Wisteria
Shortly after Martin arrived, he made an inspection of the state of the wisteria which he had pruned at the end of the summer. Wisteria really need two prunings – one in the autumn and one at the end of the winter. Ours only had one and from a very overgrown situation.
On arrival
The smaller branches should really have been pruned harder back towards the main structure, but that’s the bit that should have happened during the second pruning. Given the number of flower buds in evidence, I decided not to prune at this point and wait to see what develops.
Three weeks later: developing nicely
Better and better
Front garden
Our neighbours move their citrus trees into sheltered positions over winter (in pots). In fact, Frencesco and Mariagrazia have a temporary greenhouse on their veranda to accomodate their impressive collection. Once Stefano moved his lemon trees out into his field, we felt it would be OK to buy plants for our pots outside the front door. We went to the garden centre and bought a few plants.
Upper terrace clearance and fencing
While we were away, Andrea and his team came and cleared the top terraces. Brambles and delapidated fencing were removed and the bamboo cut down to ground level. We can now see from edge to edge of the upper garden and we need to replace plenty of fencing.
We discussed the fencing with Andrea who is happy to straighten the concrete posts and attach mesh fencing from the cancello (gate giving access to the gora) down to Lino’s garden. He is a little more wary of the fencing directly below the gora (see below). We also discussed installing some fencing from the existing laurel hedge to the back of the house. We can then attach green mesh to give Frnacesco and Mariagrazia a little more privacy (currently we can look across the back of the house directly at them when they are on their patio). Below that he will install a narrow gate to give us lockable access to the storm drain from the back of the house.
The gora
Andrea expressed some concern about replacing our existing broken concrete posts along the bottom of the terrace that contains the gora. He thinks they may be stabilising the terrace and the last thing we want is a land slip below the gora along with the resulting deluge of water. We have asked the geologo to assess the stability of that terrace and recommend whether or not we should construct a retaining wall (which could be very expensive),
The other day, Francesco took Martin up to look at the gora and made it clear in no uncertain terms that we need to clear a section of it. We already understood that from Domenico, but had assumed that the section that was already cleared had been done by Andrea. That turned out not to be the case, so some manual labour was in order.
The cleared section in the pictures below was probably done by Roberto.
The overgrown section is ours to maintain.
Work in progress:
The digging involves standing in the stream and cutting back the edge of the banks with a spade. All mud and vegetation gets piled up on the downhill bank to raise it ever so slightly. It’s quite physical and requires many breaks for an old man to recover.
Our section all dug out and strimmed:
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