The bigger they are...

21st March 2021

Good news, they say, travels fast and so does anything whatsoever that happens in Monte San Pietrangeli as we found out on Monday evening. We were enjoying a sit down with a mug of coffee and a home-made ginger biscuit or two before my evening lesson when our attention was drawn to a car horn beeping. This, it turned out, was Luigi sitting in his white van at the front of the house – though he had been there several minutes before his repeated honking had penetrated to the back room.

He had come about our impending tree lopping, and to ask if it would be all right if Alessandro, being the name of our friendly neighbourhood lumberjack as I have belatedly discovered, could do a spot of judicious pruning to their walnut tree that overhangs the back garden and whose windfall nuts give Bella a ready supply of snacks over the winter. As good neighbours we readily agreed, though that plan might have to go on hold as a couple of days later when he was passing the house, Mario stopped Stephen for a word. On further reflection they thought it might be better if only the branches that stretch over onto our side were thinned out as the ones on the other side stood a chance of tumbling onto the crop growing in the field when lopped off.

Again, being the good neighbours we are, we said that was fine, but on further further reflection, this time on Stephen’s part, we might have to rethink our arboreal husbandry and carry it out in two stages: the first to tackle the trees on the road and the second, when the crop has been harvested, the ones at the back of the house – and cross our fingers that no typhoon whips its way down the valley before they are seen to.

Apart from the business with the trees, it would have been another lacklustre week had Stephen not decided to lend a hand and liven it up a little – though maybe he could have chosen less dramatic means.

It was whilst I was out on the afternoon walk with Bella and Harry that Stephen called me via WhatsApp. This surprised me not a little as only minutes earlier he’d stopped on his way back from the factory to share a few words as I passed him on our way up the road. He’d called because he didn’t want me to be alarmed when I returned and found him spread-eagled and face down in the grass by the side of the house. I can appreciate that, especially as it was alarming enough that he was unable to get himself up and the view on the phone was a close up of his face haloed by grass and with an azure blue sky background.

I hastened back, put Bella and Harry upstairs and then set about trying to help Stephen to his feet. This took a little time, with him being a bit of a dead weight and seemingly unable to get his legs to move. Eventually, we manoeuvred him over to the square of concrete at the bottom of the steps where he managed to inch his way round into a sitting position. From there it was possible to get him to his feet after which he tentatively made his way up to the house. He was, obviously, very shaken and not a little sore though fortunately his apparent injuries were not as serious as we’d feared. The bridge of his nose was grazed and starting to swell but we think the peak of his baseball cap had saved him from hitting his head too hard as he fell, and his left leg had a cut, but again his clothing seemed to have offered some protection.

How he came to be on his face in the grass is not something he is very sure about. He thinks that he tripped on the bottom step going up to the terrazzo causing him to turn and fall to the side. He must have stumbled a little rather than topple straight over as he ended up a few feet from the steps, but did manage to hit the chest where we keep the wellingtons on his way, which is another thing that might have saved him by breaking his fall. That, however wasn’t as lucky as his impact with it managed to shatter it almost completely – though, to be fair, it was a little battered from a previous occasion when he had fallen on it and we have thought for a while we should get a new one. This we will definitely have to do now, and maybe make sure we buy something a little more robust if Stephen is going to make a habit of a careering into it.

Not surprisingly, he was a more than a little sore and disoriented for the rest of the night, and took a lie in the next morning. However, when I returned from the morning walk he was showered and getting ready to go to the factory, proclaiming himself much better. He did, indeed, look, as they say, more like himself and whilst he had a handsome abrasion on his nose the threatened swelling and bruising had fortunately subsided. The factory were, of course, most concerned, especially Mrs C who had been worrying all night and in whose estimation I seem to have plummeted. Had I taken Stephen’s blood pressure, she wanted to know, and on being told no asked why not. Well, an absence of a blood pressure monitor might have something to do with it, not having realised that it was an indispensable part of every home first aid kit in Italy.

With things getting back to normal after the excitement, Stephen’s thoughts with the imminent arrival of the spring equinox turned to the garden. He returned for lunch on Thursday with plants he’d made a detour to Montegranaro to buy, namely a variety of lettuces, some more herbs (including round-leafed mint – who knew?) and, for the first time, strawberries. These latter are very much an experiment; we can’t be sure they will survive both the soil and our nocturnal nibblers, but nothing ventured. However, their planting, and that of the other purchases, will have to go on hold for whilst the weather continues fine, it is also very cold with temperatures on or near freezing overnight. So cold was it that on Friday morning both cars were covered with frost and the surface in the dog’s water bowl on the terrazzo had transformed into ice Frisbee.

None of this prevented Stephen from carrying out a spot of tree surgery of his own when he decided that the cherry trees, all three of them, needed some judicious pruning as they had become a little wild in their growth. This he started on Friday afternoon as I was taking my lesson with Marzia and Diego, straddling the banking and the ladders at the other side of the driveway while attacking the more convenient of the branches. “I need someone to hold the ladders so I can get to the other ones,” he called as I came out of the office after the lesson to take Bella and Harry for their walk. How right he was, as it was just at that moment that the ladders toppled away and he slid down, squeezed between the tree trunk and the banking, to land in a heap at the bottom.

He had obviously learned from his tumble earlier in the week for this time he managed to avoid any contact between his head and anything hard, but he did have some very impressive grazing down the left-hand side of his torso. I’d like to say that this time he learned his lesson, but it had obviously become personal for he went at the cherry trees again the next day giving no quarter as he left them totally denuded with mere stubs of branches coming from the trunks. Well, that should have shown them. I only hope that Stephen knows what he is doing and they will come back reinvigorated – and suitably chastened – next year. In the meantime, going by the old adage that things always come in threes, for the time being the highest Stephen is allowed to climb is into his bed, last thing at night.