The figs

The figs are finally ripening and they're gorgeous this year — huge, golden, sweet and juicy. I picked one and ate it off the tree and it tasted exactly of summer.

The veg patch is rampant now and we're back on the courgettes-with-everything regime. Lots of cucumbers too and we're learning how to pickle them (have I already mentioned that in a previous post? Oh well. It's very exciting). Our wild sour-cherry tree yielded up a puny 400 grams of cherries, which made one tiny jar of intensely flavoured, sublime jam.

Cass stomped on my foot last week whilst I was taking her an apple one evening and rather stupidly wearing only flip-flops. Owwwww.

So life goes on, only with a bit more hopping in it.

Just back

Just back from a trip to England, where it was hotter than it was here, apparently. But we seem to have had enough heat combined with rain to allow the veg patch to flourish and the land to be more jungly — and greener — than usual at this time of year. Herbie the new kitten is gradually but systematically wrecking the house, with a brief calm, and in retrospect blissful, interlude while he recovered from being bitten by one of Mario's small dogs.

The baby ducks are about a month old now — not so baby any more — and are being severely harassed by the big male duck. He’s violently aggressive towards them, though it’s clearly a hormonal aggressivity and what he's after is sex, not murder — but the poor things dash about going “peep peep” at the top of their little voices, flapping about and desperately trying to get away from him while he pursues them with single-minded determination. The grown-up female, showing no sisterly solidarity, ignores the whole performance — actually, she’s probably relieved.

We were afraid he was going to harm them if they were shut in together so we’ve been keeping them separate at night, while letting them loose together during the day so they can get used to each other; but the other day Alessio and I were at the market where I bought the ducklings originally, and he persuaded me to stop and ask the guy “what to do about the boy duck”. So I did. And that provided another of those female-English-city-slicker humiliations which are a fundamental part of life here.

“The male,” I explained carefully (bearing in mind there was a child present), “is very aggressive towards the female ducklings.”

Pitying looks and smirks exchanged between duck man and gap-toothed old farmer client hanging round for a chat. Patronizing comments such as “It’s just nature, love” and so on helpfully furnished.

“Yes, I know, but he’s so aggressive, I wasn’t sure if it was, er, normal.”

Overt grins and more patronizing comments along the lines of “Oh, it’s normal all right darlin’.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m afraid he’s going to hurt them.”

Outright laughter and more patronizing comments of the “well, they’ll get used to it, fnaar fnaar” variety, followed, at last, by some advice — to just put them all together and let them get on with it. And by the information that breeders usually keep one male to every eight females, so if we only have four females . . .

I scuttled off, feeling like a willing party to duck rape. Still, it’s a relief to know it’s all only natural.

The old cherry tree

The old cherry tree just below Cassie’s paddock has a fantastic crop this year. I noticed it as I was clearing the long grass away from the electric fence yesterday, and hopped outside the fence to pick some. Unfortunately the tree’s on a part of the slope where the ground drops away steeply and not only that but even the lowest branches are so high that I had to stretch to reach them. Using a stick, I managed to pull down a couple of branches so that I could pick the cherries, but I couldn’t reach any more after that (and fat stripy green caterpillars were falling on me too). Very frustrating. I ended up with half a kilo, even so. And they’re incredibly delicious — perfectly ripe, big, dark, juicy, sweet, full of flavour. Maybe the best cherries I’ve ever eaten. The birds will get the rest and I don’t begrudge them, but I think I would enjoy them more . . .

And this is another

And this is another new pet. Okay, no, it’s not. It’s a monstrous caterpillar-type thing that I found this evening crawling on the tarpaulin covering the hay. At first I thought its head end was where the antennae are and that the headlike end with the eyelike spots and mouthlike parts was the tail end, serving as a cunning caterpillar bluff to fool predators. But after some close observation I think the mouthlike parts were in fact mouth-parts and the headlike end was in fact the head. Not sure if the spots are the eyes though. Those leglike bits had a tenacious grip — I couldn't shake it off that twig. The photo with my finger in it gives some idea of scale. Am going to send the photos to a naturalist friend and see if he can shed any light. Can’t type any more now, the damn kitten is climbing all over the keyboard.

Last passing thought: if this is a caterpillar, what the hell kind of monster butterfly is it going to turn into?

It's a while

It’s a while since we had a baby animal, so this is our new kitten. Arguments as to his name are still ongoing. He’s about eight weeks old and has been hand-reared as his mother was killed while the kittens were two days old. He’s very friendly and purrs as soon as you go into the room.

Making daisy chains is not as easy

Making daisy chains is not as easy as I remembered it to be. We were up in the mountains today doing some research for a website John’s designing, and went to look at the source of the little river Nera. A beautiful, peaceful spot a little way beyond a very pretty mountain village (Castelsantangelo sul Nera), with a grassy lawn and benches — sounds horribly like a tourist trap but there was just one elderly couple there apart from us. Someone had laid a daisy garland on a big stone in the stream and I told Alessio it was an offering to the god of the spring, so he promptly went and pulled up the nearest buttercup to chuck down into the water. We stopped him and told him to make a proper offering if he wanted to do that. Which led to the effortful daisy chain attempt. We managed to string five or six of them together, but it was a far cry from the substantial and carefully woven garland that the previous offerer (offerant?) had left. Alessio left his there anyway and I told him to make a wish. “What shall I wish for?” “I don’t know — wish for something simple, like a nice summer.” “I wish for a beanbag chair. I really want a beanbag chair, mum.”

Right. Think I'll leave that in the hands of the river god.

Last night we went

Last night we went out for the end of year meal with Alessio’s school class. This is a good class, a friendly, outgoing group, so we’ve been lucky – the other classes don’t do a lot of socializing together, whereas our class is always having get-togethers and meals and trips, which is obviously good for us as incomers. Last night’s meal surpassed all others, I’d say. It was a cena a base di pesce (fish dinner) and we hired a little chalet-type social centre in one of the tiny outlying villages, with space outside for the kids to play and a barbecue grill. Arrived around 7.30pm and finally departed at 1.00am, having eaten a stupendous multi-course fish meal of professional quality and sung and danced and even cleared up afterwards.

And I woke up at 6.00 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, with the consquence that I’m so tired now I can hardly focus to write this. Wanted to write a lot more but it’ll have to wait.

Good night.