

We found the start of the path without any problem, but the familiar red-and-white markers that indicate designated footpaths soon disappeared, and we were faced with various unmarked forks in the path and turnings, as well as the now painfully familiar sight of fallen trees blocking the path.

Despite not being able to find the right path, we had a lovely walk with some very pretty scenery. We saw some sheep complete with bells around their necks (clearly belonging to someone), lots and lots of frog spawn (which Reggie did his best to render non-viable either by thundering straight through the middle of it at the speed of light or by sticking his face in it and trying to eat it), and Reggie also had his first face-to-face meeting with a deer (actually two of them). We were walking along the track, Reggie running up ahead of us, when we heard a rustling in the leaves and footsteps behind us - I was confused at first because it sounded exactly as if Reggie was coming up behind us, yet there he was ahead of us. Turning around and expecting to see another dog, I was amazed to see two large deer running across the path and off into the woods. Reggie spotted them too, and gave chase. Thankfully, the deer were way too quick for him, and he soon lost them and came back to us. It left him very excitable for a while though, and he spent a long time sniffing the ground for traces of the large beasts that had evaded him.

 

Excitement of the chase over, we headed back to the car and drove back to the house, where Stuart spent half an hour splitting logs while I prepared a lunch of soft-boiled goose egg (a whole one each for the first time!) with steamed asparagus. Delicious.

Despite having intended to take it easy this weekend, our plan for the afternoon was to head to the upper terraces and "tidy up" - strim, collect up the olive prunings and cut down more acacias. Stuart donned the backpack strimmer, leaving me with the old handheld strimmer and off we went. I managed five minutes of strimming before I had to stop to refuel the strimmer, followed by 10 minutes before I had to stop and get Stuart to re-thread the cord, followed by another 5 minutes before I had to ask him to do it again. When the cord snapped and disappeared for the third time, I took it as a sign that strimming was not for me today. I decided to switch to my trusty hedge trimmers to go and cut down some of the bramble that was still clinging tenaciously onto the banks of the upper terraces. We then both spent some time raking the clippings and olive branches down from one terrace to the next, the plan being that we will gradually end up with a pile that can be burned at the bottom level.

In a nod to the fact that this is Easter holiday weekend, we decided to throw the towel in at about 4.30pm - it was meant to be a relaxing weekend after all - so we packed up the tools and opened a beer on the patio, sitting in the warm late afternoon sunshine, marvelling at the wonderful view, and feeling incredibly lucky to be where we are, doing what we are doing.

A little while later, we heard the geese honking and wondered what had got into them - we didn't have long to wonder though, as Chris and Henry walked through the garden gate shortly afterwards. They were full of praise and admiration for the clearing work we've done and the vegetable beds that Zach, Holly, Mum and Dad have helped make, which was lovely to hear and it was great to see them and have a quick catch up. They stayed for about and hour before leaving us to it and heading back down the hill to Pescia, at which point we fed the animals, put the geese away, closed the cold frames and retreated indoors before it got too chilly.

Tomorrow is forecast to be wet, so that will force us to slow down somewhat - although of course we have the usual weekend chores such as supermarket shopping to do, and we both have lists of admin tasks to complete.

An epic three-day round-up

Once again this post begins with an apology. I am taking the time out of my day to make sure that we get a post out to regular readers today after hearing about reader complaints for the missing posts (yes, that's you, Rose Hilsdon, I have my sources!). That will never do, so please accept our apologies. Our flimsy excuse for the lack of posts is simply that we have been busy over the last couple of days with my parents, trying to make sure we spend as much quality time with them as possible on the last couple of days of their stay with us.

We last updated you on Monday, so I will go back to Tuesday to start with - the day the car decided it would have the last laugh.


Tuesday: Car mutiny

As Tuesday and Wednesday were the last two days of Mum and Dad's visit, I decided to forego my usual exercise routine in favour of an early morning start at work to try and get it out of the way as soon as possible - so, after seeing to the animals, I plonked myself down at my desk and was at work by 7am.

You know by now how my mornings go - rather chilly and very sedentary with my eyes glued to a computer screen. Nothing worth reporting on there. While I was chilling (in the literal sense of the word) at my desk, Mum and Dad were back out on the terraces doing more digging and planting, while Stuart was planting out the new fruit trees. Our 'orchard' now consists of: peach, apricot, fig, almond, pear, plum, apple and cherry. The exciting news is that there are already signs of tiny figs starting to form - we await their development with baited breath!

I managed to get enough work under my belt by 11.30am to venture outside, so spent an hour cutting troublesome acacia stumps (which had become a serious trip hazard) out of some of the upper terraces before we all stopped for lunch - in the sunshine on the patio, of course.

After lunch had been tidied away, we prepared ourselves for another walk of discovery in the valley. This time, we headed up to the village of Fibialla, high above Pietrabuona, with the aim of walking part of the route that runs from Fibialla to the higher village of Medicina.

I know we've banged on about the storm damage rather a lot on this blog, but we hadn't been up this side of the valley since the storm, and the damage on the road up to Fibialla was quite something to behold, with trees having ripped away part of the tarmac from the road as they fell, and the surrounding hillsides decimated.

When we reached the village, there was a guy going to and fro with buckets full of broken roof tile - it seemed they were still clearing up after the storm up there. He stopped us and had a long chat with Stuart - so many locals we meet seem to be completely unfazed by the fact that we can barely grasp 20% of what they are saying. If the shoe were on the other foot, I'm sure we'd just give up, smile warmly and walk away, but this guy (like many we meet) ploughed on with his monologue (at least it turned into a monologue because we didn't have the understanding to make much of a contribution to the conversation). The main jist of it was that he was telling us about the damage caused by the strong winds. He pointed out a street lamp that had been felled by the wind as well as the trees and the roof tiles littering the pavement. Stuart tried to explain that we live here, and attempted to explain exactly where we live, at which point the man gesticulated at the hill opposite us. I think he was trying to point out where our house was, and then saying that he'd heard about us from the guys in Frateschi's. But I could be wrong - I have started to feel quite demoralised about my lack of communication skills once again (the feeling of failure seems to come in waves) after a few recent occasions where I have not been able to understand much of the conversation, let alone make any contribution, meanwhile on other occasions I can understand much of what is being said but the part of my brain that allows me to spin that understanding around 360 degrees and turn it into speaking seems completely missing.

Anyway, back to our day. After we'd bade farewell to the talkative chap we headed off out of the village to the track that leads to Medicina. We were immediately confronted by a sign saying that the track was closed due to a landslide in the vicinity of the river, but on checking the map we decided that we probably wouldn't get as far as that anyway, so decided to give it a go.

The track gave us another interesting perspective of our valley and although a little overgrown with brambles in places, it was generally good going and an attractive walk. We didn't get as far as the part that was closed due to a landslide, and instead turned around at the point at which the path became impassible due to the number of fallen trees that lay across it (yet more damage from the recent storm). By that point we had already had a pretty good stretch of our legs (and Reggie's), so we were happy to do an about turn and head back to the car.

Too many trees to clamber over.

When we got back to the car, we decided to take a drive up to Medicina to show Mum and Dad around the pretty little village that you can just see from our top terraces. They enjoyed walking around the quiet village - in which the only signs of people actually living there are the flowers in pots outside people's front doors. The drive up to Medicina offered us a great view of our house and our growing number of exposed terraces!

And indeed, when we got back home it was back to those terraces for Stuart and me, while Mum and Dad enjoyed a well earned rest and cup of tea. Stuart started clearing some of the olive clippings into piles ready for burning while I went back to chopping out acacia stumps and cutting some acacias down that were still growing. However, we only did this for an hour, as we had planned to go out for dinner so come 6pm, we downed tools and went indoors to shower and make ourselves look presentable.

All dressed up (it doesn't happen very often these days!), we gave Reggie a chew and put him in his crate then met Mum and Dad by the car to set off for a nice evening meal in Montecarlo. We all got into the car, seatbelts on... and the car decided not to start. I buried my head in my hands. The car strikes again!!!

When this had happened a couple of weeks ago (when we were heading for Pistoia for Reggie's lesson), the car had started after five or six attempts, so we all sat in our seats while Stuart tried and tried. But the car was having none of it. I decided to go and put the geese away while waiting for the car to come to its senses - they were being very difficult today and Stuart had already had one failed attempt at getting them into their house. This time, Dad came with me, bringing a broom, so that we could make a two-pronged attack. They still stubbornly refused to go into their house - I'm not sure whether there was something in the air making both car and geese behave badly, but they almost literally had us on a wild goose chase around their enclosure. We did eventually managed to manhandle them into their house and close the door on a very grumpy Mr Goose, before heading back to the car to see how things were going (or not going). They (or rather it) was not going. In a last ditch attempt, Dad and Stuart tried to push the car backwards out of its space to see if we could roll if forward enough to bump start it, but the sheer weight of the thing was too much and they gave up before one or other (or both) of them did themselves a mischief.

Deflated, we returned to the house and made a plan B: Stuart gallantly offered to get on his mountain bike and cycle down to Amanda's to buy up whatever she had on offer today. So, after changing out of his good clothes, he hopped onto his bike, rucksack on his back, and pedalled off up the drive. Dad, meanwhile, changed out of his good trousers (that is, the only pair he had with him that didn't have Reggie slobber on them) before lighting the fire and we all sat and awaited Stuart's return.

It wasn't long before a rather warm-looking Stuart walked through the door with his rucksack filled with goodies. In the end, we had a rather enjoyable evening drinking wine and eating some pork fillets, meatballs, spinach and roast potatoes, followed by a jam tart. Amanda's cooking is reliably excellent and we have to say that she saved the day on this occasion!

After dinner, we all retired to bed - although not before Reggie had attempted to make a new friend:

"What are you and why won't you play with me??"

Wednesday: A lovely day tempered by teary farewells

On Wednesday, I repeated the same early morning routine as I had done on Tuesday, and was at work by 7am. Mum and Dad spent much of the morning cleaning up in the apartment. I told them not to worry about it, but they were adamant, and Mum wanted to try out some new floor cleaner on the tiles - who am I to stand in her way?

Of course, one of the first things Stuart did in the morning was to try the car, and of course it started first time. Not wanting to be caught out again, he moved it to the drive so that it would be facing downhill - we weren't going to be foiled by it again!

Once again, I had finished most of my work by 11.30am, so we rounded everybody up, gave Reggie a bone to chew on in his crate and headed out for lunch. We'd decided that, since the car had scuppered our dinner plans the previous night, we would go out for a nice lunch instead. We therefore headed for our favourite little village of Montecarlo and one of our favourite places for lunch, La Terrazza.

Mum and Dad were charmed by Montecarlo and its stunning location with 360 degree views across the plains and of the mountains around. They were likewise impressed with the lovely restaurant although concerned for its owners that we were - once again - the only customers in for lunch. We had a delicious lunch of antipasti followed by pizzas all round before headed out for a walk around the town, which really was looking its best in the brilliant sunshine and against deep blue skies.

After that, we headed home to pick up Reggie and then back out again for one last little expedition before Mum and Dad had to go. We drove into town, parked up in the square then walked down to the river to give Reggie a run up and down the river banks. The river was packed with people as today's weather was positively summery, never mind spring like! The temperature must have been in the mid if not high 20s C, and the water sparkled in the sunlight. We ended the walk with what we had really come out for: a stop at La Baracchina for gelato!

We sat on a bench overlooking the river and ate our delicious ice cream, and Reggie got his first taste of ice cream with his very own mini-scoop of vanilla gelato (which of course he lapped up).

Feeling sated and refreshed, we headed home where there was only time for a quick cup of tea before Mum and Dad collected their cases and we packed up the car to head for Pisa.

We had beautiful views of the mountains from the autostrade, which was a lovely way to end Mum and Dad's visit. We said a tearful farewell as they waited at the check-in desk before wending our way back home.

It has been a lovely luxury to have Mum and Dad here with us for 10 days - they have helped move us on with our vegetable growing immensely, they have worked like trojans and been generous as ever with paying for meals out and buying us fruit trees, seed potatoes, tools and more. We're thankful that the weather was kinder to them on this occasion than it was on their last visit and hope that they enjoyed seeing a bit more of our valley and local area. More than anything, it was lovely just having them here, we will miss them, and we hope their next visit won't be too long away.


Thursday: Back to normality

So, after the variety of the last few days, we come finally (for this post at least) to today, which will come as a bit of a let down - back to the grindstone! Stuart has spent the day up at Lanciole and Reggie and I have been at home, with me in front of my computer and Reggie variously lounging on the sofa, barking at the door and lying on the doormat.

We have had some different behaviour on the goose front today: when I went to open up their house this morning, Mr Goose came out hissing and honking and trying to bite me (as usual), but Mrs Goose remained seated on the straw bedding, so I didn’t get a chance to check for an egg. She did potter out a bit later, but for the most part of the day, she seems to have been inside the house, with Mr Goose on guard at the door. Could this mean she is trying to hatch an egg? I guess we'll find out soon enough!!

It appears that Good Friday is not a bank holiday over here, but we have already decided that we are going to allow ourselves the full long weekend over Easter. As much as having people to stay has been enjoyable and lovely, it has been over six weeks since we were last on our own here, so we are looking forward to a bit of downtime and the chance to relax a bit. Whether that happens or not is another thing entirely of course - the cold frames will still need opening and closing, the seedlings will need watering, the animals will need feeding and walking, and that long grass will keep growing and keep niggling at us - but the plan is to take it a bit easier for a few days (and hopefully get back on track with our blog updates...)