Hi

I travel to and from Tuscany 6/7 times a year to my house and always rent a hire car. I usually go through Auto-Europe, who, as some of you will know, act as a broker as well as having their own hire cars.

This year for the first time, the allocated hire company was GoldCar - one I had not heard of in Pisa before (although I have used a Goldcar in Malaga - don't know if it is the same). I checked the details and noticed that the Insurance Excess seemed to be higher than usual (1200 Euro for damage, 1600 for theft). However.....

The garden is at it's most colourful now with iris's and roses looking good. Thinking ahead, I find July and August there is a lack of flowering plants. I find the choice of plants (especially perennials) here quite limited and have supplemented with bits dug up from friends and family's gardens in the uk. Can anyone recommend anything flowering or even interesting foliage that will (if cared for) give colour and interest in the, hopefully, hot summer months. Many thanks.

I read that you are not allowed to let your 'prima casa' but in our case our farmhouse has an outbuilding (not joined) which we are making habitable and would like to rent out to supplement our income. We would be living in our house. Does anyone have any experience of letting an annex of a prima casa?

Sorry - started to type the post and got dragged out by my partner for a walk in Posillipo! So here goes: we have been 'given' a small plot of land by our neighbours to look after and grow veg on. We have little/no knowledge of keeping an allotment and whilst have taken some educated guesses plus advice from the locals would be grateful for any hints or tips on how to keep the wild grass down after planting our veg, and to keep the bugs away etc. Or if you can direct me to a website about 'ortos' in Campania as all info on Italian gardens seems to focus on Tuscany!

Thank-you!

Was awoken at just gone 4.00 am with bed violently shaking and wardrobe doors banging. Apparently epicentre in Emilia Romana about 8 point something just over the Mountains from us not sure of how much damage elsewhere.

We have a small satellite dish pointing to Hotbird and using an Italian Sky decoder received RAI 1,2,3, as well as Mediaset 1,2,3 and 4. We also received umpteen other stations including BBC World News and Euro News. Over the last few weeks the RAI programmes have been scrambled and we continually get the No Signal warning on nearly all the other programmes that we normally watched. Has everything been switched to another satellite does anyone know? We are up to date with TV licence and we use the Sky box only to receive the free-to-view channels.