Feeling guilty...

Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been more than 2 week since my last confession... blog entry! sorry, blog entry! Sorry got a bit carried away there. I'm just so far behind, not only with blogging but with gardening too!

This is really just a quick "I'm still alive" entry with a pictoral record of what's been happening in the last 2 1/2 weeks or so.

The pilgrims left us again on their way back to France. They haven't updated their blog for a bit, but I have heard from them and they are still progressing well.



Hardly had they gone when the next batch of visitors arrived. So with them we frollicked in the sea:

...sunbathed...

Eddie proved so popular with Iana and Peter the 7-year old twins that Peter drew this picture of him:


The text on the top reads: "Dear Hako. I like your puppy so much that I sometimes think he's a rock star..."

We also went to the annual flower carpet display on Corpus Domini in Santo Stefano di Magra. Spectacular as always!

Elisabetta, our English pupil has had her first Communion (now she's allowed to confess her sins.)

We met a tortoise.

It hasn't all been idle though. I did get some work in every now and then, like a second strimming session before our land was returned to jungledom. This is me and Eddies having a wee nap afterwards. Note the grass flecks all over me of evidence that I really did do some work that day at least.

And now... It started raining again after a spell of very nice weather. So I'm still behind on the weeding, cutting side shoots off the tomatoes and tieing them up, planting out leeks, more weeding, picking more cherries, picking plums, weeding, cutting down the dead willow tree, cutting down the virtually dead plum tree, weeding, planting out the litchi tomatoes (they are still tiny, but they are showing!), weeding, weeding, weeding...

Another invasion has announced itself for September. I must make sure I'm better organised before they all arrive.

Of accidents, flowers and wine tastings

It’s been a while since my last post, and I think I abandon the series of “Our Terraces” The last 4 terraces didn’t look all that exciting on the 25th April, so I hope you won’t be too disappointed. If you are you are just going to bloody well come here and have a look at it yourself!

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks since the last post. The weather cooled down at the very end of May, beginning of May, with a couple of days of badly needed rain. This was followed by slightly changeable weather with odd sprinklings of rain showers, which meant we didn’t have to water the land until yesterday. Now the hot weather has returned. Cherries are finished and plums keep falling on our heads, loquats are finished and we’re eating our courgettes. The sunflowers have burst into flower too as you can see.

So much about the land.

Last Monday we had cycled to the seaside to see our Swiss friend Irene, who works there at the moment. On the way back we had to negotiate the busy Sarzana by-pass road during rush-hour. Just as Susan, feeling quite chuffed with herself about surviving so far, had got around a particularly busy roundabout, a car pulled out of private property right in front of us. This left us with no alternative, but move over to the extreme right of the road to avoid a collision with said car. As it happened the father of the lady-driver was busy cutting some major branches off his hedge bordering the road, and one of those branches came down precisely in front of Susan who was cycling behind me. She didn’t even see what was happening, before the branch had wrapped itself around the front wheel of her bike, sending Susan onto the tarmac. I only noticed after I had gone on a bit and found her bleeding from her face, left shoulder and right knee.

The driver stopped and the owner of the property still with saw in hand came rushing out of his garden. He did kindly offer to drive her to hospital, but a brief examination revealed she hadn’t broken anything and her injuries seemed to be superficial. He then offered the use of his wife’s bike, because Susan’s was not rideable. The front mudguard was broken, and the front fork was badly bent. So we took up his offer of the bike, leaving Susan’s wreck with him and exchanging phone numbers before we left.

It turned out that the proprietor was a senior officer in the Guardia di Finanza. I was a little worried about that fact, because I did not want to pursue a confrontational stance in demanding compensation, as he no doubt would be in a position to cause us more problems than we could him (I don’t want to go into any details in case the Guardia di Finanza read this blog…). However, il Capitano rang us the next morning to ask how Susan was. He sounded relieved, when I said to her that she wasn’t too bad. So I asked him: “what about the bike?” He said he’d take it to his local bike shop to be repaired. Later he rang us again, confirming what I had suspected, namely that it was beyond repair. So he bought Susan a brand new pink bike, with the same specs as the old one, but with everything in full working order. I had been thinking that both our bikes needed a general service anyway, so I now won’t need to do that one anyway. Picked it up on Friday and Susan was very happy with it.

Today though, Susan was obviously still a little nervous after her fall, we were riding down to Santo Stefano, where there was the annual Festa di Corpus Cristi, where the streets of the historical centre are decorated with flower petals. At the first hairpin bend, Susan applied the well functioning brakes of her new bike a little too hard and hit the tarmac again, resulting in another bang on the same knee and a couple of cuts and bruises on both elbows. The bike sustained only a few scuffs this time though, which is just as well as this time she didn’t have anyone else to blame. Now I’m on the look out for some falling branches myself, because I could also do with a new bike.

So much about Susan’s accidents (she says, she is going to stay off her bike for as long as it takes for her wounds to heal). Despite Susan’s fall, we did make it down to Santo Stefano to the floral display. Those who have followed this blog for long may remember the pics from last year. This year the folk of Santo Stefano excelled themselves again at some spectacular floral pictures along all the streets of the old town. My favourite this year was the representation of the church of Santo Stefano.

The original looks like this:

The final bit of news, I have now got an official website on line for my wine tasting events. It’s http://users3.jabry.com/tuscanytipple. Sorry, it’s a bit of a long and awkward site name, but it’s free. Once business starts flowing I will register an easier to remember name. In the meantime if you or any of your posh friends are planning on a holyday and would like to learn more about Italian wines, please have a look at the site and recommend it to anyone you know. The link is permanently displayed at the top right of this blog. It’s still a bit of a building site at the moment (some photos missing, only in English so far etc.) so wear your hard hats. I’d be interested how you find it as well, so do leave your thoughts on the comment function of the blog. What this business is essentially about is that I will hold fun and informative wine tastings at your accommodation while you are having a holiday in Tuscany, Liguria or our end of Emilia Romagna (Parma way).