We have some pretty overgrown fruit trees on one of the upper terraces. This is how they looked in 2023.
By this year, the branches were touching the ground of the terrace below. Early in June this year, Mino made a start on trimming one of the trees while Martin was cutting the grass and strimming.
As the temperatures were so high in June, John, James and I picked tackling these trees as work that could be done in the shade (at least in part). Over three early mornings (out by 7:30) we raised the canopy and carted off the removed branches.
Now look:
Still more thinning out to do, but a massive improvement.
Dominick’s latest guy turned out to be as unreliable as the previous one. He came twice to cut the grass and then disappeared. As a result, the grass was high again when we arrived at the start of June.
Martin damaged the trattorino trying to cut the high grass and had to send it off for repair. When it was returned, the guy from the shop told us that it could be used to cut the long grass, but not to use the mulching tool as that could cause damage. He indicated that trapping the long dry grass in the cutting platform could cause it to catch fire (which is how Martin did the damage).
The new strategy for cutting the long grass is to remove the mulching tool and the clippings bag, set the cutter to the highest level and to allow the grass to spew out the back of the mower. Provided the grass is dry, this works quite well. Wet grass can block the chute and trap the grass in the cutting platform like the mulching tool.
By the time our visitors came, the grass was under control. As the temperatures were ridiculous, most mowing and strimming had to be done in the early morning. Jesse’s help with strimming was gratefully accepted.
In August, we discussed some hard landscaping work with Michele:
A low wall between the pool and the terrace above it
Additional paving round the pool
Replace the damaged paving from the garden gate up to the house and the grass above
This is the rough design we agreed:
Michele was booked in to do the work in May with the aim of completing it before we arrived in early June. All the tiles were ordered and paid for.
At the end of April, Michele dropped the new on us that he could only start work on 20 May as one of his clients had a roof collapse and all his guys were put on that to fix it urgently. We agreed that he would attempt to complete the new wall before our arrival and leave the other jobs until after the pool was closed at the end of September.
The last two years we spent a fortune getting the grass cut. This year, we are trying to do it all ourselves.
Summer 2023
Andrea did a good but expensive job cutting the terraces. We had a bit of a falling out with him because a second cut along with some hedge trimming came in at about the same again and we started to feel a little taken advantage of.
Summer 2024
The grass got as high as a Martin during the time the pool was being built. Abramo (Dominick’s guy) came with a colleague and strimmed all the upper terraces. The job was not as well done as Andrea’s but was somewhat cheaper. By the time the grass had grown a little and the mower had come out, the terraces looked good again.
Autumn 2024
When John came to visit in September, the grass didn’t really need cutting (as growth stops in the really hot months). We did, however, discover that the mower was in need of a little TLC.
Following the purchase of a new battery and a service, I was able to mow the grass one last time before heading back to the UK. We felt that things were in good shape and we were hopeful that we’d be able to keep the grass cut ourselves in the coming year.
Early 2025
During our December / January visit, it was pretty wet. I did just about manage to get the mower round the terraces before we left in January.
When we returned at the end of February, the two lower terraces were just about mowable. The grass on the upper two, however, was too high for the mower so they both needed to be strimmed (bugger).
By the time we left at the end of March, things were mostly back in good shape.
We also made an arrangement with Dominick’s latest guy to come every couple of weeks during April and May. He will simply run over the terraces with the sit on mower each visit. The idea is to be in a position such that those terraces only need the edges strimming and the rest can be continued with the mower. Easy work for him and not too costly for us. We’ll see how it goes.
We’ve been having trouble with this drain outside our house.
It is clogged with silt and when it rains the gutter fills with water like this.
Mirco came on a rainy afternoon to clear this drain.
This is really the work of the comune, but they seem uninterested. It was not a 100% success as the exit channel appears to have collapsed, but Mirco did get water flowing for the first time that we’ve seen. Ideally, we’d like to dig the entire channel down and fit a metal grill above it. Alternatively, the comune could reduce the height near the storm drain so that water flows out of this channel at that end. We’ll see how things go…
Damiano and his colleague came today to move our olive tree away from the pool area. We wanted to move the tree as it was continually dropping olives and leaves into the pool.
We were finally able to burn the massive pile of hedge branches we created with Fran and Nick in July. In fact it was two piles as Jesse had moved half the branches to a second pile for some reason known best to him. We had to drag them all back as we only wanted one fire. We also learned how not to start a fire with petrol.
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