A water solution

The weeks here go by so quickly.  We wake early to beautiful clear sunny mornings, sit out for breakfast and contemplate the day which seems endless.  Before you know it we are eating dinner then falling asleep in front of the 10 o’clock news that’s on at 11.  

In between there has been more progress in the garden room.   I finished oiling the terracotta floor tiles and MrFF is renovating the solid wooden doors.  Much of the brown furniture has left the building including this beer keller type arrangement, a really nice man from the next village was happy to have it.  For now we have the old wooden garden table and chairs, much more in keeping with the light airy room.

Naturally rather than relax and enjoy our efforts we are thinking of returning to Ilkley.  The sooner we leave the sooner we can come back, the heat is starting to build, 30 degrees today when we went down into the valley for provisions and worst of all the mosquitoes are back.  I am disappointed to be leaving the garden now I’ve regained control as so many plants are yet to flower.  I have hardly bought anything new this year, a tray of trailing geraniums that just started to bloom this week 

and a yellow portaluca that I’m not so keen on.  But I want to see the plumbago open, the hydrangea that I thought was dead but is showing a few green shoots come back to life and these geraniums that I’ve had for several years are almost out but not quite.

So today I had a word with MrFF about the possibility of some irrigation for the pots.  Much tutting and head shaking from him as he doesn’t want to leave the water on inside the house, pleading from me.   We have a solution, we will leave all the pots at the front of the house where they’ll be in shade most of the day and netted off from badger invasion.  He’s already bought the plumbing parts and started work on some sort of isolation valve so there will be no water entering the house just supplying the garden tap.  He will then connect a timed sprinkler for the pots.   However at present it looks like he might be installing the Trevi fountain

The garden room

I quite like pretentious room names.  In Scotland we had a large room above the double garage that we called the morning room because it got the sun am. I know a keen weaver and spinner who called her workroom the loom room, you get the idea.  The garden room sounds better than the room under the balcony and makes it acceptable to be a mix of outside and inside.

So the garden room is coming on, it’s decorated, cleaned and partially restored.  I’ve been applying linseed oil to the unsealed terracotta tiles, i love the smell of that stuff, and they look much better.  MrFF has cleaned and repaired the fireplace, it was pretty awful with crumbling plaster and mortar splattered bricks.  

The room was full of brown furniture, we donated the table, bench and chairs to someone opening a taverna down in the valley, the brother of our local bar owner. We have a white wooden garden table and chairs that are far too heavy to move in and out that we can use instead to fill the space, I doubt we will ever wish to traipse our meal downstairs.

I am toying with the idea of chalk painting the large dark dresser as there is far too much brown in the room, it needs lifting and the change would be worth the effort.

Between the spiral stairs and the room we have made a library.  I enjoyed dusting and re-shelving all the books, most of which I’ve read. 

There’s still work to do and it feels rather make do and mend but when I remember that two years ago water was pouring from the ceiling and the walls were black with mould it does feel like progress.  It’s not the beautiful space it could be but neither is it the embarrassment it was, for now we’ve spent enough time and energy on a room we have never used.

Oranges and Lemons

A slight blip in posting as I was logged out of my account, all fixed now and nothing compared to the hassles of Italian life which goes like this.

Two weeks after our meeting with the geometra who as usual told us what he needs to do, nothing has been done.  

The room below the balcony, which I have decided to call the garden room, is almost finished.  It certainly looks better than it did when water was pouring in and the walls were covered in mould but the floor, which has unsealed terracotta tiles is not great and neither is the old furniture in there.  I may do a post to show you.

MrFF ordered some aluminium posts to support a new sun sail for the balcony, to be delivered to our house as they are quite large.  Delivery was due on Monday, by Monday afternoon delivery was due Tuesday.  On Tuesday the tracker said our address was invalid and the courier awaited instructions from the sender.  We’d provided our full address plus what three words identification and our Italian landline number to make sure they’d find us.  So MrFF sent to the supplier a copy of a letter from our Comune that showed our address, they replied that delivery would be on Wednesday, we knew it wouldn’t.  Today Thursday the tracker says the courier is waiting for instructions for re-delivery which is odd since the have definitely not been here to try to deliver, and we have camera evidence, or even tried to phone us.  I am thinking the couriers should offer different delivery options - this year, next year, sometime, never.

In happier news the sun is shining and yesterday we had a morning doing nothing before returning to the work.  The garden is great and my lemon tree is filling me with joy, lots of beautiful large lemons and it’s covered in blossom and bees for the next crop. Not only that, my single orange is gradually changing colour and there are a few more flowers on the tree that I have nurtured for 20 years.  There are also a few flowers on the little kumquat, but the bees are so busy on the lemon I worry the latter two won’t be fertilised.  

We had a wonderful Sunday lunch with friends, so nice to be out socialising after all the decorating and cleaning.  I came away with a large bag of bitter oranges from one of their many ladened citrus trees.  I made 15 jars of fresh fruity marmalade, the taste isn’t quite the same as Seville oranges and it was a challenge getting a set but I was determined.  With all the challenges here I have to be.

Italian update

We’ve been here just over two weeks now and progress is good.  As usual the garden has been my priority.  I’ve lost a few plants, the badgers seem to take the tuberous ones so little sign of irises or dahlias, but generally everything is thriving.  My single orange is still on the tree and changing colour, it also has several new flowers which I hope will set.  My lemon tree is amazing, having been told it would never grow at our altitude, 750 metres, it’s full of fruit, new flowers and happy bees.

MrFF has been busy in the room below the previously leaking now retiled balcony Over the winter the walls and ceiling remained dry so he’s removed the old black mold, which fortunately was superficial and is busy redecorating.  He’s happy to work on his own with me joining in as required to do the cutting in round skirtings, switches etc and help with the cleaning, there was a lot of sanding down that filled the room with dust.

We’ve never used this room which is a pity.  Its huge room and opens onto the lower garden, it’s very private and slightly cooler in summer than the rooms under the roof.  I’ve always had a desire for a day bed in there or maybe a hammock for afternoon snoozes. 

Sadly there is no sign of Grigio.  We’ve walked out and called her a lot, it doesn’t look good as she hasn’t been seen since Christmas.   Meanwhile a youngish ginger cat has appeared.  At first we ignored him but since we have cat food to spare it seemed mean not to give him some, we are a soft touch.  He’s quite friendly, we can stroke him and pick him up, but he doesn’t hang around too long after he’s eaten. We get the impression he has a home which is fine, we like to see him but are glad he doesn’t rely on us.  We really don’t want any more of the stress of leaving a cat for months on end however well we provide for it. So for now we have Vincenzo our time share boy who is very sweet, we are trying not to get attached.

Finally we have a meeting with our geometra on Friday early evening about the planning violation.  He seems incapable of action, so far as we know he hasn’t made any approach to the Comune since we asked him to help us last August.  However his recent email acknowledged we were returning to the village after Easter so he was on programme, his own programme which bears no resemblance to ours.  

That’s just the way things are

When we were in the UK we saw on our Italian security camera a man wearing an unidentifiable high viz uniform call at our back door, leave and come back again with something in his hand.  His car or van was obviously parked up the road so we couldn’t identify that. 

A few weeks later the same man was back, this time he again went back to his car and return with a screw driver spending time at the back door, which is where our electricity meter is housed.  We have a smart meter so there is no need for readings to be taken, besides if he wanted to just read the numbers he wouldn’t need a screw driver.  As a precaution we asked Mario to check and the house was fine.

However this time MrFF took from the camera a still of the visitor which he then sent to our provider asking if they could identify the person and explain what he was doing.  They replied, eventually, saying they couldn’t respond because MrFF had written in English, it must be a special law that utilities cannot use translator. MrFF sent everything again in Italian and this time they replied, in their own good time, that it wasn’t their department and we needed to contact the distributor.  Third time lucky, not, we got no reply at all from the distributor. 

When we arrived at our house last week MrFF discovered that the lock on the meter cupboard had been tampered with, broken and inoperable, so much for the screw driver.  Maybe it’s also a rule that keys cannot be taken out of the office.  MrFF wrote to the distributor complaining that we no longer have access to our meter and are unable to isolate our electricity supply should we need to.   In fact if the meter trips off, as often happens, we have no way to turn it back on without breaking the door open.  We got no response.

Mario arrived with our mail and there was a letter from the electricity people, dated 2 days after our complaint, saying they need to change our meter urgently and we should make an appointment.

If they’d asked us to make an appointment before the first visit and said they didn’t have a key for the cupboard that they provided we could have arranged for Mario to give them access.  Now we have no idea how the man intends to open the meter cupboard and doubt if he going to replace the lock. I know I am being too logical about this, we’ve only been back a few days and I have yet to adjust my brain into Italian mode but now as the usual senseless challenges return we really feel we’ve arrived.

We have arrived

Boxes and cases litter the house which needs a really good clean.  However I have been weeding the garden and sorting the balcony pots, MrFF has got the comfy chairs out so we can recover from our journey in the sun.

Sadly no sign of Grigio, we keep calling and will walk out later in case she’s moved elsewhere.

Lost and found

I’ve regularly been taking my walk up the other side of the valley to see Bertie the alpaca since November, sometimes three times a week.  I have never seen him, there have been goats and lovely brown sheep but no Bertie.  There never seemed to be anyone around to ask about him.

Last week I was returning from my walk and met MrFF on his way for his walk, i reported no Bertie.  So he’d taken himself up to the field to look and fortunately met some people who told him that Bertie was in a field not visible from the road.  MrFF crossed a couple of field, naughty but necessary, and sent me this.  

 

Bertie, behind the gate, is fine and with his goaty companions.  It probably makes sense for him to be safely out of sight, I am just happy he is ok.

Then yesterday MrFF was looking at our Italian security camera and spotted a cat in the garden that looked like Grigio who hasn’t been seen since Christmas.  This morning the same cat appeared where we park the car, had a happy roll on the road and wandered to the back door.  This time we could see better and it could be Grigio.  We’ve told Mario and hope he might go up to check.

We are planning to leave for Italy in a few days, maybe with a couple of nights in France to arrive Tuesday evening. We just hope this is Grigio, that she stays around till we arrive and we can be reunited. Keep your fingers crossed for us please.