"The hills are alive with the sound of....."

....gunfire and barking.

Tomorrow is the start of the hunting season here in Umbria so the hills will be very much alive with hunters and their dogs. We are therefore expecting a short nights sleep as Winnie tries to deter such antics from the safety of our bedroom.

In the way of such things here, you can only hunt for some specific types of animals tomorrow with the start date for the rest being in a couple of weeks time!

Back to work

Today marked the traditional return to work here in Italy after the summer holidays. As if this wasn't bad enough then it has been raining on and off for most of the day and we had another small earthquake this  morning.

I have been busy getting together a load of olive oil for the butcher in Trevi but also found time to finish off a batch of pickled onions.

The sudden drop in temperature also meant our Westie, Winnie, was full of beans and so needed a walk in between showers just to take the edge off her feistiness.

Hopefully we will have a few more sunsets like this one before the season changes.

You'd be happy with a couple like this!

Bottlin' and a picklin'

Have been busy today making passata as the tomatoes are cropping heavily and have done about 10 of these jars of tomatoes today.

Have also peeled a load of onions for pickling.

If, at the moment, you go into any DIY shop, nursery, supermarket then there will be a large selection of jars and bottles for conserving and so many kitchens in Umbria are busy at the moment.

Rachel is pondering what to do with all the figs we have bearing in mind I don't like them and so she alone will be eating the preserved version.

Did you feel that?

We had a earthquake here this morning which registered 4 on the Richter scale with the epi-centre being quite close to us. We did not feel a thing and were outdoors which is the best place to be.

We then went to Cortona in Tuscany to meet some friends for lunch and prior to meeting up with them did a little shopping. We stopped at a cake shop and just had to buy the cakes that were called "Ossi di morto" - bones of the dead. Isn't that just a great name. They are flavoured with almonds and are as hard as rock so think they will need dipping in some Vin Santo a bit later.

Cappuccino as art.

This a cappuccino bought from Bar Roma in Trevi finished off with a very elaborate design in chocolate. This was done by hand without a template. Not bad eh. I wonder what she could do with a Guinness.

Olive tree stumps

As I have blogged about before lots of our neighbours are reducing their olive trees to one trunk only. Above we see the root of one trunk that has been excavated from the grove. These will be left to dry in the summer sun and then chain sawed into pieces for firewood. If you have a big grove then this will be quite a saving as firewood costs around 8/9/10 euro for 100kg - and nearly everyone burns wood for fuel here.