Firewood, a done deed...
Archive post November 16, 2018…
The beauty of stacked firewood.
The outsized tractor and its outsized driver, the 6’-5” Log Man, drive cannot pass through il Poggiolo’s back gate. Meant an artful backwards descent to dump the firewood at our gate on what passes for a public street in Codiponte. Deed done, there was one anxious glitch: the tractor almost couldn’t make it back up and away, so slick was the street. The Lesson Learned: no deliveries after the end of September, when the sun shines no more on the street to our back gate.
Firewood...
Archive post November 15, 2018…
I just can not get it done right. It’s firewood, for cryin’ out loud. How hard should it be to have a pile of it cut & delivered at an anointed moment? June. Before Summer’s heat. The Summer temps can dry the logs out. The log’s Destiny is to be burned from October to March. Yeah! Last year, however, I had a fire going until late May. Unpleasantly cold until the 20th. Then BAM!!! Instant Extreme Heat Wave. Good to have enough lumber available for any games the weather decides to play. Not its fault. Year in and year out, I seem to manage a log delivery six months past that May due date.
Wonder why? Well, I feel I have cause here to blame out-of-control situations beyond nominating my own dramas. I will anyway…
I was slammed… this word it the latest import from America to say… I’m really busy. Its use has sidelined… Thanks to The All Mighty God… the 2nd most obnoxious American expression to be kicked across the Atlantic… awesome. To be truthful, I did have a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. The slammed part came from all the stress of a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. There’s a lesson somewhere in there. No time to find it. I digress.
Due to the very unpleasant circumstances circling My Puppy’s recent attack upon a neighbor’s cat involving unscheduled night-time meetings and telephone calls to the day-time visits by the local vigili… basically, traffic cops with extra duties towards the maintenance of the public order. Stuff like… Why aren’t your dogs on a leash? Well, because we are on woodland walk, Sir. I volunteered to have a protective fence installed around the perimeter of il Poggiolo’s ample and maturing quite nicely garden.
Simple infrastructure project collided with all sorts of delays: extreme heat, the gardener’s prior commitments slowed by the extreme heat, I hadn’t had time to cut the hedges to facilitate the installation of the fence, even more extreme heat. It became evident that the fence’s uncertain construction might impede the critical and important log delivery, tentatively schedule before construction. The inopportune delivery of logs would have put quite a crimp in blocking il Poggiolo’s back-entrance for the two guys come to build Safety-for-the-neighborhood. I was apparently the only participant carrying the gauntlet of Hope. As time moved forward, both ambitions seemed to evaporate into a non-happening.
How quickly the months of July and August slid by with each tear of a calendar’s monthly page. No fence, no wood. Others hindrances rose on the horizon: the vendemia in September… a hit & run for a couple of days… joined mid-stream in the month of October by the insanely labor-intensive olive harvest.
My Lord & Master, Dr. You, who was ecstatic about the log delivery delays. Not keen to lug, load, and stack logs, when he could happily lay out by a friend’s mock-infinity pool instead. Could he really be blamed? You was insistent on giving the fence priority but that was relegated to the Italian penchant for patience in the face of adversity or, delay.
Here we are in the middle of November. The fence has been rescheduled for January 2019. The weather is sunny. Afternoon temps are warm. Might we have a Go! for wood? Yes! The 6’-5” Log Man called last Tuesday to say he could deliver the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. Great! Helpers booked. Legnaia prepped. Tarps and wheelbarrow at the ready. At 3PM yesterday, with the Helpers leaning on things waiting while the time-clock clicked, I called the 6’-5” Log Man. Where are you? It’ll be dark soon! He bellowed back that his tractor had broken down and he could not reach me by phone to tell me. Can we do it tomorrow? Ma certo! Everyone sent home. For tomorrow is another day!