My baby takes the morning train ...

It's quite a lot of weight on the shoulders to go to work in these buildings, all that magnificence, all that portentous history, all those feuding families and the cri de coeur for humanism. But The Boss does it day after day - that's her beneath the Monkey Puzzle tree.

Then I was off out over the pass, ginger as ever in the freezing zone and wet roads. To a day of ivy-bashing and cable-chasing.

An update on those wooden sledges - they had an upper of woven willow - salcio (think Salix) (or possibly hazel).

As I threatened more mayhem R - a fourth generation builder of houses - said to me, Fergus, prima con l'abbaino, poi con le mani.

Which you could roughly translate as thinking first - with the garret/dormer/roof access of your noggin -  and then the doing with your hands.

I stopped at the Diacetto Co-op on the way back and the proprietress told me that the big Florence co-op doesn't want them as members because they are too small. So they remain a one shop co-operative, true to their original, and very local, origins, as many of the hill and valley co-ops do. Because they have no other option.

Some extras. The silver Solano and Arno in the misty light looking down to Poppi this morning from the high pass. And looking up to the house - past Lorcan's tree - in the late afternoon light. Wall three is now finished.