Week 21 - The Road & Countryside Pursuits

This week has basically been about our road.

The picture below shows you how perpendicular the angle was and our bumper was beginning to touch the road, scraping it and doing it damage. A quick temporary fix had been implemented to enable us to get out and about.

As a result of the constant friction between ground and bumper, our car is now under repair.. k has been busy fixing it, 3 new tyres ordered, which arrived mid-week after only a few days. My heart in my mouth every time we went up and down.The image below really doesn't do the terrible condition of the road justice. The middle bit was extremely steep!!!

Anyways, at least it was better than it was in December 2013.....

 
News Update
Our road has been fixed by the Comune, and it is now looking a lot better in the most terrible sections!

It looks rather rocky, and indeed big stones have been laid down in some parts.  We are hoping the Comune will add a finer layer on top of this..

Part of the top layer of our road..

 

What we would like to be added to the road...

 

We are very happy that this work has been undertaken, and we are very grateful towards the Comune.  We have heard through the grapevine that parts of our road may even have tarmac added, and this would be amazing.  Watch this space!!

Grubs
This week I have been out in earnest catching snails and then depositing them in our field as far away from my plants as possible.  I read that if they are placed 65 feet away from where you find them, they won't come back to the same place (ie pots).  Let's see if this works!  They have been decimating my plants, and this is not ok!

I have also been digging out all my fresh compost from the compost bin, to add to the veggie plot and towards the bottom I found quite a few of these grubs.  Please look away if you are squeamish!

I then placed them in front of the chicken pen and Freddy and co had a feast gobbling them all up in an instant!   

Thus, the life cycle goes round and round and then the chicken droppings will go straight into the compost bin and the grubs will turn the mixed contents of the bin around to make lovely fresh friable compost.  Nothing at all is wasted, and the book below, Soil, Humus & Manuring, printed in the year I was born, is providing me with invaluable advice about the gentle art of composting!!  It makes for fascinating bedtime reading, and I am not joking :-)  It's a really practical handbook.

 

Contents of the compost bin have been dug out:

 Not much left!

 

Added to the veggie plot area, ready to be spread out before planting begins in earnest at the end of May.

I have also been using this fresh compost in my flower pots and for seedlings.

Furkids' Update

One of the new kittens peeking out of a box

Samantha gazing out

It has been a very busy week, but ultimately very satisfying.  Roll on Week 22!

Week Eight

On Monday I finished reading Ian McKewan's The Innocent.  What an engrossing story, and I could not put it down! Here's a link to the storyline on wikipedia.

We finally bought a cutter for the jungle area!!  Now it will take K only a morning or so to cut the 10,000 square metres of long grass instead of a whole week.  We are looking forward to it being delivered by Bartolini, the courier service in the next week or so.

Temporary image source until I take a photo of ours: http://www.tracmaster.co.uk/images/stories/virtuemart/product/bcs-630ws-commander-%26-scythe.jpg 

I was delighted to receive a lovely certificate of appreciation of helping to moderate from Shelly. It really made my day, and I sent her a little message from me with a link to my Muzy blog which had the following but with music..

The Comune men came to do some repairs to our road on Tuesday and it is just a temporary fix, as the road is still too wet to do much.  The worker said it was just to let us be able to get in and out a little bit more easily, so this is a relief.  In the spring, more work will be carried out to make it much better!

Views of the road after the work was done on Tuesday.  It was still looking a bit messy, but it was much better than before!!  Isabella and Samantha can be seen.  Samantha goes for a walk with the dogs every day!

 

The water pipe is visible in red because the water engineers said the land is still moving, so they can only dig it underground once everything has settled. It really isn't a pretty sight at the moment, but it will be improved in the spring, fingers crossed...

The Comune workers came again on Wednesday to add grit and finish the work they had done on Tuesday.  This is the section of 'finished' road below ........

Izzie taking a little break.

 

Samantha having a nice nap after walking with the dogs..

On Friday we went to Chieti, a town about 25 minutes away. We parked the car in front of the local police station.

We had a little wander around the historical centre and we came across some lovely buildings.

A view of the 14th century Saint Antonio Abate church door in Chieti.

I just love the intricate details on the door.

The reason we went to Chieti is because I had fallen in love with a chest of drawers seen on an advert in the local Internet paper, which matched our wardrobe, and so I simply had to buy it!  Here it is in its new home!

It goes perfectly with the wardrobe we already have below.

Mini Me viewing from the outside

On Saturday I posted up my blog feedback on the EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook session and created a new comic.

Tamara de Lempicka
Sunday was a rainy day and so I finished reading my book on Tamara de Lempicka, a fascinating artist who led a very colourful and exciting life in the Art Deco period.  She was born in 1898, just 2 years after my grandmother was born.

I like a lot of her paintings, as they are very bold and striking. 90% of her work in the 1920s consisted of portraits. Three quarters of them were of women in various states of attire, and not attired....  Such portraits must have been quite shocking and avant-garde in their day. The portraits she painted of men were mostly of her lovers.  She was described by some as a 'man-eating' butterfly'.

I had no idea that she had befriended the Abruzzo poet and writer, Gabriele d'Annunzio, so she has a vague connection with this region.  That could be why there is a huge poster of one of her paintings in a local cafe....

I like Tamara de Lempicka's quote on the back cover of the book:

"I live life on the fringes of society and the rules of normal society don't apply to the fringes".

 Roll on Week nine!

Project 52 - Week Two

What a rollercoaster week this has been!  I heard unexpected news from England on Tuesday, which made me book a flight back to England a week earlier than anticipated.  My wish for a peaceful and calm start to the new year was not really granted...

A visit to Penne for shopping on Monday. It's a beautiful historical town.

Freddy enjoying the views of the garden.

The state of our road is atrocious and I rang the Sindaco (Lord Mayor) on his personal mobile to ask him when he was going to fix it. He said he would see what he could do, but basically I know the Abruzzo region doesn't have enough money after the severe floodings and landslides......

Would you be able to drive down this 'road' in your vehicle???  It was quite a hair-raising drive to the airport yesterday morning at 5.30am.  Our 'road' is 1.2 kilometres long and it is now mostly washed away into the valley.  I asked the Sindaco to come and visit it for himself.  The land is moving constantly and deep ravines have formed in the surrounding fields.....

The ruts in the road are getting bigger and bigger.  The sheer amount of water has forced the land to open up, as you can see below!

Yes, it was quite a soggy mess for a while!!

Our ancient 4x4 is getting battered and bruised by driving in these conditions, and the mudguard has come off.  We intend to take this to the Comune when I get back to Abruzzo and ask for a replacement one to be ordered, as it is a comunal road, therefore it should be driveable for the public. Let's see what happens next in this saga.

This week has been stressful with the news of my mother being rushed to hospital on Monday, just 6 days into the new year, and me being in Abruzzo at the time.  I am happy to say that she is now back at home, and I will be able to help with her rehabilitation, and I am very happy I can do this, thank goodness.

EVO 2014

This week, however, has also been exciting due to the EVO session I am currently moderating called EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook.  I wrote and published a blog post about it on my main blog here.  I was delighted to see so many familiar faces and members of my PLN joining in and posting their fabulous 3,2,1 introductions. 

As one of the 15 session moderators, I am welcoming as many of the new members as possible, and so far I have personally greeted 201 participants!! 

There are over 400 participants to date, so it is well and truly a MOOC.  (Massive Open Online Course).  It's the first time in my life I have ever moderated such a huge number of  participants. I am enjoying it very much indeed, and had got off to a flying start at the beginning of the week, but now being back in England much earlier than expected means I don't have as much free time as anticipated. However, I will be catching up with the action whenever I can, and of course doing my best!! 

Finally, I was notified by Slideshare today that my presentations have been viewed quite a few times...  I am absolutely delighted to hear this lovely piece of news.

Let's see what Week 3 of 2014 has in store....