Sauce for the Goose

People are determined to live in this landscape. Readers will know that piles of paperwork were needed to meet the requirements of the planning regulations under five separate headings to permit the reconstruction of the ecohouse and the recultivation of its land. And that was where there was a house and buildings and fields designated for the various local crops. Had been since 1629 - or whatever stood in 'planning regulations' place over all those centuries.

So everyone knows how beautiful it all is, but all of us want just our bit allowed. I opened the windows on the very top floor, turned to gaze at the untouched fields and hills and found that someone has built an open-sided barn. We all know what that means. It's like my tractor shed. Yes, there is a piano agricolo agreed with the local agricultural authorities. Yes it needed years of established cultivation, accounts, a real agricultural need for the agricultural building. No, of course it is to house equipment, store produce, shelter animals.

Shelter animals. Humans are animals. They need shelter even in the midst of such rural tranquility. So within five years the sheep will have all been eaten, the pigs ditto, the machines will be on a subterranean floor, and there will be a house.

And I haven't got a leg to stand on. Even as I type we are reinforcing the roof of the tractor shed to meet antiseismic regulation and, conveniently, rendering it strong enough to bear the weight of studio and terrace, looking across the glorious Arno plain to the mountains beyond Trasimeno. Oh well. There will be another building, tucked into the rebuilt vineyards (too low for decent olives there), and more people saying 'Gruss Gott' to us while hiking through our woods.

Cherry Ripe

Cherries are the local product. Every region (well, perhaps zone would be more accurate) has its speciality. Some ghastly, poverty-stricken disaster zones go on about acqua cotta - cooked water, gives a complete description - others go OTT with giant platters of boiled dead animals, but here we do cherries. We start out with pale gold and white cherries, small, slightly tart but infinitely Spring-like after the winter, move on to the red cherries that go into clafoutis as well as straight down your throat, and end gloriously with plump, black, juicy almost apple-sized mouthfuls.

Every cherry comes with its own in-built missile, ready for spitting at real and virtual foes. So I sit on the big terrace and spit cherry stones at passing Fascists. By the time they arrive two floors down to street level they have lost much of their force and go unnoticed, which probably is best as Fascists are not cowards, they are perfectly, indeed reliably, capable of swarming up the downpipes and making me drink oil where I sit.

The Rewards of Eco-Propriety

The solar panels excess hot water cooling device is up and running again. Andrea came yesterday, stripped off the cover, cleaned it all out thoroughly, topped up the levels, emptied the traps of unspeakable contents, set the pumps running, dumped in the chemicals, and said:

"Giovedi. With a bit of sun, 27 degrees."

Then he directed all the hot water being generated from the panels through the body of coolant and wished us a lovely summer. Tomorrow I shall be washing down the loungers and the umbrellas, looking out the bath sheets in bright colours, and trying on my cozzie.