The Great Fire

I returned from Edinburgh feeling completely OVER the work ahead of me. Not exactly what you would hope for when coming back from a mini vacation from work during your sabbatical. In any case, I came back to find that my father had completely enslaved himself during the week I was gone. He took care of the whole inside of the house, going around patching up walls and painting, he did another layer of cement on the terrace wall, and he stripped and painted the ceiling of the portico. This is my father, he is not human. In any case, he was very excited to have me back because also during this week he never left Ca' Bondi. He was anxious to have a conversation that did not involve swearing at an innocent mound of cement having fallen not where it was intended. So here we are back at work and here is some of the awesome repair work my father completed as well as the great fire.

Kitchen entry walls, done!

Wall by fireplace, done!

Steps and wall, done!!

Wall by main entrance, done!

I also have been doing my own laundry.

Portico ceiling, done!


Here is the mud room, clean and useful as it is intended to be. Yes, we used to bottle wine...and make nocino which is a liquor made from wall nuts, it is delicious.

Our very own plum tree. My dad and I ate the majority but we left mom three. We are very generous.

Dead tree, now gone!

Look at what we cleared!

For hours we battled against the overgrown weeds that had turned into trees! Dead trees, brush, Ortiche which is the Italian version of Poison Ivy (it is SO mean, so mean), and basically tried to bring the landscaping at the front part of the property back to some semblance of what it once was. So we began accumulating the cut weeds and trees in the flat driveway area so that we could then eliminate it by way of fire. My father gets very excited by fire. He makes the best fires known to mankind. This man knows how to build a fire in any fireplace. He also likes to be a bit risky.

Here is the accumulated mass of brush.

Once many years ago at our friend Avanzi's country house my father was doing some yard work and then decided to burn the accumulation of what he had gathered. It was a bit windy that day. And, well, the fire spread and he started a major fire mainly on the surrounding fields which were used to grow corn, etc. The fire department was called and they worked all day to put this fire out. Once it was out, because we are Italian, they invited all the firemen to stay for a feast of a meal under his giant portico. Much of this was filmed by Avanzi and it is a wonderful thing to watch...after the fact.

SO, knowing this, and knowing that I was not going to get out of making this fire, I was TERRIFIED. For the entire day, the hours leading up to the fire, anytime my dad was not looking, I was hosing down the surrounding brush, trees, the house, the grass around the patch, everything. And every time he caught me his response was always, "Franci, don't worry, I'm telling you, this stuff will hardly burn, it's still green, we're just going to see a lot of smoke and that's it...I know fire." OMG. I kept watering the surroundings. I had visions of Ca' Bondi burning down, of the fire department coming but their truck not being able to fit on the bridge, I was thinking of every possible scenario.

I knew that we were close to starting the fire when he had us make these "fascine" to then put under the pile of brush to help the fire take. I made my two a bit smaller.



So we lit the fire and here is my father enticing it was a lump of dried grass.

And here I am, now finally calm because the fire has died down. At the end of it all my father commented, "well, I'm surprised, I didn't realized it would burn so well, I thought that it wouldn't catch so well being that it was so green. HELLO!" Let me also state for the record that kerosene was involved.