Catching up

We've had a packed day today, managing to fit in a lovely and long overdue catch-up with Sue over coffee in the sunshine on our patio this morning, a brief catch-up with Donatella and Alex when they came to drop off the gift of half a pumpkin this afternoon (which is now cooking for our dinner), and several hours of office work for me and a bit more wall building for Stuart.

There's not a lot more to report though - oh, other than a helicopter that we watched all day yesterday and all day today flying back and forth from the area where our communal bins are located. We watched (and heard) it a lot yesterday, but as we can't actually see the spot where it was landing each time (it's just hidden from view around the corner of the hillside), it was only this morning, while sitting on the patio with Sue, that we worked out what it was actually doing: it seemed to be carrying either telegraph poles or electricity poles to different places both up and down the valley, presumably repairing damage done in last month's storms.

We managed to get a couple of photos of it, although without any cargo on this occasion:

 

So there you have it, a very satisfying day - a much needed catch-up and putting the world to rights, as well as a quick hello, the gift of a pumpkin, a few hours of work and plenty of sunshine.

Walling Wednesday

For whatever reason, I only got four hours of sleep last night - very out of character for me! I read until midnight (much later than I normally would) and once my eyes felt heavy and thought it safe to try, I was wrong. I lay there thinking how good it would be to get up at 6.30am with Helen, help with the animal chores so that she could start her own routine ten minutes earlier and therefore finish work a little earlier and so that I myself could skip working outside for the hottest part of the day, enjoy a slightly more leisurely lunch and do a few things indoors.

Well the plan seemed like it would be going out the window when I was still looking at the clock at 1:45am - I drove myself nuts with it but just couldn't switch my brain off for a second. Next thing I knew it was 5:45am and Lucca was demanding an early start of his own. The instant I snatched my feet further up the bed to avoid his claws getting a purchase on my toes (his idea of an alarm call) my brain fired out of the traps and was whirring, so I lay there as still as possible, trying not to ruin Helen's sleep until she finally turned the alarm off and got up and I was out of bed shortly after.

One of the things that spurred me on to get up early was that I had finally managed to arrange to get our broken Skype phone collected by the courier, and as per usual they could only be as specific as "between 9 am & 3 pm". That meant I'd be chained to the house, potentially for most of the day, and we currently had a car loaded full of rubbish that never quite made the trip to the bins last night (when the car had other ideas).

So, after a quick glass of grapefruit juice I was off up the drive with the first car load of rubbish and an hour and 45 minutes before 9am. I took the scatter approach today and on each of the four visits I used a different set of bins so I'd seen a fair bit of the valley before half eight, by which point I'd managed three loads, leaving just one more to squeeze in later after the courier had been.

After the frantic start to my day, I joined Helen for breakfast and then went to work outside. I went back to the dry stone walling efforts I'd begun yesterday at the bottom of the bank beneath goose island. The idea behind this is that, not only will it help improve the aesthetics of the parking area but it will also act as a retaining wall behind which I can bury a pile of rubble - rubble that is currently piled up looking a right mess on the area where the extension was going to be, but isn't any more... (still following?)

Work on the wall turned out to be slow going, especially when it involved rolling huge stones that were too big to lift from one side of the drive to the other, and then finding out that they didn't quite fit the space I needed to fill, so then having to set them aside for later and repeat. Anyway, by the time the courier arrived, the wall was starting to take shape and once he'd disappeared back off up the drive I turned my attention to clearing out the wood shelter (wood shelter number one, the one that we have pretty much emptied over winter). Now that I'm feeling a little more on top of things elsewhere, I'm starting to focus on the curb appeal of the parking area. Anyone who has visited us will agree that one side of the house is definitely the poor relation. This is all made up for once you get around to the front and see the views, but unfortunately the dreary parking area is the first glimpse of the house you get - so the push is on to do as much here before our steady stream of guests start arriving (which isn't far away!).

The grand plan is to build the aforementioned small wall, half-fill it with rubble (which will help tidy up the extension area, which we're stuck with until plans have been approved to render it), then fill it with soil to make a flower/shrub bed. The other part of the plan is to clear out the original wood shelter (now that we have an improved and extended wood shelter a little further along the drive) to make space for the (inherited) cultivator to live, alongside the lawn mower and eventually a little tractor - leaving us with a nice tidy little machine shelter instead. Finally, I plan to build a new screen which will both provide some privacy to the guests as well as hide most of the parking area from their view. I'm hoping this can be a wattle fence made from wood sourced from our own trees, but when I tried to dig some post holes today, I quickly hit solid stone (the stone that the geologist told us was there as part of his very expensive report last year). It's nice to know the house is built on good foundations, but not helpful right now.

Anyway, after a nice lunch on the patio together, I proceeded to forget about missing out the hottest part of the day. I say "forgot", but I had the last load of rubbish to get rid of and wanted to do it during the quieter lunch hours so went out and did that before returning to work (that was the point at which I forgot to avoid the sun).

The sun was beating down on the wall area so I opted to stay out of it and turned my attention back to the clearing of the wood shelter for the afternoon. Helen joined me at around 3pm and spent a couple of hours moving rubble and blocks to behind the wall and using a lump hammer to break it down into much smaller space-saving pieces before I started covering it with soil.

At just before 5pm we both gave in, feeling quite worn out. After first checking that the car would start (we didn't want poor Reggie to get his hopes up again, only to be disappointed), we went out for a dog walk. This time, we headed for Castelvecchio, hoping to find the other end of path #52 (a path we'd started out on from Sorana a few days ago, but lost our way). We did find a section of it on our way to the village, but failed to find where it came out in the village itself. We weren't too bothered though as we had a lovely walk around the charming little village before heading back home.

When we got in the sun was still shining so we sat on the patio for a glass of beer before watering everything and retiring indoors.

A day not as planned, but productive all the same

When I started the week I had two jobs at the top of my list: planting and strimming. If you read yesterday's post then you'll know the planting is largely done, so if all had gone according to plan today, everywhere should be strimmed, but it didn't.

After breakfast, which was probably the earliest I've had it in two weeks, I decided first to head out shopping. The one job that had pushed its way to the top of the list after yesterday's plant-a-thon was to set up a better way of watering down on the lower terraces - walking up to the house to keep filling a watering can is not only tedious, but no longer going to cut the mustard on this scale!

As you might know, we're awaiting some large water tanks from a company in Pescia. As of last week they have been cleaned and are ready for collection, so now we're just waiting for the builders I asked a couple of weeks ago (who said they'd do it for fuel money rather than the €100 the first guy wanted) to call me and let me know when they can collect. Anyway, primarily these tanks will collect rain water from the roof of the house, as well as some grey water (drainage from the shower, bathroom sink and washing machine) for use on the veg, but it'll take a little while to collect enough to run an irrigation system, so for the time being at least we're using metered water. This morning I'd worked out how to get that water part way back down the hill from whence it came - but I needed some hose.

I told Helen I was off out shopping as we needed other items too - at which point she reminded me we had SOME hose in the shed. She was right, so I went to rummage around for various bits of hosepipe and connectors, and ten minutes later I emerged into daylight with all of the bits and pieces and set to work connecting it from a tap at the side of the house and working my way down the terraces before testing it... Two out of four lengths of pipe had holes in them, which left me short, but at least we'd only need one new length now.

I grabbed my shopping list and headed out. My first stop was a Fiat authorised car repairer on the way into Pescia. The central rear seatbelt had recently broken (by the time we've finished with the repairs to this car, we'll have only the seats left as original parts!) and earlier attempts to procure a replacement had resulted in me being told to go to a Fiat dealer. Searches on the internet had proved fruitless, so this was my next step before finding the nearest proper dealer. I'd already removed the faulty belt by way of demonstrating that I only needed the spare part and not the fitting (as I'd clearly already done the reverse of fitting).

When I finally got to speak to someone and explained what I needed, the guy said he'd have to order one from the nearest Fiat dealer! Oh well, you can't accuse me of not trying to spend locally and keep our money in our local economy (although I'm sure there a small part of the €127 plus tax that will be)! It seems that Fiat have their spares locked down, so to speak - the guy who called me later this afternoon to give me the price told me he thought it was expensive, but what else could we do?

Next, I headed to Montecatini to Obi. I wanted to look around a display of plumbing items - while I've done bits of plumbing here and there, I don't have enough expertise to know what to ask for, so sourcing items from Frateschi's was going to be impossible. (I'm looking for some connectors and taps to make a few improvements to the incoming water set-up - mainly to take an electric pump and water storage tank out of the loop which appears completely useless.)

Anyway, I left Obi with nothing more on the plumbing front than 25m of hose which I'm told will last me until I'm 70. Not bad for €1.50 per metre - I'd better keep the receipt safe! I had really wanted to buy the hose from Davide at his little ferramenta, but I'd failed to see the need for it early enough and if I had been met with the usual response of 'I will have it next Wednesday', well then that would have left us watering very slowly and painfully by hand, traipsing up and down the terraces to keep refilling a watering can - not something I was prepared to do. I felt bad about giving Obi yet more of our money all the same.

Heading back into town, I planned to stop and fill the car with more used tyres for our terrace steps, but the tyre shop had obviously closed at noon so instead I turned up towards the wood yard to go and get another sack of wood shavings for the geese. However, before I'd made the short journey there I'd changed my mind, deciding that I would wait to see how many of my own wood shavings I could collect from processing the huge stack of wood that needs cutting. I then headed quickly to Frateschi's to exchange an empty gas bottle for a full one before going home for a delicious lunch on the patio with Helen and the ever hopeful Reggie - Helen and I had left over quinoa salad (from last night's dinner) and half a goose egg each, while Reggie circled for crumbs.

After lunch, I sorted the new hose out and am very happy to say that we can now water our seeds and plants with relative ease (albeit with metered water). For now at least we can keep this ship going in the right direction.

On hearing the church bells strike 3pm, I gave up on the idea of doing any strimming today and instead decided to do a bit of tidying around the place. It wasn't long before Helen emerged into the warmth and sunshine looking for something outdoorsy to do. Shortly after that, she came out again in a change of clothes and clutching her hedge trimmers with the intention of "trimming back" the brambles and acacias around the newly installed washing line to make it a little more difficult for bugs to get into our washing.

Helen's "trimming back" got a little carried away, and after an hour or so she had started to clear the terrace on which the corrugated iron roofed rubbish shed sits. 

She downed tools at around 5.15pm though, and we both packed up to take Reggie out for a walk. Well, that was our plan, but clearly not the car's! Once again, the car decided it was going nowhere this evening and after a few attempts we gave up, took a somewhat bewildered Reggie back out of the car and headed to the patio where we sipped a solitary glass of beer each and ate olives while the sun cooled before getting onto watering duties and dinner for the evening.

Finally! A day of planting!

It was a toasty hot day today, so out of my list of immediate jobs to do, I opted for a day's planting rather than donning the strimmer - so I warn you now, this isn't going to be a long or exciting post, (exciting for us, but I think you really needed to be here).

While Helen toiled away in the chilly office as per usual, I set up shop behind the house with a crate full of seeds, a huge stack of pots and three sacks of compost and that was where I stayed for the duration of the day, with the exception of a half-hour break at lunch time to have a luxurious egg mayo sandwich on the patio with Helen (not as luxurious as it could have been, as we have two goose eggs on the worktop waiting to be eaten, but it seems Mrs Goose may well have laid her last egg for the season (today was day four with no sign of an egg), so these two remaining eggs need to be savoured in some form better than a sandwich).

At around 3.30pm, planting done, I spent half an hour transporting all of the pots down to the lower terraces while Helen finished up in the office then got ready to go out for a walk.

What took me all day to plant? Well, from memory, the list went something a little like this...

Aubergines (or melanzane as I should now start to call them)
Yellow bell peppers (pepperone giallo)
Red pointed peppers (pepperone rosso)
Celery (sedano)
Two types of squash (zucco)
Runner beans (I've no idea what they're called in Italian - they're seeds from England anyway)
Three types of tomato (pomodoro)
Cucumber (cetriolo)
Lettuce (lattuga)
Courgettes (zucchini)
Parsley (prezzemolo)
Basil (basilico)
Sage (salvia)

Rocket (rucola)
Chick peas (ceci)

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but combined with the potatoes, onions, carrots, radish, leeks, peas, broad beans and beetroots, and the asparagus and artichoke (neither of which will crop this year), we should be in for a bumper crop of delicious veg this summer - that is assuming we don't mess it all up, which is highly likely as we've hardly started small!

After siting the pots, we loaded Reggie into the car, drove up to Stiappa at the top of the valley and did the short walk down to an old mill that we did with Helen's parents a couple of weeks ago. As we drove along, the valley looked glorious in the late afternoon sunshine, and we all enjoyed our walk through the trees in dappled sunlight.

Once we were satisfied that Reggie had stretched his legs sufficiently, we headed home to mow the lawn, water the seedlings and cook a quinoa salad with griddled squash, salad ricotta, toasted pine nuts and piles of parsley with an olive oil and balsamic dressing.

Birthday weekend part 2 - summer is here(?!)

After yesterday's birthday excesses, I left Stuart to sleep in this morning while I got up to tend to cats, dog, cold frames and geese. When he eventually stumbled downstairs, sometime after 9.30am, I was happy to be able to announce to him that it was warm enough (and lovely enough weather) to have our breakfast outside. And so, we had our first al fresco breakfast of the year. There was still a cool breeze, so I kept my layers on, but there was definitely the promise of a lovely day's weather in store.

When I went to open up the cold frames and check on progress in our veg beds this morning, this is what I found (exciting progress!):

Peas/broad beans.

Radishes.

Onions!

After breakfast, we got ourselves and Reggie ready for an excursion and all got into the car. First, we headed back out in the Alberghi direction to the same garden centre as we had visited yesterday. Over breakfast, we'd decided that we would create a bed of lavender against the fence that separates Reggie's lawn from the guest garden (the lavender being guest-side) - but having only bought four lavender plants yesterday, we needed a few more. We were unsure as to whether we'd find the garden centre open. While it would be a safe bet back in the UK, the opening days/hours of the tiny, independently owned garden centres over here can be a bit hit and miss - but happily, we found this one open again. We therefore relieved them of another 12 lavender plants and headed back towards Pescia.

Next on the agenda was a cup of coffee. I have recently dramatically reduced my coffee intake - while I love coffee, it doesn't necessarily always feel the same way about me (or perhaps it's my body that doesn't feel the same way about coffee as my mind and soul do?) - so I have started to ration myself to just the odd cup here and there, maybe even as little as once a week. It has now been over a week since my last coffee, so I was looking forward not just to any old coffee but to a (heavenly) cappuccino ginseng at the café in town. Since the weather was really warming up, we decided we ought to take our coffee somewhere where we could sit with Reggie outside (rather than leaving him sweltering in the car), so we were making a beeline for Bar Poulter. 

We turned off the main road to turn into the square only to find that there were barriers stopping vehicles going into the square. Not only that, but there was the sound of drums beating and some sort of noisy activity going on at the top end of the square. We were intrigued, and had we been on our own, we would have found somewhere else to park and walked to the square for our coffee, but we knew that the noise and commotion would be far too much for little Reggie to cope with, so resigned ourselves to another day without cappuccino ginseng.

From town, we drove up the valley but instead of heading straight home, we took the fork in the road that takes you down the middle of the valley and to Sorana. We'd decided to give the footpath we tried a week ago another go. Although we had thought we were heading for Lignana then, we subsequently realised we were on a different path, possibly the one heading for Castelvecchio - but either way, it was a lovely quiet walk with beautiful views, so worth a repeat today.

Once again, it was a lovely walk, although this time we deviated from the route we'd taken last time and tried a turning that looked, to all intents and purposes, as if it might actually be the direct route to Castelvecchio. As is often the case, we started out in this direction feeling confident, as a red-and-white marker reassured us that we were on the public footpath. After a little way, though, the red-and-white markers disappeared and we felt very much as if we were about to walk right into someone's private yard and along their drive. We thought that it was possible that the path carried on past the house, but didn't have the nerve to investigate at close quarters, and instead retreated back up the path, deciding that we would check the road map/Google maps/footpath map when we got home so that we would know for next time.

It didn't really matter though, the weather was beautiful and the scenery pretty as a picture, and Reggie had a great time, throwing himself down on the grass every few steps to roll around on his back (much to Stuart's consternation as he had to untangle the lead from around Reggie's legs every time he did so).

After a 45-minute walk, we got back to the car and headed for home.

There must have been some sort of classic car rally going on today as the whole time we were out and about (both out Alberghi way and Sorana way) we kept being met by a steady stream of classic cars - from old Fiat 500s to Ferraris. It has to be said that they weren't the most courteous of drivers (while Stuart pulled over to give way to a stream of 5 or 6 of them coming across a slightly narrow bridge, not one of them offered any sign of thanks), but perhaps they were in some sort of road race or perhaps we just missed the point...

Anyway, by the time we got home it was 1pm and time for lunch. Naturally, we chose to have lunch al fresco on the patio, and we dined on leftovers from yesterday's birthday lunch, with bread, cured meats and some peppers and artichokes. We took our time over lunch, enjoying the lovely weather and the feeling of the warm sun on our skin, before turning our attention to some afternoon productivity.

After changing into shorts and dosing up on sun cream (both for the first time this year), we headed down to the fence to begin digging our lavender bed. We both dug, taking out the top layer of turf, then Stuart turned the soil over, before handing the trowel and the trays of lavender to me. So while I planted the lavenders, Stuart found spots for the two hydrangeas that we bought yesterday and dug those in.

After that, I dug out a little triangle of earth in the corner of the fence by the house. This is a little difficult to explain, but the earth needed digging out because Reggie has been using the height of what was effectively a mini-mound to stand on and then get himself over the fence (to chase geese/cats/cars/cause mischief). Once I'd dug all of that out, I handed over to Stuart to finish the job by piling stones up against the steps to the terrace, while I went and did a spot of weeding outside the guest apartment.

This fellow was hiding beneath a stone. (I almost picked him up, thinking he was another stone!)

Mini-mound of earth dug out.

Yes, it's a new washing line.

By the time I'd done that - and Stuart had concreted in our new washing line - it was getting on for 5.30pm and we decided to call time on our afternoon's work and enjoy the evening sunshine on the patio.

We sat on the patio with a glass of wine until the sun went below the hill opposite, when we came indoors to start on our regular list of indoor chores. We were both a little shocked that today, for the first time this year, it was actually colder inside the house than outside (even after the sun had disappeared) - a true sign that summer is on its way if ever we saw one!!

And so we come to the end of a lovely, relaxing summery weekend - back to work tomorrow, although the good weather looks set to continue for a while yet.