I am going for the weekend to our house to enjoy a few days before work starts. I will cut some of the grass in the Olive grove with a strimmer and take some photos of the existing road to the house. My neighbours want me to put the road back into the condition it is in now if the lorrys do any damage. They will of course and I will too. But better to have a record of how it is now to avoid arguments.

Back to the olive grove. This year there will not be many olives as we did a big cut back this spring and they are looking a little sad. But the wild flowers amongst the trees are lovely. I hope to bring back some figs. We have 3 trees all settembrini and we have already had a lot from the initial june crop hopefully we will not loose them with the building work. Two will definately have to be cut back the third we may loose but hopefuly not.

We have just got back from a weekend at our home in Castelnuovo Magra. The weather was great and we spent 2 days at the beach. We also signed the contract with the Construction company for the building work and they will start 1st September....at last. I took the picture of the Melangrano (Pomegranate) in the garden at 6 in the morning. You can see Castenuovo Magra in the background.

We also in the evening went into Sarzana for cocktails and dinner. Here during august they have every evening an antiques fair from 6 until midnight. The town is buzzing.

We have just received some good news - my bank has accepted me for a mortgage last week which meant that finally we could go ahead and sign the contract with the builders so that they can start as soon as the holidays finish here . Hooray... we opened a bottle of frizzantino from our local winery in Castelnuovo magra (Lunae)to celebrate!!!

Giacomo has designed our website for us and has this weekend linked our website to our blog. Thank you Giacomo!

It has been some time since I made a post. We have heard nothing from the bank.... not a suprise as it is august. Hopefully soon as I would at east like to give the go ahead for work to start!

We have had some friends to stay for a couple of days Marco and Kerstin and they left today. It was great to catch up with Marco and meet h is friend. We had a great time. I hope to be able to invite them to our new home soon!!!!! Carmelo and I will be going to La spezia for the weekend. It is vewry basic as there is no gas so only cold water and no kitchen so we cook on a single electric hob or on the BBQ and basically camp there. But it is fantastic cannot wait to be there permanently.