It's alive!! And friends to the rescue!

Yesterday morning disappeared all too quickly. Helen was up and out on her bike around the usual 6:30am but I slept in a little longer in a bid to banish the tiredness I've been feeling slowed down by all week. By the time I'd got up and walked Reggie along the road to Vellano for an hour or so (in an attempt to tire him out and thus reduce his barking during the day while guests are here), got home and had breakfast, it was gone 10am. As Helen was still feeling the tiredness too, we both sat on the patio and drank small strong coffees for half an hour until Diane and Ernest came up to ask a few questions before heading out for the day. We were amazed and immensely proud to witness, as Diane and Ernest headed through the little garden gate and across the lawn, Reggie running over to them, tail wagging, but without uttering a peep, not the slightest little bark. Clever boy! The four of us sat and chatted for a while, and by the time they went out it was 11am. Helen headed back into the office, but as I hadn't picked up a tool yet today and could see little point in doing so before lunch, I took the chance to do a little admin indoors, hiding from the heat.

We had lunch at noon prompt in the hope it would rejuvenate us for the afternoon. After lunch, we spent half an hour or so thinking about our menu. For a while, we've toyed with the idea of offering meals to guests, but it's a project that's a little way down the list at the moment. Today, though, we were encouraged to make a start on it as Ernest remarked how much they had enjoyed the lentil ragu that Helen had made for their arrival and asked if she would cook more for them. It's always great to get some genuine feedback (even better when it's positive!), so we put some thought into getting this additional service up and running. We now have something resembling a menu, but have yet to cost the meals properly and put more thought into the logistics of such a service.

When Helen went back to work, I headed down to the lower terraces for the afternoon where I weeded the radish patch before sowing another, slightly smaller crop and sowing more beetroot, some parsnips (both in the ground and in a plastic box between damp paper towels, which I'm told is a more reliable way of germinating troublesome parsnips so it'll be interesting to see the comparison), more carrots, more leeks (this time in pots), and more cucumbers, and planted out the remaining nasturtiums and a dozen marigolds around the house in various spots.

This took me until almost 4pm, at which point I turned my attention to Helen's slipping bike gears for an hour in the hope I could pack up my tools and water everything before the Phillips family arrived at around 5.30pm. Since we were still car-less, Sue was picking up Helen to take her to their Italian lesson while dropping off Chris and the boys here with the aim of Chris taking a look at our non-functioning electric fence. Chris brought their own fence unit and a charged battery in the hopes that we would be able to identify the problem by process of elimination.

So, as the girls headed off into town and Reggie had his usual welcoming bark at Chris, Henry and Erik (which didn't last very long at all, surprisingly), we sat and had a beer on the sunny patio and then a little glass of red before we started work on the fence. But before we could drain our glasses we heard the sound of a car door and Reggie barking. I wasn't expecting anyone, our guests had not long left (on foot) for Pietrabuona so wouldn't be back for a while. Just as I was wondering who it could be, Helen and Sue reappeared with a back of shopping!

It transpired that Rita had not been at home when they arrived for their lesson, so they made an about turn and at Helen's suggestion went and bought some ingredients to cook dinner for everyone. A lovely impromptu evening ensued, and as Helen and Sue cooked dinner and the boys watched 'The Matrix' (for the first time ever!), Chris and I took the bottle of wine, our glasses, Chris's fence unit and battery, and headed down to work on the fence.

We set Chris's fence unit up and hooked it up to our fence, which produced the same poor voltage as we've been getting all these weeks. We then had a walk around the perimeter to check for vegetation that might have grown up and be touching and shorting the fence, but there was nothing (Helen and I have been quite hot on removing encroaching creepers and the like). We then unhooked the unit from the fence and tested it directly - which gave us 4000-6000 volts so that was fine. Something, somewhere was wrong with the fence, but what?

Next we cut and separated the top two ropes so that we could test each individually. As it stood, the two lines were one length that ran around the perimeter twice, crossing over at the fence unit. I figured that the fewer breaks or joints in it the better, and after we reconfigured the fence and tested both middle and top ropes independently we got different voltages on each - a clue at last! We set about taking another look around the perimeter for maybe a broken rope clip or whatever it was that was affecting one rope and not the other. It wasn't long before we found that one of the steel posts had been twisted 90 degrees or so (quite probably when the potato thief climbed through), and this was allowing the rope to touch the steel post and short the circuit. On further inspection, we found a couple more posts that had done the same. All posts corrected, we hooked Chris's unit back up and we got a 4000-6000 volt reading from the entire fence!! I couldn't quite believe that, with all the focus on everything green shorting the fence, I'd not noticed this before. We unhooked Chris's unit and hooked ours back up. I held my breath, switched it on, hooked the tester up and got a reading of 4000-6000volts!! What a joyous relief! Not only should our potatoes be safe now, but I would be saved the trip to the shop to try and explain the problem and deal with all that followed it.

Feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves, I grabbed the fence to make absolutely sure and got a big zap from it in return - much stronger than anything I've felt from it before and so strong that I have no doubt that any but the most determined pest will look elsewhere for their feast from now on (I'm sure I'll be eating those words very soon however, it can't be that easy, can it?).

With a few tweaks planned for the fence tomorrow, we headed up to the patio to light the fire pit, finish the bottle of wine and get stuck into dinner: pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce, which went down very well indeed, with all but Erik having seconds, and some thirds! The Phillipses eventually left to get the boys home to bed, after a really enjoyable and satisfying evening. I'm quite sure that if it hadn't been a school night, we'd have happily whiled away several more hours (and several more bottles of wine to boot).

This morning, we repeated the same routine as yesterday, although Reggie's barking while Helen was in the shower got me up promptly today. He seemed to be in one of his barky moods this morning, so after breakfast I took him out for a walk to try and tire him out - but it wasn't long before he turned us both around and charged back towards home! I think he was still quite tired after yesterday evening when he spent a good while chasing around the goose enclosure. Henry had offered to put the geese away for us, and Reggie slipped through the gate onto the terraces with him. Since Henry had not done the geese-putting-away routine before, it took him some time to corral them into their house (which earned him a bite on the hand from the ever feisty gander, but thankfully no blood drawn on this occasion). Reggie, for his efforts, almost ran himself into a grave - he was so hot and panting so furiously that Helen took to dousing his head in water to stop his little brain boiling. I'm sure this extra curricular activity was responsible for his early about turn this morning, which was fine by me. Despite it being a short walk we still had to deal with six vehicles on the road - but I think Reggie's car lunging is reducing - he only went for two out of the six today, so let's hope that trend continues.

Once again it was mid morning by the time I got home and we sat in the sun drinking coffee before heading off to our respective offices for the rest of the morning.

While Helen worked away at her computer I was insulating the 50 or so steel fence posts to stop any future short circuits. This involved unscrewing two of the plastic rope hangers from each post then slipping pieces of old garden hose over the posts in between each hanger before using a grip that Spock himself would have been proud of to tighten the hangers back up and re-threading the rope through... By the time Helen shouted down the terraces to call me for lunch, the fence was three quarters done.

For lunch today we finished off a quinoa salad (with avocado, grated garlic, lemon segments from our tree and home grown radishes from our veg garden), along with some fresh and still warm bread that, unprompted, Sue had delivered us this morning before disappearing with half of our recycling.

After a very pleasant and slightly cooler lunch today (no need for the umbrella, it felt under 25°C today), we went back to work. Just as I was finishing the fence, I had a call from Izmet, the guy we've asked to collect and deliver these water-collection tanks for us. I'd sent him a text message at lunchtime to let him know that they were ready and we managed to establish that the tanks had to be collected at 2pm, not later, or before, and that he knew where the company was in Pescia. He offered to collect them tomorrow, so after a quick call to Donatella, who called the guy supplying the tanks, we agreed on a 2pm meeting in Pescia with the four of us: me, Donatella, Izmet (with his truck) and the guy selling the tanks. It's been a complicated thing to arrange and has taken far too long to get sorted, and we're extremely thankful to Donatella for her help and patience over the last couple of months to get this sorted and saving us 100s of euros in the process.

With that sorted and the fence upgraded and zapping away happily at over 4000 volts, I went up to the lawn to start putting training wires into the garden wall so that we can try and train what we think are a couple of old grape vines we found up the wall. How exciting that would be to reinstate some really old grape vines and encourage them into fruiting again!

When I ran out of eye hooks I called it a day to go indoors and keep Reggie quiet during Helen's 3pm conference call while at the same time catching up with the blog posts.

It was almost 4pm when Helen emerged from the office and headed out to try and find Lucca with a worried look on her face - worried because he's been in the habit over the last few weeks of asking to be let back in around lunch time for a snack and a little snooze but today there had been no sign of him. Normally that wouldn't be much cause for concern, but not long before Helen had heard cats fighting down below the house somewhere and as Florence was indoors it could only be little Lucca getting into trouble with one of the tough-looking heavy weights that we see around here. Although he's much better at standing his ground than our diminutive Florence, is he's not a fighter so we hoped he was just hiding somewhere.

She eventually came in looking relieved, with our little black cat following closely behind her. Panic over.

With Chris coming to our rescue again at 5.30pm to drive me to the car dealer, I decided now was a good time to hop on my bike and ride down to our local farmacia. Donatella had very helpfully ordered us some heartworm tables (for Reggie) to be delivered to the village pharmacy - what a star! We had no idea this could even be done and were waiting for the car to be returned to take Reggie to the vet to get the tablets, thanks again Donatella!!

I had the call this morning to let me know that, apparently, our car is ready. I find it hard to believe, but for now I can only give them the benefit of the doubt I suppose. Time will tell!

So it's been friends to the rescue over the last couple of days (and indeed over the last week) - how much more difficult life would have been without them!

First crop!

For some reason, today felt like an uphill struggle for both of us. I guess we had quite a tiring weekend, and the heat sapped a lot of our energy. Of course, for me, getting up at 4am to dash to the rescue of our whining pup didn't help. Poor Reggie had rather an urgent need for a toilet trip, but thankfully he came straight back in and settled back down again after he'd done his business and I'd traipsed back upstairs to bed.

Stuart started his morning finding some posts to support a net to cover the potato bed (in an attempt to prevent any further potato thievery), but was soon side-tracked by our guests who needed a little help with their hire car and its broken wing mirror. He spent a little while calling around Avis offices and explaining the minor accident that had happened, but other than 'call in at your nearest Avis office' (which is in Lucca), he didn't get much out of them. Stuart was going to offer to go into Lucca with them to help with communications, but since nobody from the company seemed all that bothered about what had happened, our guests chose to leave things for now, with the option of going into Lucca later in their stay if they decide to. Instead, he wrote down a few useful words and phrases for them to take with them when they went out, as they planned to call in at a couple of garages to see if they could get a spare part.

I, of course, spent the morning at my desk, but really didn't feel like I had much get-up-and-go on the work front today, and was more than ready to take a break for an early lunch at 12pm.

We ate lunch under the shade of the garden umbrella - the first time we've opted to put the umbrella up when we haven't had company with us, which means it must have been hot today!

After another stab at work after lunch, I decided to call it a short day and both Stuart and I headed down to the veg terraces to do some work.

I spent a couple more hours digging out roots from the newly dug bed - once again it was back-breaking work and still those darned roots kept appearing! - while Stuart weeded all of the established beds, which was a not inconsiderable task as the weeds really have taken hold over the last week or so.

Come 5pm we were both wiped out, so retreated to the patio and sat under the shade of the garden umbrella for a while. While doing so, Stuart tried calling the car dealership to find out the status of our car - we'd been told that the mechanic would update the dealer on things either last Friday or today, and we still hadn't heard anything. The chap he spoke to told us he was just talking with the other guy in the office and would call back. Needless to say... he didn't. This being without a car thing is really starting to wear thin!! If I were being optimistic, I might think that the fact they've had it for so long must mean that they are repairing it and will have it back to us soon. Having had a fair bit of experience with these guys though, I suspect that the reality will be yet more frustration and inconvenience.

While Stuart went down to the guest patio to see how Ernest and Diane had got on today, and enjoyed a long chat and a Belgian beer with them, I got on with making a start on dinner, washing up, feeding the animals and watering the plants. We then both went to the vegetable terraces for our very first harvest: a full crop of radishes!

Needless to say, tonight's dinner will involve radishes as we have rather a lot to get through! (Lesson for next time: sow roughly half the number of seeds as we did first time around - it's all a learning process!)

Oh for an ice cream!

It was an earlier than hoped for start to our Sunday this morning: the cats, Lucca in particular, wanted breakfast before 6am, although he was studiously ignored until 7am, and shortly after that, Reggie uncharacteristically started whining in his crate. Reggie's crate is positioned directly above the bedroom of our guests who arrived last night. They'd had something of a nightmare start to their Italian holiday - pressured into buying expensive and unnecessary hire car excess insurance by AVIS (of all people), getting lost immediately on leaving the airport (due in no small part to the quickly descending darkness), and then smashing the wing mirror on a road works sign before getting here. They looked absolutely frazzled when they finally clambered out of the car at about 9.30pm last night and were so tired they couldn't even face reheating Helen's lentil ragu for dinner and settled instead for red wine and bread.

With this in mind, Helen quickly jumped out of bed to let Reggie outside. She didn't make it back to bed afterwards, opting instead to do washing up and keep an eye on Reggie while I lay there listening to him having his usual morning bark-a-thon and wondering how long before Diane and Ernest packed their bags and left for the airport.

I eventually got up at about 8.30am and Helen and I ate our breakfast outside at a very leisurely pace with the beautiful sweet smell of the acacia blossom all around us and the sun gradually heating up the patio.

After we'd finished our breakfast, we changed into work clothes and headed down to the vegetable plots on the lower terraces to rake and weed the bed that my uncle John had dug over for us the week before last - we were in urgent need of more space for veg as the cucumber seedlings in their little plug trays were starting to struggle with their confined space, as were others.

About three quarters of an hour later, we heard Reggie barking in the garden. I guessed (correctly) that he was at the gate barking at Diane and Ernest so I went up, jaw clenched, to remedy the situation. No animal brutality took place, you'll be pleased to hear. Instead, I invited Diane and Ernest up to our patio for a drink and a chat so that Reggie could have some time to get to know them. The four of us then whiled away the rest of the morning chatting about the local area and our move here, and it wasn't long before Reggie had done enough familiarising to go indoors and flop down on the cool kitchen floor for a doze.

By the time Diane and Ernest headed off to explore, it was almost 1pm so Helen and I settled on the patio for a lunch of fresh tomatoes drizzled in extra virgin olive oil with salt and pepper, cold lentil ragu (which makes an excellent cold dip), fresh rocket leaves dressed in oil and lemon juice, boiled eggs, bread, oh...and a glass of beer (it was Sunday after all!).

As our guests made for Pietrabuona on foot, we finished lunch and headed back to work on the lower terraces in the searing heat. The weather app on my tablet would have me believe it was only 26C today but it felt hotter than that. In fact, it was so hot the I gave up working at around 4pm, unable to take it any more - I was on empty. I left Helen digging over another new vegetable bed, as yet untouched, in the hope that we can find space for the squashes and pumpkins that are growing.

It was while we were down on the lower of the vegetable terraces that we both had a depressing realisation: the bracken, brambles and other plants have started re-growing with a real vengeance. So much so that we will have little choice but to watch quite a bit of what we have cleared over the winter (both on the lowermost lower terraces and the uppermost upper terraces) get covered over again this summer as it's just too much to keep on top of while have so much else to do that takes higher priority. The only slight silver lining is that this autumn we won't have to clear anything like the amount of decades-old bramble growth that Helen razed to the ground this winter with her trusty Stihl hedge trimmers.

Anyway, I headed indoors to the cool of the house and hid there for an hour until Helen appeared, her back done in, having finished the first and hardest dig-over of the bed. We were shortly joined by Diane, pen and paper in hand, as she and Ernest were off to stock up their cupboards at Esselunga and, knowing all too well that we are car-less at the moment, she had come to ask if their was anything we needed - a very kind gesture indeed, and one that hopefully meant that they couldn't be too annoyed with our not-so-little bark-machine... yet. Let's hope this morning's introduction has sped things along towards a harmonious (and as peaceful as possible) holiday for them.

Helen and I then sat on the patio with a couple of cold beers watching the sun slowly dip and thankfully cool (how on earth did we do all that physical work last summer in temperatures like this and higher?). Tonight's dinner is as yet undecided: do we harvest our very own first crop of radish for a quinoa salad or light a fire and cook fire-pit fajitas? We'll let the beer decide.

One year on

Today, it is exactly a year since we spent our first night in our house here in our little piece of Tuscany.

For anyone not familiar with the beginning of our story here, or in need of a reminder, THIS is how we first entered the house (using power tools) and THIS is how we spent our first day as inhabitants.

That first night here, I cried myself to sleep - wondering what on earth we had done, too jumpy about the number of creepy crawlies to sleep, and desperately missing our carpeted, double-glazed, centrally heated, mains sewer-connected, mains gas-connected house in Abingdon. Thankfully, the next morning, when I woke up to find it was still sunny and that amazing view was still there, all my worries melted away and we both rolled up our sleeves to start the mammoth (and still ongoing) task of getting the place in order.

The last 12 months have seen plenty of challenges, frustrations, unforeseen obstacles, tears (lots of), freezing cold winter nights, fierce storms, power cuts, communication black-outs, illness and hard, back-breaking work, but also lots of fun, laughter, heaps of satisfaction, quality time with friends and family, the joy of making new friends, beautiful weather, stunning views and, of course, lots of prosecco.

We still have a mountain to climb - getting this place to how we want it, and even maintaining it in its current state is like trying to run up a down-escalator, but I think we've now reached a point where we can actually appreciate some of the things that we have achieved over the last year. It's taken us a long time to acknowledge that we've made any progress, and looking back over our old photographs has been a lesson in standing back and taking stock and allowing ourselves a gentle, cautious pat on the back.

We have our first paying guests (strangers, as opposed to friends/family) of the year arriving this evening for a 2.5-week stay in the apartment. We desperately hope that they will find the apartment to their liking and that they will enjoy the local area and scenery as much as we do. We also hope that Reggie won't terrorise them, but that's going to be harder to pull off! Having spent this morning supermarket shopping courtesy of a lift from the lovely Sue & Chris, and the rest of the day cleaning the apartment and cooking a meal for our guests, we are now about to open a bottle of bubbles and reflect on the last 12 months while awaiting their arrival.

Cheers!

In each of the photos below, 'then' is on the left (and varies in date, some from when we first arrived and others after we had done a little work) and 'now' is on the right.

Car-less and work shy

After the monumental struggle with tiredness I've had over the past couple of days (which Helen hinted at in yesterday's blog), I decided to try a less strenuous day today - not work shy exactly, but I chose the less physical tasks to tick off my list. That was not before another 12-hour sleep though - I was so tired after yesterday that I woke to find that I'd snored my wife into the spare room, something I haven't done for months and something I'm only liable to do if totally wiped out or have had one too many glasses of the hard stuff - last night was the former.

As it was just after 9am when I woke (yes, that means I was asleep at 9pm last night), the sun was already coming up over the hills behind the house and starting to warm the patio, so breakfast (for me at least) was outside. A beautiful start to the day. At 10am, Helen had a work call scheduled, so I decided to take Reggie out of earshot for a walk to the quarry track near Vellano.

Unusually, there were people up at the reservoir today - we normally don't see anyone but today a small group were felling trees around the reservoir. There was enough noise for Reggie to come close to me looking often for reassurance, but he was happy enough to have a growl at one guy standing much closer to us.

We got home an hour or so later just as Helen's conference call ended, and I sat on the patio with a mug of tea and my tablet PC to finally sort out my to-do list so that's its all in one place. I've been surviving lately with lists written on different scraps of paper, but that isn't organised enough for me and has genuinely caused me some sleepless nights as I've woken in the wee small hours wondering if I've got this, that and the other on any of my lists. The moral of this story is that I need to allow a little time to keep on top of my lists simply to clear my head. I don't think it's helped my mood much over the last few days either.

After clearing my head and sorting my 'master' list chronologically, I headed out in the car to a garden centre near town to grab a few shrubs to add some much needed colour to the outside of the house. We have heaps of lilac-coloured irises at the moment, but little else actually in flower. So, with the car loaded with lavender and four other plants (of types I couldn't identify but liked the look of), I got home in time for a later than normal lunch.

I was due to take the car to the mechanic over near Altopascio this afternoon, so lunch was brief - we'd soon be car-less and I needed to make sure we had everything we needed to finish off the apartment before our guests arrive on Saturday, so I rummaged around in the old shed and found the paint and even some rollers that hadn't been ruined by the rain pouring in through the holey roof so dragged them out and left them somewhere out of Reggie's way.

Chris and Sue had been in touch this morning to offer to accompany me to the garage in order to give me a lift back home and save me cycling back from the garage, but it couldn't be until 5.30pm. After feeling as tired as I have been over the last couple of days I bit their hands off and told the car people not to expect me until 6pm.

After applying a final coat of filler to the walls in the apartment, I locked up and sat in the office with Helen for an hour and a half to tick of some small admin jobs on my list - small jobs, but ones that had been eating away at me for days now, so it was all in a good cause and it made me feel loads better.

At 4.30pm, I hopped in the car to head off and meet Chris so that we could drive to Altopascio in convoy. But of course, the car wouldn't start would it!! It was behaving like a cat that had got wind of an impending trip to the vet - if only it had a sofa to hide behind!

I abandoned the car and weeded for half an hour while trying to call Chris, who had been out playing rugby. When I got hold of him he said he would come up here anyway after a quick coffee, so I jumped into the car quickly to try it once more - and it started (caught by a surprise attack from behind, it didn't see me coming) - so I quickly headed down into town to meet Chris and left helen sanding in the apartment.

We dropped the car off with the mechanic and I managed to explain the three problems we were having well enough, but then couldn't understand what he asking me. I dragged Chris out of his car and into the conversation and as the mechanic was slowly explaining to Chris, I understood that all he wanted to know was when I needed the car back. A strange question, as he doesn't even know what's wrong with it yet, but anyway, he's agreed to look at it and to tell the dealer the scope of the problems by Monday and we'll take it from there.

When we got back to the house, Helen was busy barrowing piles of stone across the driveway and after a brief chat with Chris accompanied by loud barking from Reggie, he left us to our evening - which for me involved the third al fresco meal of the day. Helen had cooked a Ligurian potato salad while I was out, which was ready to eat before the sun went down and I couldn't resist a little glass of red to go with it. 

The next couple of days will see us car-less and busy getting the apartment finished off - and hoping we have everything we need to do so!

Hot & tired!

A year ago today, we were setting out on the biggest adventure of our lives. It would be another few days before we arrived at our new home in Tuscany, but the journey began 12 months ago today with a long day's driving from Bristol to Nuits Saint Georges. I wonder how we would have felt back then if we'd know that, one year on, we'd be owners of geese and a dog - I'm pretty sure you'd have been able to knock me over with a feather if you'd told me we'd have a dog!

Anyway, today started early, but not anywhere near as early as our journey did a year ago. Once again, it was a very mild morning and my exercise session felt harder in the warm air.

After a shower and breakfast, I settled down to work in the office while Stuart went down to the apartment to work on some of the things that still need doing.

The morning was uneventful - Stuart popped out for some plumbing supplies, while I carried on at my desk.

We stopped for lunch at around midday. Stuart seems to have been suffering over the last couple of days with exhaustion, irritability and a lack of energy, so I think that the early lunch was a must for him in a vain attempt to muster some energy.

After lunch, I went back to my computer for a couple more hours before going out to join Stuart and lend a hand where I could.

By this stage, he had abandoned work in the apartment and returned to his screen-building project. I could hear him rustling around in the trees on the lower terraces cutting and cleaning pieces of hazel, which he then brought up to the guest patio to add to the screen.

I made myself useful by carrying on with the hazel cutting on the lower terraces while Stuart worked on the screen, then did a range of other small jobs to help things along.

The day was hot. It was both sunny and fairly humid, which sapped what already little energy Stuart had, but we worked on until 5pm - by which time the screen had moved on a fair way. It looks really good and won't take long to finish off now, although whether or not that gets done before our guests arrive is another matter as the list of jobs to do before then is as long as our arms.

After tidying tools away, we retired to the patio to collapse and relax in the balmy evening. It was while we were sitting on the patio, Reggie pottering around us, that Reggie suddenly rushed to the fence and started barking his head off up the terraces, standing on his hind legs and desperately wishing he was tall enough to get over the fence. This is not an unusual occurrence, and it can be somewhat wearisome, but this time, as we both turned to say 'Reggie, quiet', we realised that there, standing on the top terrace looking down at the three of us was a deer! Needless to say, it turned and ran off to get away from all the noise, but Reggie continued barking for a good while, after which he sat staring up at the terraces just in case the intruder made a return visit.

So we now know that we definitely have deer on the terraces once again. We guess that there is also something else visiting the lower terraces as yesterday, for the second time, we found that something has been digging up and eating our potatoes. The damage was less severe this time - just 4 plants dug up and eaten as opposed to the 20+ last time - but still very frustrating. One thing is for sure though, Reggie was in the clear. The poor dog took the blame for the last round of potato devastation (despite my protests that it was unlikely to be him as potatoes are toxic to dogs and he hadn't been ill), so this time he was acquitted of the charge. Unfortunately that makes it a more difficult problem to solve though - it's easy enough (relatively speaking) to stop Reggie going down to the veg beds unattended, but not so easy to stop local wildlife digging things up. Especially when you appear to have a faulty electric fence that doesn't kick out enough power (one of the many things that need sorting out)!

A few other niggles that add complications to our enormous to-do list are: yesterday we received yet another bill from Telecom Italia in the previous owner's name (the transfer of accounts should have been made by the geometra shortly after we arrived, 12 months ago, and even after several delays, we understood that the transfer had  been made several months ago). This means that we are being billed (yet again) for services we haven't been using and don't want (it turns out we are still paying for internet through the phone line, and still paying for various packages that the previous owners had but which we didn't want) - the upshot of which is that we are being billed €118 for a telephone line that hasn't even worked since early February! Now, the fact that the line isn't working is kind of our fault for not having reported the problem yet - it's one of those tasks that keeps getting moved from one to-do list to the next - but still, I wasn't expecting a bill for €118 for a phone line that hasn't been used! Stuart has been in touch with Andrea about the latest bill, so we await to see what happens next. Next on the list are a toilet with a faulty flush, the tap on the bottom of the water butt in the goose island being blocked and not letting any water out, oh and ... our car is due to go back to the dealership tomorrow to try and get to the bottom of all of its problems. Despite asking to borrow a car as a replacement, they have simply said that we will need to leave the car with their mechanic 'for some days'. Bl**dy brilliant!!

You can be assured that there are plenty more niggles and frustrations that I've left off this list (did I mention that we still haven't had the contract for the purchase of our house from the notaio? that we still haven't had the ownership documents for the car? and that Reggie has lost his tag so we need to get a replacement engraved?), and that there is an even longer list of things to do that are less frustrating but equally important and pressing.

We never imagined it would be easy here though, and who are we to complain when we live in such a beautiful place, we only need to walk out of the front door and look around at our amazing view, the trees and the terraces to feel grateful for being here.

In store for tomorrow are: supermarket and garden centre shopping to try and get everything we need for our visitors' arrival before we are left vehicle-less (and hopefully to tide us over until we can get the car back); Stuart taking the car to Porcari (and cycling back); and more work in the apartment (if there's any time in the day left by then!). Early to bed tonight then.

The tidy-up begins

We awoke this morning to the distinct feeling of summer in the air. It was already mild when I was getting my exercise equipment out and seeing to the animals and the forecast was for the temperature to climb today.

After breakfast, I settled down at my desk to do a few hours' work while Stuart busied himself outside in the car park and guest patio area. By the time lunch time rolled around, he had already set up some temporary screening to hide the rubble pile on the extension site, created a new flowerbed along the side of it, and made a start on the screen for the guest patio.

We ate our lunch in the hot, hot sunshine on the patio. The days of us feeling the need to put the umbrella up to hide from the heat of the sun can't be far away now!

After lunch, I changed into work clothes and went to help out. Between digging soil to fill the flower bed, weeding, picking and bagging up rubbish from the extension site and helping with the screen, the afternoon slipped away quickly.

We were both quite jaded by late afternoon after working in the heat, but pleased with progress.

We took Reggie out for a short stroll through Sorana then came home to sit on the patio and relax for half an hour before starting the rounds of vegetable watering, cooking dinner, putting the geese away etc. This evening was the first of the year that stayed really warm until darkness fell - we were able to eat dinner outside and it still felt warmer outside than in even at 9pm. We're looking forward to many more balmy evenings!