A Sad Week

Last Saturday evening our wonderful, octogenarian neighbour passed away. We understand that she had been suffering from cancer for a few years and although she had gone down a few times over the last four years that we have known her, she had always bounced back, until last week.

About a couple of months ago she was on the roof of her house dealing with a chimney fire (along with her sons). She told us later that the fire engines had to come from Macerata which is about 40 minutes away, so what else could she have done? Only last month she was at the top of her albero di fichi (fig tree), sawing off limbs deemed to be pruned. I remember last November when we were harvesting our Olives – at the correct time of course as directed by our neighbour – she was up one of her trees and I was up one of ours and we were having our usual stilted exchange of Italian from the canopy of the Olive trees. Brilliant.

She really was a fabulous person – it’s quite hard writing about her in the past tense. She was so welcoming to her new Inglese vicini (English neighbours). We shall so miss her deep brown harsh voice bellowing at the cats to get off her vegetables, or shouting at her sons to do something or other or just engaged in normal, i.e. shouting, Italian conversation with visitors or neighbours.

La D and myself were often tutored by her in the art of the orto (vegetable patch). Pretty much everything from spacing of plants, when to plant and cut, varieties, harvesting, what to eat with what. She even gave us some bamboo poles after she looked at our first, looking back on it, pathetic attempt to stake out our tomato plants. I kept forgetting that we were not growing toms out of Gro-bags in England. Over here the tomatoes need almost Stalinist structures to support their growth, development and ultimate produce.

She would be out tending her garden pretty much every day unless it was bitterly cold or raining. She grew so many vegetables. Frequently she would bellow at us to see if we would like some lettuce or brassica or anything really.

Last summer, a couple of the children who live in our lane would help her in the garden and she would be chatting away to them and showing them how things were done. We don’t believe that she has any grandchildren, but she would have made a great granny.

Often in the warmer weather she would wander down the lane and stop to chat and give us a bit more advice such as “If I was starting again I wouldn’t have planted those there” or “Those canes need to be a bit more straight”. It was all said in very good humour..
Sometimes when she visited, she would have a twinkle in her eyes and produce a few eggs from the pocket of her old wraparound that she wore constantly. She had a great sense of humour and we had been looking forward to knowing more and more of our Italian neighbour.

And then of course there was Bertie. We think it was love at first sight for both of them.. She adored the Bert. Loved rubbing his great soft neck and head while he put his paws on her shoulders and proceeded to wash her face again and again. Bertie was bigger than she was when he stood on his hind legs, by quite a bit.

So, not much more to say really. She lived with her two sons, one of whom, the elder, also has cancer. In fact mother and son were in hospital at the same time recently. We understand that he is very poorly too.

Arrivederci, cara amica.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

Everything in the garden is …………green

Well almost. The veggies are going gangbusters - this is an expression my brother who lives in the USA uses. I find it very expressive.

I swear the potatoes wait until your back is turned and then suddenly put on a growth spurt and next time you look round they are a couple of centimetres taller. Quite extraordinary.

We have already had some fave – broad beans. They are so sweet and fresh, absolutely lovely. In fact tonight I am doing a fave risotto at La D’s request. Yummy.

Last week I did a asparighi – asparagus – risotto with our own asparighi and it doesn’t get much better than that. One minuet they were in the ground, about 30 minutes later they were being served up in a wonderful, creamy risotto.

Ooh, ahh, Cantona. It was that good.

This morning we were planting the first of our citrioli – cucumber – and zucchini in rather a special way. In fact news of our innovative and groundbreaking method must have been leaked, I am not sure who by but Bertie has suddenly found it very difficult to hold eye contact when you are talking to him. Kew Gardens have sent not one, but three of their vegetable experts to talk to us about our methods.

Actusally it’s quite simple really. We don’t use the vegetable patch as both these plants spread like wildfire and take up an enormous amount of space. No, in the ground that surrounds one of the vegetable patches, we cut out a turf about a spade width size and a spit deep. We fill it with a mixture of soil, bought compost and our own kitchen compost. Sow the seeds and cover with a couple of centimetres of soil and then, this is where the innovation comes in, cover with half a plastic milk bottle which acts as a mini cloche. Brilliant.

Of course it’s in its developmental stage and we won’t know how well the system works for a few weeks. So far – after two hours – everything seems ok, except for one small, or rather large thing. Can you guess? Yes, that’s right, Bertrum.

La D and I covered the area with some old fencing to deter the beast, just until the seeds started to really get going. Did that deter him? Did it hell.

When we had finished I went to have a bonfire of some vine trimmings that needed burning (that’s my excuse for the bonfire and I am sticking to it) and la D went to do some seeding. After about 15 minutes the air was suddenly filled with some excellent, good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon words. It’s good that the sky was so blue.

I rushed over to where the noise was coming from, I think I guessed it when I heard the shouting.

Bertie the Bastard (one of several alternative names he has) had only gone and dug up half of the seeds we had just planted. He had pushed away the old wire fencing and got stuck in.

To give him a little credit, I think he knew he had done wrong after the verbal pasting he got. He slunk off and sat under the outside table looking morosely at us. After we re-planted our 45 minute old seeds again and put a further protective layer over them, La D called him over. He came to La D almost crawling on his belly. Soon La D had a lovely smile for him. I looked on and smiled too..

“What are you smiling at L’uomo chi fa? Is something burning? Don’t you think you had better go and tend to the bonfire before this part of Le Marche is put to the torch?” La D said. Clearly, I was being dismissed.

Birds in the Wall

Over the past few days. we have been watching the adult blue tits flying into the wall where their nest is. There is so much noise coming from the nest, which of course we are unable to see at all. The poor adults have been flying in with flies and caterpillars and presumably other bugs to try and satiate their offspring’s’ appetite. Then yesterday we were sitting outside having a cup of coffee when I said to La D. “La D, listen”

“What? I don’t hear anything” she said.

“Exactly. The tits have gone. They have flown the nest. So that’s good, but we do miss their daily activity. Perhaps they will be back next year.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Home

This week we have been down to a town called Comunanza to finalise the importation of our car. It is a very long, protracted and expensive undertaking, but necessary.

On the way home we were just coming round a bend and there in the middle of the road was a very large bird beside a stick. At first I thought it was one of the large grey backed crows of which there are loads here. But then it flapped its wings and rose into the air with the stick in its talons. But it wasn’t a stick, it was a black snake. It was quite something to see. The bird was a Sparrow hawk and the snake was, I think, just a black grass snake. But the snake was writhing in the birds talon as it lifted right over the trees at the side of the road right above us. La D was mesmerised.

“It was a good thing we didn’t have the sunroof open” she said “Imagine if the bird had dropped it and it had fallen into the car. I would have died”

I think it would have given rise to some fairly erratic driving for a few seconds, that’s for sure.

This is just what it looked like, except the snake was black.

Lingua, Lingua, Lingua

La D got an opportunity to do some research for a novel she is writing on set in WWII. Near us in Severigilano there is fairly well known old Prisoner of War (POW) camp. One of our friends over here is a very keen historian and knows quite a bit about the camp. There was a talk being given last Friday at the town hall and he said for us to come along. From what he said we thought it would be about the camp.

Well, there was a little about the camp but it was actually about the “Resistance” movement in Germany itself and in particular about a group of very young Germans called the White Rose of Monaco who helped several Jewish people to escape the persecution.

Now, the problem for us was, that the main speaker spoke in German and then had a translator translating after every sentence. As you know we are not proficient in Italian, and we know no German at all so we were pretty flummoxed. When the speakers spoke in Italian we could certainly follow the gist if not the detail, but with the stop start in German and then Italian with the translator clarifying things all the time with the speaker, it was pretty difficult.

But there you go, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

If you want to find out some details about the camp have a look at:

http://camp59survivors.wordpress.com/

Ciao. Mantenere la fede

Cats

Some very sad mews. Mum’s kittens were getting on for two weeks old. We let her get on with it in the old laundry room under the external staircase.
We popped our heads round the door every now and then and made sure she had fresh water and sometimes a bit of food just for her, not to be shared by the other cats.
We looked in last Sunday evening and they were in the little basket. La D even picked one up. It seemed very comfortable.
The next morning La D heard Mum mewing in the laundry room. When she opened the door, only Mum was there, all the kittens had gone. It was obvious that Mum was “looking” for them. Poor Mum was frantic, we even let her come into the house so she could have a good nose round, but of course they weren’t with us.
All this brought back last year and Sisi and the “wolf” that had got her kittens, funnily enough at almost exactly the same age, just under two weeks. Clearly there was no wolf involved this time.
We did some research on t’internet and found that tom cats can often take kittens away. We were unable to find out why nor what happens to them. This to us is the only explanation. We have seen one of the old toms coming out of the access hole, an old black thing, called Lucifero – you can probably guess the English equivalent! As I said there certainly wasn’t a wolf involved, nor, we feel sure, a fox. A fox couldn’t get through the small access hole high up in the wall. Also Bertie would have heard it and smelt it, in the night and would have gone berserk with barking.
All we do know is that the toms are again on the prowl, harassing the poor female cats, just like last year. So there will be some more kittens soon no doubt.
We were wondering whether the taking of the kittens makes the females more receptive to the overtures of the toms. We have seen one poor female cat surrounded by four of them. It’s looks like a form of feline gang rape.
We already had a home for one of them. Two of the others had creamy fur very like Clarence’s, and we were going to have one of those. Anyway. C’est la vie.

Weather

Unlike last week, the weather is now Yes. Lots of sun and warmth. Fabulous. Lots to do in the garden now it is drying out a bit and we can get out without galoshes and umbrellas.
However, at the week end we suddenly heard a lot of noise, a bit like pebbles landing having been thrown in the air.
It was a hailstone shower. The noise was incredible. The hail was pinging off the metal guttering and smacking onto the ground. They were about the size of broad beans. Bert went out to have a look and soon came back with his broom-head-size tail between his legs as he obviously felt pretty uncomfortable being hit by bits of ice.

A Bird In The Wall

You know the old saying “A bird in the hand, blah, blah, blah”? Well this is nothing to do with that adage.
At the back of the casa are three large stone/brick buttresses, which are part of the back wall. Like the rest of the house they have been sort of pebble-dashed. We will be taking this off in the next 20 years or so to expose the lovely stone and brick work beneath and then have it re-jointed. Anyway, we have started the taking-off process, well, mainly one of the sons continued the work started by La D. So there is already an area that has been exposed. Being pretty old, there are many gaps between the stones and this time of year some of then are used by the “Lidards”. Now Lidard may not be a word you have come across before However, our favourite three year old granddaughter calls Lizards, “Lidards” and therefore Lidards they will remain.
However, we have noticed little blue tits going in and out of one of the gaps, taking in food. Sure enough once they go in, if we are close enough, we can hear the little chirrups of the babies. So that’s rather lovely, isn’t it? Helps make up for the kittens, in a small way.

Bertie Is Famous!

Bertie’s story appears in the May issue of Dogs Monthly. Go round to your local newsagent and get a copy and you can read all about him and also get a glimpse of La Duchessa - -a good photo actually. Or if you are too tight or in desperate financial straits, nip round to your local vets and pretend to have sick animal. If you don’t have an animal, borrow one. Sit in the waiting room and rifle through their waiting room reading matter. Once you have found the magazine and read the piece, just say to the receptionist that your animal has made a miraculous recovery, and leg it.
It’s an extremely well written piece even if I say so myself. In fact the editor said he had to make no changes at all to the text before sending it for print.

Bertie Celebrity Status Brings Bizarre Behaviour

I think we have gone wrong somewhere in our training. All the books etc say never your dog into your bedroom and don’t feed him titbits. What do we do? We let him into the bedroom and give him a bit of our biscuits in the morning.
But, and this is really taking the biscuit – pardon the pun. Since his celebrity status has been confirmed, it seems to have gone to his head.
He now looks at La D’s tea , only La D’s not mine, and starts to bark and shake his head up and down, until La D gets up and takes what left of tea, normally almost all of it, and puts it into his dinner bowl for him to drink. He absolutely loves it.
During the warmer weather there is also a spin off benefit for me when La D has to get up out of the bed, but I am too much of a gentleman - stop laughing – to go into any more details. Suffice to say it brings a smile to my face. Enough said.

Bertie Confirmed As A Water Baby

Bert, as you know from previous entries loves the water. Well on Monday he had his first proper swim. He so enjoyed it, we had difficulty getting him out of the river. We were throwing sticks a little further every time and he suddenly launched himself into the deep stuff and doggie-paddled round and round. When he came out he seemed to enjoy the act of shaking himself from head to tail so much that he did it over and over again. But when he first came out and his coat was stuck to his body, you could see the real size of him, without his fluffy coat. He is a magnificent, big dog.
Here’s a of pictures of him standing guard.










This is a bit of a Bertie Blog!







Ciao. Mantenere la fede

Lingerie Lifter, Knicker Nicker, Underwear Usurper

Shock horror, La Duchessa has no underclothes.
Bertie has suddenly become extremely interested in ladies underthings. To such an extent that when we put out the washing for drying – we usually put the “smalls” on a waist-high drier - within a few minutes there are bras and panties littering the area around the back of the house. He takes them all, but nothing else. No shirts or jeans. We pick them up, brush them down if they are not too dirty and put them back to dry and blow me, in five minutes they’ve gone. So they have to be washed again and the same thing happens.
Alarmingly, this is an aspect of his personality that has only just come to light.
Now, I’m a broad minded liberal sort of a person, but what gets me is that Bert completely ignores my underwear. Why? I call it blatant sexism.
Also, it’s not that he wears any of the things he takes, or even tries them on. Nnow that would be a story. Although I consider myself to have a good imagination, Bertie in a black bra and panties is a stretch of the imagination too far.
So, he just “nicks” them and then leaves them on the ground. Some days the ground at the back of the house looks like a Turner Prize exhibit. Mmmm. Food for thought. Any income generation scheme should be looked at. No matter how bizarre.
Anyway, spare a thought for la Duchessa. Poor La D. She’s having to go commando for much of the day until she can dry her undies in a secret place that we have found and Bertie is unaware that it exists, for the moment. I have offered her the loan of my boxer shorts, some of them are quite dashing actually, but although she hasn’t answered in the negative, the face she pulls when I mentioned her wearing my boxers makes me think that she would only wear them should hell freeze over.
What a dog (not La D, but Bert!)
Any solutions would be gratefully be received.

Four Candles or Fork Handles?

I’m pretty sure most of you will remember the scene from the Two Ronnies that this title refers to.
What brought it to mind was a recent Italian lesson we had with our neighbour.
We were talking in Italian about places we have been to in Italy. One year we stopped off for a couple of nights in Lucca which is where Puccini was born. It is about an hours drive from Florence.
Anyway we said we had been to Lucca. Our neighbour shook her head saying “dove?” meaning, where? So we repeated the name, Lucca. Phonetically it’s a bit like saying “lookah” Still no recognition on our neighbour’s face. We spelt it out for her. Then her expression changed to one who has just understood what was said. “Ahhh, Lucca” she said, pronouncing it exactly like we said it, Lookah.
So, we moved on to words less open to misinterpretation such as sbocconcellare (to nibble) and schiacciante (nut cracker). Much easier, because they are at the moment totally unpronounceable to us.

The Orioles are back (and other Uccelli (birds))

No not Margot and Jerry, I mean the real things.
Those of you who follow this blog – thanks fan – may remember that about a year ago I got very excited about a bright yellow bird that had started to frequent the estate. Well they are back.
Both La D and myself thought we heard them at the week-end, but yesterday I actually caught sight of one and was able o have a really good look at him through the binoculars. Fantastic colouring. From the sounds we can hear we reckon there are probably three pairs.

I know I mentioned the Hoopoe a couple of weeks ago. We have loads of them in the garden. Again there must be three or four pairs around. It’s quite lovely to have so many brightly coloured birds. Not to take anything away from the old Sparrows, but they are a bit drab, colour-wise aren’t they? I mean there is no getting away from it, is there? But I expect they don’t think so. I can’t imagine a Sparrow looking into a mirror and saying, ”God, my plumage is so drab. Why can’t I look like a Bird of Paradise?” I mean where would they find a mirror? Also, how would they know what a Bird of Paradise looked like anyway. No, I reckon the Sparrows are OK with their feathers.

Gattini

Well I can report that Mum is doing sterling work with her week-old brood – see picture. I (this is L’uomo chi fa speaking) don’t know whether that’s good or bad really. I am in two minds over our assumed responsibilities for these kittens. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so English in my views of smallish, pettish type animals. But there you go.
These community cats have the lowest morals of anything I have come across. The males are already on the prowl again. Ganging up on other females who, like Mum, have probably just given birth. Fortunately they have not been round Mum because of The Bert.
Let’s hear it for Bertie. Protector of fallen cats.
But our worry is that as soon as she “leaves” the kittens, she’ll be got at again and the process starts all over.
We will just have to make sure that we don’t leave any birthing places or receptacles available for feline use in the future, and hope for the best.

Weather

No.

Ciao. Mantenere la fede

It’s raining cats, not dogs
It was La D’s turn to exercise Bert this morning. I turned over waiting for the bounding hound to leap onto the bed – very wrong, I know – whilst La D went to feed him. All of a sudden she came rushing back to the bedroom. “L’uomo chi fa, L’uomo chi fa” (she doesn’t really say that of course “ there are five very small kittens in a basket outside the back door. Mum has given birth!”
Now we had known Mum was with kittens, as is her daughter Starlight, but we didn’t think she was going to have them right outside our door.
So, just as I was about to have a nice glass of OJ and a hot mug of Red Bush tea in bed reading my book, all change.
What are we going to do with them? We asked each other. The interim solution is to put mum and kittens in the old laundry room under the stairs. Fortunately I had only cleaned it out a few weeks ago and it was relatively dust, cobweb and dead leaf free.
So that’s were they are at the moment and I suppose they can stay there for a few weeks – there is hole in the wall to the outside and we think that Mum can get in and out through it.
Of course the big problem is the Bert. Now Bertie is a big softie and if he saw some kittens all he would want to do is to play with them. But 25+kilos of a frantic 7 month old puppy leaping about might be a little intimidating, not to say fatal to the poor things. But we will have to see. Mum may decide to move them anyway when they are a little bit older.
No doubt we will return to this subject. Pictures may be published.

Speaking Italian
Now I know you probably don’t realise but I speak perfect Italian. The only problem is that the person I speak perfectly Italian to is myself. It’s brilliant. I never misunderstand what I am trying to say. However it does have its drawbacks. It’s quite solitary, and I need to get out more.
When I am waiting to order something, I go over and over in my mind what it is I want to ask for, to such an extent that I ooze confidence.
It is as though I am soldier and in my mind I see myself in all the camouflage stuff, bristling with weapons, swaggeringly self-assured. If you were to stand behind me you would see this authoritative figure, legs apart, arms akimbo, 6’ 6” feet tall. You get the picture.
So there I was waiting to ask for some minced beef – macinato. It was my turn. “Buongiorno” I said to the butcher in a deep manly tone. “Eh, cinque cento grammi macchiato, per favore” I said with a knowing smile on my face.
“Che?” he said. My weapons were beginning to bristle less, my camouflage was beginning to fade. “Eh, cinque cento grammi macchiato, per favore” I said again. The butcher looked blankly at me.
Oh no. It suddenly dawned on me what I had asked for. For all those coffee devotees out there you will probably noticed I had asked for 500gms of espresso coffee with a touch of frothy milk. Doh!
“Scusi, scusi” I squeaked for by now I was only 3’ 2” tall, devoid of any camouflage, weapons in fact any clothing, my legs were turned in and touching at the knees. Well at least that is how I felt I must look like.
“Macinato per favore”
The butcher fulfilled my order without another word and handed me the package. I went and paid for it at the casse and left. I felt a right wassock.
It’s great this “speaking another language thing”. But it’s not that easy for me, nor for La D, but we continue to learn and are positive enough to know that it can only get better despite having a few hiccups on the way.
Oh the joys of learning a foreign language.

Green Shoots of Recovery – The Gooseberry Pie maybe back on
Last week I wrote about how a newly acquired Gooseberry bush had failed at the first hurdle due to you-know-who having savaged the thing before we were able to get into the ground. Well, we have had a lot of rain recently and as I was walking by the bush, I looked over and noticed some new green shoots. So naturally we are hoping to have some of those lovely hairy green balls later in the year.

Have Passport, Will Travel
La D and myself are proud to announce that Bertie has joined the fairly exclusive club of international canine travellers. The world is his dinner pail. We are not sure if he plans to go back-packing, but it is a possibility, just as soon as he masters international dialling codes.

La D Surprises Again!
We were sitting reading some Sunday newspaper supplements that the DIL and MIL sent us – keep them coming DIL, we need them – when La D uttered a cry of surprise. She was reading an article about some top man in a financial institution and the difficulties being faced by him compared with the difficulties being faced by the company’s lesser mortals, i.e. job losses.
She announced to me in her very haughty and beautifully sensuous way that only she can, (it is a difficult thing to combine haughtiness with sensuousness, but La D does it fabulously) “These Big Ponchos think they can get away with anything and leave the poor ones to fend for themselves. It’s just not fair.”
“I agree La D” I said, “But I think you mean “Head Honchos”, not Big Ponchos”
I smiled, she laughed, and then she threw a glass of water over me.

Ciao. Mantenere la fede

The cat with only two lives

You may remember that not long ago I reported that we were going to take custody of a cat from some friends we know who are having to return to the UK. Well in fact one cat but with three kittens growing nicely inside her!

We got a call over the week-end from them and we thought it was about when we could go and collect Jess, as she’s called, as they are returning in about 10 days time. But the poor wee thing had been run over, again, this time with fatal consequences and they were ringing to let us know.

Our friends and their children were distraught. It was going to be hard enough to leave her behind when they move but at least they’d know that Jess was with some people they and the cat knew, and would be looked after.

We were getting quite excited at the thought of a another house pet. Our thoughts were concentrating on how Bert was going to take with living with another animal. Also of course with the impending birth, where we were going to give Jess a bit of peace and quiet to get her “nest” together. Anyway, that won’t be happening now.

Very sad.

Of course Bert still will have the three community cats that seem to live fairly permanently outside our door. They are really getting on well together. Bert does seem to annoy Clarence sometimes, but he is only wanting to play as you can see by his demeanour towards Clarence. Clarence however, bears his fangs, hisses loudly and flattens his ears against the back of his head and shoulders. I can’t believe Bert doesn’t understand that this means “go away”. But then most times they are lying out in the sun by the door together, quite happily.

Birds, birds, birds.

I was looking out of the window yesterday when I spotted a couple of very colourful little birds flitting about one of the nearest olive trees. I went and got the binoculars to get a proper look. They were Redstarts, a species I haven’t seen here before.

I was looking in wonder at the fabulous colouring the males have and I shouted out to La D, “Come and have a look at the wonderful breasts on these!”

La D came shooting into the room, and without actually looking at what I was doing said, “What are you looking at L’uomo chi fa? You do know that the police can trace all sorts of things on computers these days”

“No dear” I said, “It’s a small bird, the feathery kind, that has a very colourful breast”

“Let me see” she said and took the binoculars out of my hand and stared out of the window. “I can’t see anything” I gently took the binoculars back and turned them round. “Ahh” she said. “Oh yes, it does have lovely colouring. It’s very pretty isn’t it”

“It is. But not as pretty as you my darling” I said.

A little blush arose in her cheeks, but she said “Flattery will get you nowhere. Haven’t you got to do a TPU today?” And with that she left the room with a wistful look in her eye and a little smile on her lips. She loves playing hard to get.

Enough of this frippery, on with the blog.

The Hoopoes are back, and with a vengeance. Their call is heard all day long and we have several daily sightings. Excellent.

We also have Nuthatches flying about the olive trees, as well as Tits, Blackcaps, Woodpeckers, Gold Finches and Blackbirds.

We are hoping the Golden Orioles come back this year too. If they do I don’t expect it will be too long before we hear and see them.

Although there are lots of cats around they do not seem to put off the birds which is good from our point of view. Certainly Bertie won’t give them any trouble. He hasn’t started to chase birds, yet, but of course he might do. His sister does

The Gooseberry Pie is off!

Naturally we expect to encounter natural difficulties in growing some plants. Soil too Ph, not enough Ph, too sandy/too heavy, too sunny/too shady etc., etc..

We have encountered another threat to the growth and longevity of things we are trying to grow to provide food for ourselves.

You’ve probably guessed it …… yes, the Big White monster himself, Bertie, aka The Canine Destroyer.

Last year we identified a couple of our fruit trees that had died and decided to replace them, an apple and a pear. We also fancied planting some soft fruit plants, so at the same time we bought ourselves a gooseberry bush.

After we got them home from the nursery, we watered and left them outside to plant the next morning.

When we came out the next day, the gooseberry bush was missing.

However a quick search revealed this battered, chewed sad looking fruit bush on its side half out of its plastic container which, surprise, surprise had lots of bite marks on it. Now, neither La D nor myself are prone to savaging plastic plant pots with our teeth – unless it’s a full moon – so the culprit was easily exposed. When we tried to talk to Bertie in a very civilised “British” way to admonish him – God knows what the neighbours think of how we treat this mutt – he just looked, well, sort of bored and just wandered off as we were half way through his ticking off.

We persevered with the gooseberry and planted the poor thing, but too much damage had been done. Today it just looks as though three little sticks have been stuck in the ground.

The fruit trees appear to have taken very well and show no signs of having been Bertied. So we live in hope.

Ciao. Mantenere la fede

Earthquake.

Not really a lot to say as it has been so disastrous that everybody will have heard about it. Fortunately it was a long way from us, although we have felt a couple of the heavy aftershocks.
We can only imagine what the people involved are going through.
There has been quite a few efforts to help by the English community across Central Italy with people wanting to do something and some wanting to get personally involved. Some who have holiday homes in the region are offering them to those now without homes. Brilliant. They have made them available for at least 6 months.
We have donated some funds to the expert emergency services, http://www.cri.it/donazioni.html which seemed to us to be the best thing we can do in the circumstances.

Gorge of Hell

I know we have talked about this before, but we have a friend staying with us for a few days and yesterday we took her up to the gorge along, of course, with Bert. Unfortunately we forgot the camera.
The river was quite full from all the water from the snow-melt and there is still quite a lot of snow on the tops of the mountains.
As we came down the path to where the gorge trail really starts there appeared to have been a huge landslide that covered the river and the path. When we got closer to it though, it turned out to be snow with all sorts of vegetative detritus. The river was gurgling away underneath it. From both ends it looked like the ingress and egress of water in an underground cavern where the water disappeared and reappeared.
There was no problem walking over it so we could be reunited with the path. We came across another couple of massive movements of snow further down the valleys. They looked like mini-glaciers (I have never actually seen a glacier in real life, only pictures so I am sort of guessing here, but the logistics must be the same).
We had a lovely walk through the gorge and Bertie loved experiencing the new terrain.
We stopped for a picnic – we had bought some porchetta from the market on our way there. Porchetta is a huge roll of herb-stuffed pork, roasted and covered in crackling. It is sold in slices. Yummy. Anyway after lunch we set off again and came across another of these snow slides blocking our way but much tinier. We walked across, the surface being very hard, but we had now left the route of the path and had to get back to it. The snow slide was petering out, but yours truly decided to take a short cut and stepped onto the snow that lead down to the path. There was a slight problem. This particular lot of snow had no substance to it whatsoever. My foot went straight though the surface and I went “a over t” with impressive speed and landed in a crumpled heap on the cold, wet, stony path. I did feel a bit of a tit I must say. Bertie thought it was a fantastic new game and came bounding over to join in the fun and started to lick me and bite my hands – strange dog. But after much rubbing off of imaginary flecks of something and muttering “I’m fine, I’m fine” to La D and our guest, I hobbled on with nothing more than a bruised ego.
Fortunately there no more incidences of the negative sort and we continued to have a very enjoyable walk.

Volpe

The other morning I took Bert out for his early morning perambulation. We were walking across the fields to a small olive grove when I saw a fox starting to cross the grove. He or she was looking in perfect condition and had a beautiful coat.
I haven’t seen many foxes, but what always stands out in my memory of them is the way they carry their tails; dead straight and horizontal to the ground.
The fox turned and saw me after I had been watching it for a few seconds – Bertie had run off the other way and hadn’t seen it – and it just quickened its pace and made for the woods on the other side of the grove, it’s tail remaining ramrod straight.
Beautiful.
A moment or two later Bert came bounding over and I was hoping he wouldn’t pick up the scent of the fox or he would have been off. He’s still very much a pup and although he’s getting better at heeding our commands, there is much progress to be made.

Blossom

The hills around us are covered at the moment in cherry blossom. There is a lot of commercial growing of cherries here and it does make wonderful sight seeing serried ranks of cherry trees in full bloom. Gorgeous.

En garde!

All right, fencing. We have trebled Bertie’s area of garden that he can have the run of without going into the neighbours or onto the road. We are also attempting to keep the cinghiale out as we intend to move our orto (vegetable garden) into one place.
Anyway we will have to wait and see if it all works the way we want it to.

Temperature rising

It has been a lovely warm and sunny week so far. You can almost see the grass growing. The decespugliatore (strimmer) is back in full swing. Although I have encountered a problem whilst using it. Bertie.
Yes, that’s right, Bertie thinks this noisy, smelly machine that has an open metal blade that spins around at 7000 rpm is a cracking big toy just right to play with. The dog’s demented. So we are trying to train him otherwise. It is a slow process, but we will succeed.

Spot the difference




















Ciao. Mantenere la fede