A LEMONY LUNCH & ARE WE READY TO LEAVE POSITANO?

We're Niki and Carlo and we live in Positano, Italy. Except we also just bought a house in Tuscany, which we're currently renovating. So we live there too. Join us as we turn this house and olive grove into a dream home and get to grips with living in two different parts of Italy. I'm having a bit of a clear out because this room is a mess. It gets full of cobwebs really, really quickly. I think all the spiders want to come in here and make it their home. And also we have an ant problem up in this corner, which all year round, there's always a trail of ants. And I've tried everything to get rid of them, including Nippon, which is supposed to be the best. And I've done exactly what it says in the instructions. All it did was leave streaky marks on the wall. So if any of you know any really good solutions to get rid of ants, but for good, not just kill the ones that are there, but to stop them coming back, please do let me know in the comments below because I think we've tried everything, but I just don't know how to get rid of them. What I've also decided is, as my books here are getting sun damaged and stained by dead ants, lovely isn't it? Mold, because it's very humid here. I'm slowly moving a lot of books to Tuscany. So I'm currently getting together piles of books to take with me before they get too ruined. And some of these are very precious. And this one is covered in dead ants. This is a book from when I was younger. The Enchanted Wood. It's such a beautiful book. The pictures in it are just lovely. I'm going to take that with me before it gets too ruined. I also have a copy of Alice in Wonderland in Italian. My mum bought me this. And it actually says to my darling Nikki, we miss you and love you. Mummy and daddy, Christmas 94. So that was when I was actually already in Italy. I was working in Rome at that point. So that's coming with me because that's getting very mildewy. And then here's my school yearbooks and various things like that. I'm also, being very nostalgic, going to take two Enid Blyton books, which I bought for Skye actually, but she never read. The early years of Mallory Towers and The Naughtiest Girl Ever. And I'm going to take my four mini Dr. Seuss books. I've got some bigger ones and they're down there and I'll leave them there for now. And then here I've sorted out a pile of books that some of them I haven't read and some of them I don't know where they came from. These have disappeared on my bookshelf, these two, but they're all coming with me. So the next thing is getting them up to the car. Now we've been doing this for a few weeks now. We've been carrying books up to the car in bags every time we go up there. So these will go up on, maybe not all of them, there's quite a lot here. We'll take them on the next two trips up. Quick change and I'm on my way up to get the scooter to drive down into town because there's a new thing to do in Positano. There's a Positano lemon farm to visit and it's our friends at La Fenicia. So we're going to go along. Carlo's going to meet me there. He's going to walk down, lucky thing. And we'll meet there, meet up with Elizabeth as well and have a look at the Positano lemon farm. I've quickly changed. I've put this dress on, which I love, except I have to hold it up to climb up the steps. But it's one of those awkward dresses where I haven't worn it much because it seems almost too elegant for day wear and not quite elegant enough for night wear. So I never quite know when it's the right moment to put it on. And I'm sure it's far over the top for going to visit the lemon farm. But I thought, if I don't wear it now, when am I going to wear it? Pink oleander flowers were in full bloom, swaying gently in the breeze and completing the palette of primary colours around him in the lemon grove. Yellow lemons and dandelions, bursts of red from poppies sprinkled through the groves and the green leafy trees framed the cerulean sky. Francesco worked in the family lemon groves, just like his father and grandfather before him. Three acres of terraced mountainside had been painstakingly planted with hundreds of Amalfi Coast lemons by his grandfather many years ago and had been lovingly cared for by his family for years. They now supplied most of the hotels and restaurants in town with the big fragrant sweet lemons and the potent limoncello that they made. That's a quick excerpt from my novel, A Boat Full of Lemons. In real life, Francesco's lemon groves in Montepulcizo don't exist. But you can visit a very similar place in Positano, the lemon farm run by two brothers, Giacomo and Giulio. We were invited to the lemon farm last week and really enjoyed our visit. It's something different to do in Positano and we could have sat on their shady terrace all day long. After a refreshing welcome snack, Giulio told us a little bit about the history of their family and their lemon and vegetable gardens before leaving us with his brother, Giacomo, who led us into the groves to pick our own lemons. Put the lemons on the tree that's between the fourth and the fifth year. And they have Sorrentino. And we have Sorrentino and Scusato because they are the best because we need juice or limoncello. So when you go to Chicago, to the other market, Once we had learned all about the Amalfi and Sorrento lemons and our baskets were full, we headed back to the sun-dappled terrace for a fresh light lunch. This is a salad with all the ingredients from our garden. Cherry tomatoes, two kinds of escarole, normal one and the curly one. Green beans, pink grapefruit, and a slice of lemon and a cucumber. You can dress it with olive oil, balsamic, whatever you like. And just to let you know, if you're a Kindle reader, the e-book version of A Boat Full of Lemons is currently available on Kindle Unlimited to borrow for free. And if you're passing through Positano, signed copies of my book are available at Ciro's newsagent at the Fornillo side of town or... Suddenly it was pouring with rain but there's another load of books all signed and ready to be sold at the Blue Star Kiosk on the main beach. It is opposite Shedlack Restaurant, which is there, and the Ankuka Sartoria, which is there. And you can come and pick one up here as well. I was lucky today because I'm working with a split in the middle. So I'm done for work now. I need to be back by four o'clock and he came down and wants to go on the kayaks and I luckily had a spare swimming costume in my bag. So we're gonna go now. So this is the water in the cave. There's not that much space to turn around as you can see. But it looks pretty amazing, doesn't it? It's like the cave for the mermaids from age two old. Bye-bye. So I said, today we're serving a plate of squashed orange and salted fennel. Very nice. And I went fishing for it. That's why I said I'm fishing for a fish. I think it's very beautiful. Why are we in Sorrento? We're just having breakfast. Why? Okay. And suddenly it's the beginning of July and it's time to head back to Tuscany. This last month has flown by and I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave yet but we have to get back there for various reasons. The car is full of books and summer clothes. We wanted to bring a crate of bottled tomatoes that we made last year but it's just too much work to carry it to the road. So we didn't. I was sad to leave Sky and Kitty but she's not alone. Nicola moves in when we're gone and there's always Carlo's nephew and his wife upstairs. We have stopped for our halfway walk and feeding session. We need to feed the dogs. We need to feed ourselves and then we will carry on. It is very hot. It's about 32 and a half degrees. It's actually not as hot as it was when we came here last year in July. It was much much hotter but thankfully most of this walk is shady. Were you ready to leave Positano this morning? Yes. I'm not sure if I was. I know that. You told me yesterday. Yeah I felt like I've only just arrived in Positano. I felt like I haven't had much time at all there and as I said a few weeks ago every time you get to one place it's hard to leave it and go to the other place and it's exactly what happened again here. It was hard to leave Tuscany and now it's hard to leave Positano. So we're thinking we might actually have to do it more often. Yeah maybe we'll go back to Positano in two weeks time. That's what I say. Can you show me the signs where the tools were? Do you know what tools they used? Something like a small pickaxe. Last time we were here Indy climbed up this second tree here the one that's sloping slightly. She climbed all the way up it and I was terrified she wasn't going to get down again. But I don't know if we've ever told you that Indy has this penchant for climbing trees and she gets quite high up. It's very very strange. I haven't seen many dogs that do that. I have a few little videos here I can show you of Indy climbing various trees on our daily walks. Do you know her? Are you friends with her? What are you doing up there? Yes, so I'm sure that when we get home she'll run up Giovanni's olive tree and she'll go and chew it like she does. As soon as we get out the car she will run barking to this one olive tree out of hundreds of olive trees there's this one olive tree she will run straight to it and she will start biting it. Right let's go have some lunch. Now Carlo has a full size plate and I actually have asked for a half portion. Look who wants some. Are you hungry? Okay we've just arrived. It all looks very overgrown and abandoned. Let's see what Indy does when we let her out of the car. The poor tree. Well it's all very overgrown. It's completely abandoned. That's hilarious after all the work we did. Look at this. You can hardly tell the flowerbed from the... Oh wow. So we have a few casualties. This one hasn't survived which is a shame. That rose bush is not doing very well at all. But the bougainvillea has come back to life. That one seems to have changed colour. I'm sure that was orange when we left. Yeah it's changed colour. Who does that bougainvillea? Maybe it's not quite the right plant for those vases. Let's go inside. It smells fine. Hello home. All as we left it. Hey you happy dookies. You want water? Hold on. I've just realised how clean it is on the floor here. It is almost spotless. It's normally filthy. It's like maybe somebody came and cleaned it. No maybe not. That's where all the dirt is. Just a few hours later and it's starting to look much better. Not so abandoned. I've changed. It's very very hot in here. I think we need to get some fans or some air conditioning. It's going to be the next purchase. But not all is well in paradise. As you can see we found a quite important leak under the sink. Which Carla reckons has been leaking since we left. There was a big puddle of water here. I didn't notice it at first but I think when I turned the tap on it activated it. And water came out everywhere and it's dripping under there. So he's dashed off to the hardware store to get whatever he needs to fix it. He's not very happy about it. He wanted to go out in the garden and play and strim and trim and cut and do things out there. I'm going to get the lawnmower out and see if I can at least tidy up the back garden. Okay I have mowed the lawn here and this is what it gone from that to that. All of this will have to be done another time because we're going to need a tractor mower. There's no way we can do this with our little mower here. We need something heftier. Thank you for watching today's video. Have a great week and we'll see you next Sunday.