Strimming

A perfect day for strimming the olive terraces - cool, overcast, still, with recent rain to damp down the dust. The grass and flowers on the olives terraces have grown very tall in the recent rain. In Italy it's a legal requirement to strim your olive terraces as they are a fire hazard in hot, dry weather. There is a police force called the Forestale who enforce this. They also make sure people have permits to chop down trees, stop people having barbeques when it's dangerous, and control the hunting, particularly of wild boar.

Talking of wild boar, you can just see the electric fence on the bottom left of the photo, which tries to keep the wild boar out of the garden. Coming back from a local restaurant at 10 last night we passed 2 young female wild boar on the road about 200m from the house and 2 piglets just outside the electric fence! If they get into the garden they dig up the lawn, which only British people would try to maintain in this climate :-) When the cherries or pomegranate are fruiting, it's impossible to keep them out - they are prepared to swap electric shocks for ripe fruit!