The biggest surprise

The biggest surprise was that nasturtium leaves and stalks are really delicious when cooked. (No, really.) Steamed and then tossed in olive oil with garlic. So the free food's going well! On top of all the veggies and numerous ways of eating home-grown mushrooms, we had (well, the blokes had) wild boar sausages the other night, courtesy of Mario. He and his posse spent last weekend conducting a concerted campaign against the boar that are ravaging not only our veg patch but also the just-sown fields of the farmers round here. They ended up with three boar. In the case of wild boar my normally strongly anti-hunting ethic goes into reverse, as these are animals that have no natural predators here and the population has just gone crazy since they were reintroduced a while back. They do a huge amount of agricultural damage. My hopes that Mario's efforts would end the digging-up of our garden were dashed, however, as this week the beasties dug over the broad bean bed and trampled much of the broccoli and greens. Deeply upsetting. I'm setting up an electric fence round the veg patch now, and if that doesn't keep them off it'll be watchtowers, searchlights and landmines.

Mario's latest weapon

Mario's latest weapon in his all-out war with the wild boar is a bright light attached to an apple tree and a badly tuned radio balanced on a fruit crate and turned up loud. He's hoping that this will keep the scavenging beasts away from his vineyard at night in these last few crucial days or weeks before the vendemmia. With my bedroom window open, all night long I can hear the tormented mix of Italian pop music and white noise just on the edge of my sound perception, and it stops me sleeping and drives me mad. In previous years Mario's boar-scaring methods have included miles and miles of white tape stretched along the edge of the wood, a gigantic stuffed-toy Tweetie-Pie, and a child's doll dangling at the edge of the vines, looking curiously terrifying and perverted, like something out of a David Lynch film. These things were all weird. But at least they were silent.

Wildlife report

Wildlife report. Fifteen or so wild boar rootling about in the valley early in the morning — several big adults and a load of piglets. A large deer in the top field, grazing. A hare nibbling shoots in a ploughed field when I was bringing Alessio home from a friend's house. Four or five Little Owls (Athene noctua) on the road home at dusk the other evening. Hoopoes, a nesting pair of redstarts in the garden, kestrels, a cuckoo (heard all through the day but never seen), swallows everywhere and the usual pair nesting in John's workroom. Lots of different interesting caterpillars!

Down on the ranch

Down on the ranch things have been quiet recently. Wet and mild, until a couple of days ago, when we had about a foot of snow dumped on us. It's thawing now but our steep lane is still icy enough to mean that the school bus won't come down to fetch Alessio in the mornings so we have to ferry him up to the main road. The first day of snow, he had to walk up — at 7.00am when the sun wasn't even over the hill yet — he was NOT pleased, and I think would prefer the UK approach to snow — shut down and wait for spring. 

Maxim has been in trouble for running off round the countryside in the company of Mario's two little terrier-type dogs, so we've been keeping him on the chain. Which means we have to walk him regularly, something we're not used to doing but I quite like it (as it seems to be me that's principally walking him, so far). I take him for half an hour in the morning after feeding the animals and before my own breakfast. This morning I went round the huge field below the veg patch, still deep in snow, and watched the sun come over the hill and light up the icy trees and fields from the top down. Very pretty. There's a lot of evidence of wild boar activity — the photo shows where they've been digging under an oak tree to get at the acorns. They've been up very near the house, too: under the enormous oak they've snaffled most of the acorns (poor Cass! she likes acorns) and have cleared part of the bank of brambles — I was going to take a picture but it's covered in snow now. Alessio wants to install a webcam to try to catch the wild boar on film!

We have bats

We have bats. We have three or four bats hanging sweetly in the room we're in the process of converting. One has a baby on its back (or possibly front). They hang as from invisible threads from the beams, and there are possibly some in the chimney as well. Not sure how they're going to like the room being turned into a studio. . .

The other night I'd just finished watching The Sopranos when I became aware of a very large moth in the room. Only it wasn't a moth. It was a bat. The front door was open because of the heat and it must have flown in that way. It swooped around a bit, and then flew out.

I hope it comes back. Bats are very nice.

The first day of September

The first day of September: a cool, hazy morning. Summer is ending. The farmers are starting to plough and people’s veg patches are filling up with all the winter veg seedlings as the summer stuff gradually starts to fade. The swallows are still here, the babies from the nest in the workroom now fully grown. They sit on the power line outside the kitchen window and up until a few weeks ago we would watch the parents feeding them. Now the young ones are indistinguishable from the parents. Periodically huge numbers of swallows swoop and wheel in the valley after their insect feast and often now they alight on the electricity cables, presumably waiting for the invisible signal that will set them on their way south. I can never remember when they leave – perhaps I’ve never noticed – so I will try to make a note of it this year. For a summer lover such as me, it’s a melancholy sight.

Another bird we’ve seen a lot of recently has been the kestrel: far more usual here are the buzzards and peregrine falcons, but this summer there has been a kestrel family on the other side of the valley and suddenly they’ve become a common sight in the field below the kitchen – often six or seven at a time flying about, and coming incredibly close to the house. When they perch you see how small they are in fact – pigeon-sized – and when they fly you see the beautiful smooth terracotta colour of their backs and wings. We see them up on the top road as well, perching on the power lines and hovering over the stubble fields. And the buzzards are always around, floating in the blue air and riding the thermals in huge, high arcs over the valley, piercing the sky with their cry.

We have hornets too! A nest in the wall near the apartment, where the hornets have gone in and out all summer, bothering no one; and a new (or newly noticed) nest in an empty birdbox on the massive oak tree by the side of the path to the veg patch. The knee-jerk reaction to hornets is panic and terror – they are huge and mean-looking and have a terrible reputation – but we have recently learnt that hornets are less vicious and more docile than wasps. Unless riled. (Never rile a hornet.) So we're inclined to leave the nests and see what happens. The one in the birdbox is interesting because you can see that the hornets are constructing, over the circular entrance hole designed for cute blue-tits or sparrows, a sort of intricate porch-like shelter. They make a kind of strong papery material with which they build their nests, very strong and resistant and beautiful. To get rid of a hornets' nest you call the fire brigade and they come out and deal with it (we had to do this a couple of years ago, when we had a really big one we couldn't leave) – because destroying their nests is something that really riles hornets and is not recommended you try on your own.

In the veg garden we are getting ready for the new season and have rotovated a patch and planted winter veg seedlings: savoy cabbage, broccoli, green cauliflower, chicory (greens) and cime di rapa (turnip tops). Still room for fennel but we’ve left it too late for leeks, which is no great disaster as for the past two years our leeks have been useless (I think we always plant them too late). Cime di rapa are really tasty and when John’s mother stayed years ago she told us they used to be a staple vegetable in England too – now sadly unknown. You eat them like spinach but they’ve got a sort of nutty, buttery flavour and are far less muddy when you wash them. The cauliflower we’ve planted is a beautiful, sculptural thing, bright green in colour and shaped like some kind of weird organic ziggurat: a vegetable as work of art.