Codiponte updates...
Archive post June 25, 2019…
Lordy, it’s hot! Boiling. Un forno. I sweat profusely just sitting on the Loggia at il Poggiolo sipping an iced-coffee and minding my own business. Many showers and costume changes of T-shirts. The Italian Civil Protection Folk predicted EXTREME HEAT last week for the middle of this week and boy, it has hit! All of Mid- to Southern Europe is affected. When I came home from lunch at 2:00PM this afternoon, it was 105F degrees in my courtyard. That’s 40.5C. Imported African heat.
The Dogs were bizerk crazed to go out. I said no. Neither has thought to alter the Fall/Winter W-a-l-k Schedule to adapt to the Summer Heat. Creatures of habit. What happens is… I take them out so they will have the sensation of the hot wind brushing across their Weimaraner hides, i.e. Total Liberation!!!… and the smoke from their paw-brakes is clearly visible, when they realize the HEAT on the Medieval Bridge is way beyond a tad too much. They rigorously keep to a shady spot. Hugging the walls of the old bridge. Waiting rescue. I give them the Good Word… Casa!!!… and they gallup back to the relative COOL of la Casa Grande’s salotto. Deed done. Not that they demonstrate much patience to wait-it-out until the COOL of 7PM or, later. Dogs.
Photos left to right: Nina looking back to insure I will, yes, cross over the last part of the Medieval Bridge. Safety in numbers, I believe. Where she is standing has been filled to render the dip more gentile; a fond view back towards il Poggiolo on the other side of this public works project; Me and The Croesus-person admiring the view from the bridges now altered ramparts in the early evening sun. Please note whose tongue is flapping in the heat. Dog.
Work on the Medieval Bridge has resumed. Apparently, the Culture Police deliberated and found consensus on a Plan. Three workmen started Monday at 7AM and were gone by 2PM. If they had remained longer their brains would’ve fried. Why they don’t wear caps is only your guess. Ditto for today’s schedule and imagine the same for tomorrow and on until this Heat Wave subsides or, moves elsewhere. To Russia. Or, by a miracle, the guys finish the work ASAP. Learned from a neighbor that the work on the bridge and any associate structure must be finished by August 10th or, thereabouts. The C.P. risk an Arrivederci for the funding of this exercise in public restoration. Certainly, all needs to be spiffy for the Sagra dei Pome in September. Surveying the work done, the decision of a Plan involves lessening the roller-coaster effect of the dips from the two arches of the bridge. It will still be very hard for anyone relegated to walking with a cane to managed the up, up, up, and the down, down down, twice in a row, and survive the trip, in my mind.
On another front…
no abatement to the Watering Battle with la Signora Accanta. I am watering sections of the garden at il Poggiolo all the night through. The plants & grass are bearing up as can be expected with this elongated but less effective nocturnal program and also, despite the adversity of our EXTREME HEAT.
More on these and other topics later.