XMAS 2013 - TUSCANY

We spent our second Xmas in succession at the farm and had a wonderful holiday.

Sally came to join us for ten days and the tree she had designed in silver and white looked wonderful

GLADIOLI!

Spring

TAXI DRIVERS-LONDON'S WIKIPEDIA!!

My first visit to London this summer and I fly into London City airport.   Small, compact and beautifully formed, unlike all other airports around our city.

My first driver greets me with the words, "Here's a customer who looks as though she enjoys life", I confirm I do and have many bad habits which seems to open the floodgates of my hippy-ish looking chauffeur.   He asks if I have ever smoked weed!!!

I say yes, many years ago and from City to Eaton Place I take notes on how to buy the Female seeds online, the best time to buy, how to plant, how to water, and when to harvest.   I thought I might try to grow a few plants in my greenhouse in Italy and I gladly lap up all the information.   I have since thrown away the back of my landing card and so am none the wiser but it was a fascinating interlude and I didn't begrudge the arm and leg it had cost me to take my forty-five minute trip home.   I also realised this form of gardening was probably illegal!

This man should be a teacher and I tell him so.   His final words are, "Have a good harvest!

My time here has been taken up with visits to doctors, dentists, hair colourists, and the usual people one has to visit when one is an ex-pat and therefore taxi drivers have become part of my daily life and they have not let me down.   Each one is a law and a story unto himself.

I usually try to find a non black taxi, red, white, anything but black because the drivers of other colours are usually more fun.   Black taxi drivers can be moody, old, smelly and generally bad company.

I always smile as they stop and if I get a cheery hello I know I am in for fun.   The old drivers merely say, "Get in", or nothing at all and whatever conversation one begins is met with silence.   Sometimes I even bang on the glass if I really feel like talking and very often receive a scowl.   These are the people who I only give a twenty pence as a tip.   You know they would like to throw it at you but dare not.    The smiley, fun ones get at least fifty!   I gave my hashish driver three pounds!

The last three taxi drivers have all picked me up in Oxford Street outside Marks and Spencers and brought me home and have all been characters.

Immediately I have told them where to go they have asked if, "That actress lady still lives at Number 15", and I have confirmed yes she does.

The first informed me that he had picked up her daughter and driven to actress-lady's front door and the poor girl was in a state because she was late.   Actress lady comes out dressed up to the nines, ignores my driver and slams the taxi door lams into poor late daughter.   Taxi Man informs me she has a mouth like a dustbin and that he taught his fellow drivers several new swear words over lunch.

My second driver informs me he has collected her on several occasions and that she is definitely Older Than God and why do the papers keep saying she looks 45  and isn't she wonderful for her age.   I tell him she probably uses two kilos of cement on her face every day!

My third says that at 8.30 in the morning without her wig and make-up she looks a little like Cliff Richard and why do the papers keep saying he looks wonderful.   He also looks like Old God without his wig and sun tan!

I have known this lady for about forty years and agree with everything they say and the last finishes off by saying I look good but when I was young I must have been a Looker.   Meaning I also look as Old as Methusela.

I knew actress lady when I worked in the film business and then ran into her again in Antigua where we had just opened a hotel.

THIS YEAR IN TUSCANY-2014

PONIES GETTING READY FOR WORK!

My New Year's resolution to write ONE blog a week went out of the window after about a month, so here is a précis of the year with pics!

Not a year to remember weather wise, some nice weather in early spring but then a downpour that lasted for the rest of the summer!!!   We read of England basking in its warmest summer since records began while we listened to crashing torrents of water coming down our normally dry river beds.   The grass never stopped growing only to be overtaken by the weeds.

The ponies got fatter and fatter and hay I had bought for the summer months went uneaten.

SALINO

Salty has behaved like the perfect gentleman and not thrown me off once this year.   He has tried a few times but failed.   I keep thinking I should send him off for cat food but then think that the day I give up taking risks is the day I will lie down and pull the sheets over my head.

AZIZ SAYS THIS IS THE BEST PHOTOGRAPH HE HAS EVER SEEN OF ME!

Paulo our gardener found a Bambi asleep under a pile of leaves so brought him down to see if I would like to add it to our growing collection of animals but Fabio told us in no uncertain terms to return it to its leaves as soon as possible and its Mum would come to feed it.   Probably one of the most endearing of young animals but a bottle every two hours would not have appealed to me.  Worse than having another child!!!

We had Liesle's daughter's, boyfriend's donkeys to stay whilst they went to chant in Thailand.   Not only did they pull me face down in a very dirty ditch and drag me for half a mile but they ate everything in sight.   Not just the grass but the olive trees, bark and all, my cypress trees, two cherry trees and various other things I would rather they had not eaten.   

No good deed goes unpunished.   I open my mouth and out come words I wish I could have eaten.   Words like, of course you can leave the donkeys with me for a couple of months, no problem.  Ponies do not behave so ungratefully and I am sure Jesus did not teach them such bad habits.

COUNTRY LIFE ARTICLE ABOUT PESTS!

CASA LORETO

BOCENA 398

SAN MARTINO

CORTONA

AREZZO 52044

+39 0575 612683

Dear Ed,             (The Editor of Country Life in England).

I eagerly await my weekly copy of COUNTRY LIFE here in Tuscany and smile at your articles and readers letters about their attempts to save wild life from the onward march of civilisation!

Having been brought up on a farm in Cornwall and then living for forty odd years in central London, we decided fourteen years ago to find somewhere less noisy and polluted.   My husband wanted a flat in Portofino but we ended up with an olive farm in central Tuscany!   Something to do with my argument about not living with people around me but animals instead.

He has never let me forget his wants as I grumble about the complexities of a life in a foreign country, running a thousand olive trees, large orchard, lake, horses, dogs, chickens, doves, ducks and a pair of Emperor geese!

Add to that the fact that Italian men do not like taking instructions from a female of the species, thinking they are only good for one thing and that at seventy this woman is not even useful for that pastime!   Also the difficulty of learning a completely new language when one had failed O level French fifty five years ago, plus the fact that men here do not like to keep appointments and when they do turn up they do not feel a need to apologise for their tardiness.   Especially as you know that it will take another five visits before they fix what they had originally been invited to mend in the first place!

Take it from me, it could fill a book but that has already been done, several times, and made into films and still they haven’t really shown Italy as it is living here and trying to stay sane on a day to day basis.   You have top live here and been baptised by fire to truly understand.   

Having said all that, I wouldn’t have changed the last years for all the boat trips in Portofino with film stars for the world.

What really makes me smile about your letters page is the wonderful, kind hearted people who diligently try to save wild life from humans who seem to be trying to kill off the planet.   Here, I am trying to save the humans from the wildlife!!

Let me start with the pigs.   Our property is way off the beaten track edging onto the forest which is where the cingali or wild boar live.   Before we had any electric fences or gardens to speak of, we would think their visitations every evening of families of up to thirty pigs rootling around in the orchard was sort of wonderful.   Now that we have rescued acres of wild ground, built kitchen gardens, etc., we think of them as a wretched nuisance and they have cost us thousands of pounds over the years building barricades to keep the buggers out!   The big ones are wary now but the little ones in striped jumpers, squeeze underneath any electrified wire and dig around to their hearts content especially around the irrigated shrubs and lawns.

The hunters do kill them off in the winter but another solution has been found by the Commune, our local government.   They have introduced wolves.  I haven’t seen or heard one yet but a couple of years ago the local bar proudly pinned a dodgy photograph of a large wolf-like animal to the bar wall and we have been waiting for more hard evidence of their whereabouts ever since.  

Now the stories are legion.   One neighbour’s donkey foaled in her field quite close to the house in the nighttime and by morning just four baby hooves were found scattered around.   A taxi driver’s wife kept half a dozen sheep in a paddock close to our town of Cortona.   They were all killed.  She replaced them and they were again killed and half eaten.

The thinking behind introducing wolves is that they will predate on the wild boar and give the farmers a break from the mayhem the pigs make of their fields.   They may have just introduced another, more costly nightmare for the locals.

Added to this, we had a very nervous making clue that they were in our midst when our friend up the hill walking her elderly labrador one morning was stopped in her tracks by a growling and bristling of hair from her dog who was glaring at something up ahead.   Three wolves, equally aggressively barred their way in the middle of the track.   She hasn’t walked in the woods since!

Next, the deer.   Well, everyone knows what deer do.   They just eat everything, and kill poor young boys riding to work on their mopeds early in the morning by leaping over roads unexpectedly.   So sad for both rider and deer.

Next, the porcupines!!!   Big, black and bristling.   

We are in the middle of a drought at the moment and all of nature’s creatures are descending from the hills in search of water.   Of course a nicely irrigated farm with green lawns and a kitchen garden full of plump, ripening produce is a natural draw for any hungry animal.

I have caught a couple of porcupines in the past who have been causing trouble, and have taken them on a scenic drive to another desirable part of the countryside, but now we have a rogue monster who will not be deterred.  

First he waited until my corn on the cob was just ready for eating and he pounced the day before I did.   Mayhem!   He didn’t even finish each cob but went for as many as he could ruin in one night.  How did he get over the wall into the garden.   Did you know that porcupines live up trees, or at least can climb as well as any cat?   Well, we didn’t until my husband found videos on Utube to that effect.   

We had also been told that they shoot their quills at any chasing dog or human.   They don’t.   They run ahead and then stop dead in front of the following assailant which then runs into the back of its prey and bingo, a pincushion!

When he returned he decimated the peas.   Then the tomatoes the following night.  For breakfast he ate my water melons and dug up my prize irises and ate them as a sweet.   They love irises and I knew this so kept them in the walled garden for safety.   They must be able to smell out the tubers.

He’s not too keen on potatoes.   Too mundane.   He likes something with a bit of sugar in it.   Who doesn’t.   

He has avoided all of my traps which have been baited with goodies and just shimmies in and out at will.   He does leave me a few quills every night for my hats and when I go back to our flat in London I will take them to Philip Treacey for use in his millinery for the fine ladies of Belgravia.

Next the raptors!!!   They have taken all of my doves.   Returning from London a few weeks ago I couldn’t think what was missing.   A silent dove house, normally humming with life and a joy to behold as ten white doves dove in and out feeding their young or sitting on eggs.   Now it stands silent and empty.   Ghostly almost.   The gardener said he thought that falcons had been visiting whilst the house was empty.   I immediately visited the market the following week and bought a new pair of sparkling white birds and put them in a holding pen until I could introduce them to their new loft.   The next morning was a scene of utter ghastliness.   Three birds with their heads bitten off.   Not eaten, just killed for the sake of killing.   I suppose the guilty animal was a stoat or weasel.   The empty house remains empty as I see a family of falcons visiting daily for breakfast.

I discovered they had also taken two baby chickens from the hen compound and two wonderful little Mandarin ducklings just three weeks old from the lake.

That will teach me to leave my animals to fend for themselves.

Frogs are the next pest we have.   You notice that as I relive all this carnage that the local wildlife are now described as pests!!!

Frogs are protected the world over but these noisy amphibians have blighted our lives for five months of the year ever since we arrived.

I remember saying to the Swiss lady who sold us the property as we walked around, Oh good, you have frogs, remembering my youth of fishing around for frogspawn in our stream in Cornwall.   I wondered why she gave me a sideways glance of horror.

When we finally moved in and prepared for sleep a slow croak became a cacophony of raucous mating cries which continued for the rest of the night.   And the next night, and for fourteen years thereafter.   It is impossible to sleep with windows open and we wouldn’t mind if the croaking was pleasant on the ears, but this is a downright ugly, rasping sound.   Finger nails on blackboards type of sound.   Spine chilling.

I won’t tell what we do to lighten our load as we would probably be prosecuted!!!   Humans fight back against nature.

Did I mention the Rooks.   Actually, probably Crows because there are a lot of them suddenly in our neck of the woods.

“If it’s a crow on it’s own, it’s a rook.

If its a rook with friends, they are crows”.

Every one of our mosquito nets covering the windows both in the house and in the cottage have been ripped to shreds by crows attacking their mirror images in the window panes.   The woodpeckers have taken care of the wooden window surrounds so to cut it short, we need new windows and new mosquito nets!!!   

The crows also have an upsetting, discordant cry.   They are almost worse than the frogs.

Am I beginning to sound like a witch with grudge against nature?

Not for a minute am I against nature, I just wish it would give us humans a chance to live and breathe on their planet without such a grudge against us.

There a many nice animals and birds here but that is for another day.   However, as I gathered the duck eggs this morning I happened to stand admiring the lake and out of nowhere flew a dagger of turquoise feathers.   This little missile flew headfirst into the water and out again clasping a little piece of silver in its beak which it proceeded to bash the living daylights out of on the back of a bench.

He did this twice and his colourful image is still copied into my brain as I think of him.

By the way, have I mentioned the ants, snakes, mosquitoes, wild, farm bred cats, rats, et al?

Well, okay I will stop here.

Jean Fraser-Cami

20th July, 2017

Cortona.

Photographs to be added.