In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
Never in nearly five years have we seen a porcupine here in the hills below the Gran Sasso (550 m.s.l.m.) and we've yet to see a Hoopoe (the "cockatoo looking bird with a crest on it's head" mentioned by Sebastiano above). We do get fireflies, but they've yet to put in an appearance this year. The boar, however, are here in vast numbers. Our house is in a no-hunting zone and the buggers seem to understand they're in no danger around our place. We hadn't seen much of them over the winter, then, a couple week ago, we looked out the window and counted 30 rooting around in the wooded area near the house, some no more than five metres from the house. Once we did a count, we opened the window, clapped hands and shouted to move them on and stop their rooting about. When we looked the next day, we were amazed at the size of rocks they had dug up out of the hillside on their search for... what? acorns? truffles? grubs? No idea. We're not terribly fussy about our garden, but they do make a mess even when they visit in small family groups. Huge mobs are just a total pain. I do wonder what's going on with the population management of these things. Their numbers do seem to wax and wane quite drastically from year to year. Al
"Ignorance is always free and abundant". Excellent. It's doubtless the same widely-available commodity that leads some here to swerve their cars to kill the harmless black snakes as they cross the road. (Well, harmless unless you're an insect or other lower lifeform...) In my nearly five years here living in very rural Abruzzo, I've only seen one of the large green lizards twice. I'm sure your friends were very serious, Maralyn, but that doesn't necessarily make them right. In fact, in this case they're completely wrong. Not that anyone is ever likely to be able to convince them of that... Al
We've got a (neutered) female cat who's in her second year and so in prime condition. Although our moggies are all well-fed and have dried cat food available all the time, the carnage she inflicts on the local vole and lizard population is terrible to see. Easily three quarters of the lizards around here are without tails and she regularly presents us with mice and voles in various states. I'm sure we never see a lot of her victims. Today, I caught her with a mole. I never knew they could squeak, nor had I ever seen one actually starting to dig. Fortunately for the mole, I suprised the little madam near a patch of ground which the bloody boar had been churning up, so mole disappeared below ground pretty quick. Given her past performance, I would not be at all surprised to see him again. This seems to be a particularly good year for voles. In the nearly five years I've been here, I've never before seen so much evidence of them. Perhaps they, like many species, have population explosions and crashes? If you can't bear the thought of acquiring another cat (for which I would not blame you - there are moments when I'd quite happily shoot all of ours!), then the other predators of voles are foxes and owls. Not an immediate solution, but if your layout might suit owls, then you could, I suppose, put up a roosting box. That's something else on my long list of things to do. Foxes, I'm sure, don't really need any encouragement if there's food about, so long as they can get easy access and they don't feel in danger (like from a dog roaming the area). Al
I've noticed new posts in this thread over the last few days, but every time I clicked on the "New" in the read/unread posts area on the front page, I was taken to the last (fifth) page of the thread (logically enough), but there was nothing to read there other than the thread starter. I tried to page back, but there was nothing there either. I figured The Management was censoring due to the residents being up to shenanagans. How disappointed I just was when I went to the third page and discovered it's just a glitch. Oh, well, at least I've reset the "Time Since Last Post" clock to zero with this. ...Let the tumbleweed resume rolling past. Al
I'm afraid there's really nothing (short of shooting down every wild and domesticated bee overflying your terrace) that you or the beekeeper can do about this. Bees have an instinct not to void their bowels in or near the hive, but I've not heard of anyone ever researching exactly what prompts them to do their business where they do it. All I can say is that, while it does look distasteful, it is only "processed" pollen and flower nectar! While the feces of bees that are suffering from some bee diseases can contain microorganisms which will infect other bees with the disease, even this poses absolutely no risk to human health. Perhaps the best you can make of the situation would be to have a word with the beekeeper in a lighthearted way and suggest that the bees owe you a bit of compensation in the form of a jar of their honey. Al
Speaking as a beekeeper, your description sounds similar to the one product of apis mellifera which has nil commercial value. So I think you're right to suspect it's an insect of some sort. No idea what kind, however. Al
Tell me, Brian, just how many times you think I should go and tell them? The numpties in our comune office are well aware that I'm here. I asked them about refuse tax three times shortly after moving in and a friend who is involved in local politics has raised the matter as well. As for fines, well, given that I was fined all of €12 for inadvertently driving without road tax for a year, I really doubt if any fine I might get due to the incompetence of our idiotic band of comune paper stampers will force me to mortgage the house. Al
If GPL would be difficult for you to install, then that's two strikes against it since it's also very expensive. Also counting against it is the legal requirement (in most places and with most installations at least) for the boiler to be regularly inspected. Possibly even more expensive is heating oil. Electric is just expensive. If you haven't yet done so, I suggest you look into heat pumps. But, before you do this, you should check out the maximum capacity of the power lines to your house. It's not unknown for ENEL to be unable to supply any more than three kilowatts. This could possibly create problems if you were wanting to use any sort of electric heating over the winter. Al
We regularly get little blips on the power line and we occasionally lose power for a few minutes, but it has been two years since we had an electric outage that lasted more than a couple of hours. That's a credit to the ENEL lineworkers, really, since even the most cursory examination of powerlines in Italy leads one to conclude that the network is hanging on an awful lot of wobbly nails (in some places, I suspect, literally so). Going without electricity for more than an hour or so in the midst of a blizzard is not something we're willing to put up with if we can possibly avoid it, not least because we have a young child and all three of the possible means we have to keep the house warm require electricity. Like you, Sprostoni, if we really had to, we could retreat: put chains on the car, drain down the house's plumbing, put down lots of dry food for the cats, load up all we need to keep us going for a few days and head off to someplace slighty warmer where the lights are still on. But the return journey would only happen when the snow had melted. However, it's nice if you're able to arrange things so you know that's not your only option and that you can survive with a reasonable degree of comfort (a highly variable measure) for a couple days when the leccy goes off yet again. Still, we would be hard-pressed to deal gracefully an outage the length of the one Sebastiano has had, not least because there's a limit to the amount of petrol I'm willing to have sitting around the place in plastic containers. Al
Comments posted
Never in nearly five years have we seen a porcupine here in the hills below the Gran Sasso (550 m.s.l.m.) and we've yet to see a Hoopoe (the "cockatoo looking bird with a crest on it's head" mentioned by Sebastiano above). We do get fireflies, but they've yet to put in an appearance this year. The boar, however, are here in vast numbers. Our house is in a no-hunting zone and the buggers seem to understand they're in no danger around our place. We hadn't seen much of them over the winter, then, a couple week ago, we looked out the window and counted 30 rooting around in the wooded area near the house, some no more than five metres from the house. Once we did a count, we opened the window, clapped hands and shouted to move them on and stop their rooting about. When we looked the next day, we were amazed at the size of rocks they had dug up out of the hillside on their search for... what? acorns? truffles? grubs? No idea. We're not terribly fussy about our garden, but they do make a mess even when they visit in small family groups. Huge mobs are just a total pain. I do wonder what's going on with the population management of these things. Their numbers do seem to wax and wane quite drastically from year to year. Al
"Ignorance is always free and abundant". Excellent. It's doubtless the same widely-available commodity that leads some here to swerve their cars to kill the harmless black snakes as they cross the road. (Well, harmless unless you're an insect or other lower lifeform...) In my nearly five years here living in very rural Abruzzo, I've only seen one of the large green lizards twice. I'm sure your friends were very serious, Maralyn, but that doesn't necessarily make them right. In fact, in this case they're completely wrong. Not that anyone is ever likely to be able to convince them of that... Al
We've got a (neutered) female cat who's in her second year and so in prime condition. Although our moggies are all well-fed and have dried cat food available all the time, the carnage she inflicts on the local vole and lizard population is terrible to see. Easily three quarters of the lizards around here are without tails and she regularly presents us with mice and voles in various states. I'm sure we never see a lot of her victims. Today, I caught her with a mole. I never knew they could squeak, nor had I ever seen one actually starting to dig. Fortunately for the mole, I suprised the little madam near a patch of ground which the bloody boar had been churning up, so mole disappeared below ground pretty quick. Given her past performance, I would not be at all surprised to see him again. This seems to be a particularly good year for voles. In the nearly five years I've been here, I've never before seen so much evidence of them. Perhaps they, like many species, have population explosions and crashes? If you can't bear the thought of acquiring another cat (for which I would not blame you - there are moments when I'd quite happily shoot all of ours!), then the other predators of voles are foxes and owls. Not an immediate solution, but if your layout might suit owls, then you could, I suppose, put up a roosting box. That's something else on my long list of things to do. Foxes, I'm sure, don't really need any encouragement if there's food about, so long as they can get easy access and they don't feel in danger (like from a dog roaming the area). Al
I've noticed new posts in this thread over the last few days, but every time I clicked on the "New" in the read/unread posts area on the front page, I was taken to the last (fifth) page of the thread (logically enough), but there was nothing to read there other than the thread starter. I tried to page back, but there was nothing there either. I figured The Management was censoring due to the residents being up to shenanagans. How disappointed I just was when I went to the third page and discovered it's just a glitch. Oh, well, at least I've reset the "Time Since Last Post" clock to zero with this. ...Let the tumbleweed resume rolling past. Al
I'm afraid there's really nothing (short of shooting down every wild and domesticated bee overflying your terrace) that you or the beekeeper can do about this. Bees have an instinct not to void their bowels in or near the hive, but I've not heard of anyone ever researching exactly what prompts them to do their business where they do it. All I can say is that, while it does look distasteful, it is only "processed" pollen and flower nectar! While the feces of bees that are suffering from some bee diseases can contain microorganisms which will infect other bees with the disease, even this poses absolutely no risk to human health. Perhaps the best you can make of the situation would be to have a word with the beekeeper in a lighthearted way and suggest that the bees owe you a bit of compensation in the form of a jar of their honey. Al
Speaking as a beekeeper, your description sounds similar to the one product of apis mellifera which has nil commercial value. So I think you're right to suspect it's an insect of some sort. No idea what kind, however. Al
Tell me, Brian, just how many times you think I should go and tell them? The numpties in our comune office are well aware that I'm here. I asked them about refuse tax three times shortly after moving in and a friend who is involved in local politics has raised the matter as well. As for fines, well, given that I was fined all of €12 for inadvertently driving without road tax for a year, I really doubt if any fine I might get due to the incompetence of our idiotic band of comune paper stampers will force me to mortgage the house. Al
Can't beat it, but I've been here since September 2006 and never heard a dickie. Maybe your comune wants to put on a really good sagra this year? Al
If GPL would be difficult for you to install, then that's two strikes against it since it's also very expensive. Also counting against it is the legal requirement (in most places and with most installations at least) for the boiler to be regularly inspected. Possibly even more expensive is heating oil. Electric is just expensive. If you haven't yet done so, I suggest you look into heat pumps. But, before you do this, you should check out the maximum capacity of the power lines to your house. It's not unknown for ENEL to be unable to supply any more than three kilowatts. This could possibly create problems if you were wanting to use any sort of electric heating over the winter. Al
We regularly get little blips on the power line and we occasionally lose power for a few minutes, but it has been two years since we had an electric outage that lasted more than a couple of hours. That's a credit to the ENEL lineworkers, really, since even the most cursory examination of powerlines in Italy leads one to conclude that the network is hanging on an awful lot of wobbly nails (in some places, I suspect, literally so). Going without electricity for more than an hour or so in the midst of a blizzard is not something we're willing to put up with if we can possibly avoid it, not least because we have a young child and all three of the possible means we have to keep the house warm require electricity. Like you, Sprostoni, if we really had to, we could retreat: put chains on the car, drain down the house's plumbing, put down lots of dry food for the cats, load up all we need to keep us going for a few days and head off to someplace slighty warmer where the lights are still on. But the return journey would only happen when the snow had melted. However, it's nice if you're able to arrange things so you know that's not your only option and that you can survive with a reasonable degree of comfort (a highly variable measure) for a couple days when the leccy goes off yet again. Still, we would be hard-pressed to deal gracefully an outage the length of the one Sebastiano has had, not least because there's a limit to the amount of petrol I'm willing to have sitting around the place in plastic containers. Al