Monday 12 November 2012

We've been very busy working outside for some time now pruning our massive pine trees, some of them have struggled this year with the dry weather, the person that planted them many years ago, obviously didn't realize how close they would be, once they grew to their maximum height.
 They are pretty horrible to prune as the very sticky sap just oozes out and you stick like glue to everything that you touch and its almost impossible to wash off. Also we are unable to burn the wood even when its dry, as the sap turns into tar, then goes hard and  blocks the chimney. So for the moment we have given the goats mose of them to climb and play on. They are loving them.
We had to change some of the fencing too as Picasso has found he can jump that extra foot which is now 7 foot, he has been escaping then eating the olives, luckily we were around when he started this so patched it up quickly until we changed the new bit of fencing.

We had several friends for dinner on Saturday, as our guest were nearly all Italian I decided to cook Italian dishes, the antipasti was of ham, salami, cheeses etc. then, a porcine lasagna,  then lemon chicken and vegetables and salad, fruit salad, ice cream, cakes that our friends had brought and too much wine as usual, but a good evening. My dishwasher has broken so there was a mountain of dishes to do, so I confess I was a little too p--sed to do them until Sunday.

Thunder woke me up on Sunday morning and heavy rain. I cannot ever remember that having ever seen so much rain in all my life (even though I come from England where it rains a lot). The sky was dark grey and the  thunder and lightning went on all day long and throughout the night, I have never seen or heard of this before, especially here in Italy. Storms are usually quite spectacular but for a storm not to stop for so many hours was a little scary. The dogs were unsettled all night too.  
This morning Monday, was quite bright so we said we would take a drive to the coast which is just 20 minutes away and give the dogs a run and to see if there were any nice sculptural pieces of wood that had been washed up on the beach, we were quite shocked to see huge lakes in the fields,  the roads were covered in mud and rocks, there were police everywhere, who were blocking any traffic going onto the main road to Rome, so the roads had lorries everywhere, so, we never got to sea either as the police turned us back too, so we really dont know what had happened near the sea. It has started to rain again now and part of our cantina has flooded through the walls but luckily there is a drain that the water escapes into. I do hope the walls hold though as they hold up our house.

Our balcony roof has been leaking too even though we paid (some Italian cowboy) to have it fixed just a week ago, so all in all, we are very damp at the moment. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny so I am hoping things will dry out pretty quickly.








I was hoping to get some marmalade made this week but that will have to go on hold until we dry out a little more.
The olive picking started last week too, Im sure a lot of the olives were blown off of the trees yesterday, its such a pity because many of the Caninese rely on the money from the olives to live on, and its such an important time for them in our town of Canino as the oil is very special.

I am now off to check on the animals as another storm seems to be brewing and the rain has started belting down, I wonder if we are getting the after effects of the hurricane Sandy I hope not, so many people suffered and we are nothing like them.














2 comments:

  1. Eek! That all sounds rather grim! I do hope you dry out soon and the weather settles down.

    ReplyDelete