Less than ideal weather may have spoiled plans to attend a wild asparagus festival near Verona today, but I feel more sorry for those stranded, inconvenienced and worn out due to the disruption of air travel here in Europe. The latest I've heard is that KLM wanted to start getting their planes in the air. Who wants to be among the first guinea pigs? Nature can be such a tempestuous beast!
So it seems almost by grace that we had beautiful sunshine on Saturday morning because we were able to haul the 35 (out of an estimated 70) 5-gallon buckets of dirt from garden nursery to home. That meant only 3 trips down into town then back up the mountain. My husband did all of the back-breaking work of course, but it is so nice to have actual soil instead of the heavy clay. Total cost: 10€ - dirt cheap (literally!). We were done just before 12, which left the afternoon free to let go of another 10€ and pick up an apricot tree. What's next? Building a frame to allow us to unfurl hail nets to cover the entire garden. I've seen some local gardeners already spreading out theirs. The tricky thing is figuring out the specs to protect a steep slope instead of a flat plain.