It has been a while! We enjoyed our first Christmas with a lovely traditional lunch at our local restaurant and welcomed in the New Year quietly at home watching everyone’s fireworks on the stroke of midnight. January gave us some heavy snow, two days off school, sledging in our garden, down the roads and across the farmers fields. I’m not really sure what happened to February but we enjoyed our first Carnevale, a lovely Sunday afternoon in Montegiorgio with everyone dressing up in costume and so much confetti, silly string and streamers.

 Here we are in March already. It is great to see so much blossom and spring flowers. Time to make sure our fruit trees and olives are pruned after a few years of neglect. The olives trees which were already looking very overgrown in the autumn and sustained quiet a large amount of damage from the heavy snow fall were looking in desperate need of some TLC. We felt this year confident and competent olive pruning was beyond us so got in the professionals. To save money, it seemed like a good idea at the time, we asked them just to cut we would tidy up the branches. Little did I realise what 3 years of neglect looked like laying on the ground. It will though give us plenty of logs for next year and we now know olive branches and leaves burn really fast on a bonfire.

Well, 4 months in and we are still here enjoying this beautiful part of Italy. Every week bring something new, often a challenge, but helping us to settle in, learn more about Italy, its culture, our property and new life.

Sophiea has made some great friends at school, and enjoyed Halloween trick or treating around the village. Her next adventure is a school trip to ‘Fattoria Arcobaleno’ in Recanti and a trip to the local cinema, not sure how we are going to get on as language skills still need a lot of practice.

The autumn has brought some beautiful mornings and evening, also a day of very strong winds, loads of fun until the willow tree at the gates got blown over a little to far  and crack, a very large split appeared in the trunk. One of the main branches needed removing, good news we get to use the chain saw, a great afternoon chopping, sawing wood and a bonfire to round off the day.

Pomegranates have been harvested and persimmons are the only fruit left on the trees.

The snow that appeared on the mountains in October had all melted but more appeared a couple of weeks ago, this has now gone again. We await the big ‘dump’ and hope to get into the mountains for a look around and maybe a bit of skiing!

Quite a bit has happened since our last post. Having only moved into the house for a month we were shaken by the terrible earthquake in the early hours of 24th August. Being a fair distance from the epicentre we were very lucky, still a frightening experience but has made us think and all be more aware of the area we live in which can only be a good thing.

Our trees have continued to produce fruit enabling us to make peach jam and two batches of fig chutney. We now have an electric dehydrator and have had dried apple, pear, peach and grapes.

On Thursday 15th September Sophiea started the local Italian school. A huge step for her and us, she was very nervous and excited but had a good time. It is good to get back to some routine and she has so far embraced the experience coming out of school smiling with a thumbs up. We know we have a long and possibly bumpy journey ahead to get her fully integrated but at the moment are enjoying the fact she is happy and eager to learn.

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Finally for now we have a new arrival, Ebony, who joined us on Saturday. A very lively and friendly kitten who I am sure will keep us all on our toes.

This morning we had a look at our fruit trees to see what needed harvesting! First stop, with plastic pot and bag in hand the almond tree that last week was showing promise. Wow,the outer casings had now split open to reveal the nut, time to get picking. Soon the bag was full and there are still many more to collect, but what to do with this many almonds! Then we saw how the peach trees had come on, let’s hope they don’t all ripen at the same time. Next stop a fig tree for some fruit for breakfast, soon there will be more than we can eat, need to get some jars for fig chutney. And finally some apples and pears think we may need more jars and a larger freezer.

We all arrived safely 11 days ago, with our belongings  reaching us the following day. Surrounded in boxes we started to find the items we would need, for Sophiea her books and toys, for us our work clothes. The house was the same as we had left it but the grass and surrounding land had grow considerably so our initial task was to get mowing and restore some of it to a manageable height before we could sit back and relax and enjoy the weather and wine!

Two initial problems for us to sort out! Keeping our appointment with the poo man, to looking into the drainage of our septic tank and drains. After  initial inspection it was decided to give them all a good clear out a new and exciting experience for us, not sure he was too impressed with me snapping pics all the time though. Our second problem was when we arrived we discovered the phone/ internet was not working and our initial thoughts were we had been cut off, upon further investigation we found that the phone line had been severed at the entrance to the field next to us, most probably by accident by one of the large harvesting machines, so no phone or internet for us! The telecoms  engineer arrived 2 days after we reported it and the line was promptly fixed (with a large knot) and communications restored.

The pool is now up and some of the boxes unpacked, Mr P returning to the UK tomorrow leaving us girls to soldier on alone.

The day has arrived and we are starting our adventure. All the contents of the house was packed in to vans yesterday and the cars loaded. We have made it to Folkstone and are waiting for our tunnel crossing. The girls stopping in France tonight and Milan tomorrow. Ian,Ronnie and Layla travelling through the night so Ronnie is not stuck in her cat box for too long.