The renovation of the Cascina will be completed in June. In keeping with the 'I'm leaving' style, we are still unpacking and decorating the day before the first guests arrive. The terrace in front of the Cascina looks like an exploded construction site, not to mention inside, but that evening it is really finished. We are secretly a bit proud of the end result.

Summer is whizzing by. There is a coming and going of friends and family. The 'damage' of last year is being made up for on all sides. This year my sister Nanny and her husband Peter came to Italy especially to celebrate my birthday. Until the end, it wasn't entirely certain whether it would work with all the travel restrictions! So glad it worked out in the end: the best birthday present ever. And as a surprise, our Nadia gathered all her children together to sing to me in Italian. How sweet! They treat us to a delicious cake from Cristian Zippo, who previously owned the restaurant Regina from Spigno Monferrato, and now bakes particularly tasty cakes that you can order and have delivered to your home. Recommended!

It is great to be able to show Pian del Nasso and the surrounding area to family, friends and acquaintances. And thanks to their visit, we discover more and more and enjoy what the area has to offer us. We eat, cook and walk a lot together. How nice to spot goats crossing the street, grazing deer, waddling wild boars, darting foxes and badgers during the walk - if we don't talk too loudly. For a long period - until July - we can enjoy a spectacle of dancing fireflies in the evening. And when the last firefly has gone out, from the beautiful starry sky. Our guests do a lot of cycling, running, swimming, sailing and strolling through nice towns. The nice thing about Pian del Nasso is that everything is relatively close: endless nature, the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps, but also places like Turin, Genoa, Cinque Terre and Monaco.

We receive a message from the Coldiretti that Sander is officially registered as a farmer, which means we can further start our agriturismo. This also gives us an IVA (VAT) number and we can finally become part of the Italian healthcare system, the Asl2. That is not unimportant, because it also means that, after 1.5 years, we finally have a general practitioner here in Italy. Now we could continue to contact our wonderful GP Fleur in Baarn for-the-time-being, but in these times with periods of lock-down, a GP around the corner is very practical. A little more established again.

Nature on Pian del Nasso needs moisture. While people in the Netherlands are rightly longing for solar warmth and less rain, here we are longing for water. We cannot remember experiencing this drought before, except for one of our holidays, when the grass at the Mulino also had this warm yellow color. And we can't even complain. Because less than 15 kilometers from here there are villages where there is a lot of damage due to water flows due to excessive rain or large hailstones and in the south of Italy the temperatures are even more extreme, causing forest fires to rage. Fortunately, it has been a bit cooler the last few days, which gives us the idea that nature is recovering something thanks to the dew that has a longer effect now that it does not evaporate immediately. But nature simply has a chronic water shortage, hardly grows (we don't have to and can't mow), is already showing autumn shades and our poor grass looks like a worn, frayed carpet. Fortunately, our new plantings do not really suffer from this, because we (have to) provide them with water manually every day for the first year anyway. The lavender, lagerstroemia and portulaca even thrive very well, just like our guests who of course love the sun. But how happy we would be with a few days of normal rain: 'speriamo‘!.

Partly thanks to the help of friend Leo, who is staying here for a few weeks in the Rustico together with his son Sepp, Sander managed to paint the hall with the enormous high ceiling and the conservatory. As a result, our house is now as good as finished on the inside. In the coming period we will focus on the land that needs to be prepared for the planting of lavender in the spring, the renovation of the Rustico and the insulation and painting of the outside of our house. To be continued!