TRAULING FOR FRUIT
The new addition to the pony family has grown exponentially and has already learned all her parents bad habits.
As I type from the kitchen table I see SKIPPY is breaking down the bank between one terrace of olive trees to the lower by sliding down at a full gallop having baited her Babo (DAD in Italy!), to follow in order to chastise her or just join in the fun. Only a few weeks ago she was gingerly taking her first steps on uneven surfaces.
At this time of the year they are either in their stable out of the way of flesh-eating flies or trauling for fruit! This starts in the spring by standing beneath the cherry trees with their mouths wide open and progresses through the arrival of plums (two colours), apples, apricots, pears, peaches, with a rather more than a few figs (two colours), thrown in.
Actually, sucked in!!!
When Skippy was born I asked the vet if her parents were too fat and he said they looked ‘fully formed’ but okay and would probably loose weight as the sun burned the grass.
He did look askance at the almost extinct box of apples donated by the greengrocer that stood outside their field and said they should only be allowed two each per day in order to guarantee against laminitus, a painful affliction most Thelwell ponies suffer in later life.
Little chance of this as their campo is dotted with all of the above fruit trees. What they need is a bit more exercise, apart from sex.
More of this later but am preparing to buy Mum and Dad a little pony cart in order to get around. All in the interests of low carbon emission of course!!
OTHER GUESTS
From our position below Cortona with its wonderful skyline and our vista across the valley between ourselves and Mount Amiata, I suppose the most memorable times in the summer are in the early sunset hours.
To sit either up at the pool or outside the house and watch the hills turn pink could make your gin curdle with its beauty. To watch the evening news is almost too painful realizing how lucky one is and how little we care about our fellow man.
I have nothing to say here about this but it pains me every day worrying about ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’! Even watching an animal programe called Animal Precinct can so depress me now about Man’s inhumanity to Animals or to Anything that I tend to play Solitaire or Backgammon on my Ipad rather than turn the set on.
One is ambushed from all sides and made to face the total annihilation of the world. I have just experienced the wonderment of my first grandchild and already this is another thing to not only enjoy but to ponder what the world will represent when he is my age, or long before, possibly when he is in his early teens.
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