Slow moving

The humidity has been - well - humid. Even to think of moving brought me out in a sweat. And the flies dive bombing eyes and ears.

I collected figs, pears, a huge bag of three types of old Casentino apple varieties (dodging the hornets). I picked a lot of tomatoes and moved the chickpea plants to somewhere they could continue to dry beyond the forecast rain (which never really arrived. Same could be said of chickpeas).  I picked a few buckets of stones from the veg plot for the slowly rejuventating driveway, laid some Mypex, walked the perimeter (no new incursions) split some more acacia wood and sweated in the strange, still  heat as huge clouds bubbled up over the mountains.

I picked off and rubbed out cabbage white caterpillars on the brassicas and then sprayed them with a pyrethrum based spray that is sold as an evil concentrate in Italy - 25ml for 10 litres water.

I looked at the unfenced big field that is wet and partly ploughed by recent boar activity. I've bought 50kg of lupin seeds as a green manure but I suspect it will become boar feed. But then if they plough and harrow for us who's crying. (That will come back to haunt me.)

In the afternoon as thunder rumbled  a strange hatch of insects occurred. At first I thought they were dandelion (thankfully we don't have them) seeds floating by but when one landed I got a few photos - see left side of extra compilation.

A kind of ant flying like a vertical take off plane with a smaller - male - ant gamely attached. There were males were also flying solo so I wondered if they were coupling in the air. The couple I was watching was very still but some kind of webby stuff was being extruded onto the wooden plank on which they had alighted to complete their nuptials. At a certain point the bigger ant gave a kind of annoyed shrug and the little one fell off (although I couldn't find him). Some were luckily caught in a spider's web so I got a shot of them too. All very strange.

And when splitting the acacia - which has a big thick fireproof bark - these big grubs kept falling out onto the chopping block. Like witchetty grubs, I thought, in my ignorance. Although they do rather look like them. It'll be a moth I guess and it is a shame to see them disturbed. A Large Wood Moth in Australia. Ideas?

A couple more extras - a close up long shot of Borgo with the sun on the old castle tower (they are two a centesimo here) and the light moving over the hills.

All very peaceful. Didn't see a soul. To seaside tomorrow as heat expected to soar up above 30C again.