Marigold

Marigold or calendula

At long last we’re getting some nice weather – bright and hot. This marigold epitomises it!

Quince blossom

The weather is so cold, windy and wet that bees are unlikely to be venturing out very much which is a shame for the quince tree. Its blossom is just coming to an end (the photo was taken a week ago) and I’m not sure how much fruit it’s likely to bear.

The quince tree in blossom

It’s a tall, sturdy tree - which it needs to be in order to bring hefty quinces to ripeness.

Last year we had such a glut of quinces that we even have some left in the fridge, six months later. The skin on one or two is slightly wrinkled, but other than that they seem to be in reasonable condition.

Quinces after 6 months in the fridge

Wind-blown wisteria

Wisteria in bad weather

Against a backdrop of dark mountains and thunder clouds, the wisteria’s pale tresses show up beautifully.

They don’t, incidentally, grow at that angle to the ground: they’re being blown by the wind.

In more clement weather I’m sure they’d be fully open by now, but they seem to be  holding themselves back.

Very sensible.

I love this ‘wispy’ stage of a wisteria before there are masses of blossom.

Do springs ever come back?

It’s been so wet lately that the hillside where our spring used to emerge is like a sodden sponge. That probably accounts for the fact that water has started to come through the system we built to take advantage of the spring.

The blue pig with its 'rationalised' pipe

In any case, today I noticed that there was water escaping from a hole in the red corrugated pipe that brings the water to the blue pig. I tried to mend it and did in fact succeed in slowing down the leak, only for it to transfer itself with great gusto to somewhere else.

I looked carefully at that stretch of the corrugated pipe and it was in very bad shape, broken down by UV and cut through by the wire which all builders here seem to regard as indispensable for supporting everything.

So I cut out the whole section of rotten pipe, right through to where it went  into the grey pipework next to the blue pig, and rationalised the route of the rest of the corrugated pipe so as to make up the slack.

I then twisted a spare piece of red corrugated into the grey pipework and attached it with insulating tape to the main body of the corrugated.

It’s a Heath Robinson affair which I’m sure won’t last very long, but when I last went near I could hear the music of the water falling into the blue pig. It hasn’t flowed to the pond yet but I hope it will before my construction collapses.

It would be wonderful if our spring had actually returned, but I daren’t allow myself to hope.

White-capped mountain

Snow on Monte Subasio on Easter Monday

It must have gone on snowing higher up in the mountains yesterday after it had stopped here.

This morning there was a white cap on Mount Subasio.

So we have spring anemones, flowering rosemary and a peach tree in full leaf in the foreground, and snow on the mountain in the background.

Italy is nothing if not a land of contrasts.

I hope the plants won’t have suffered too much from the unseasonal weather, though.