It was about four o'clock last Monday afternoon when pinus pinea struck. There was a loud, not so distant rumble and then a big bang that rang out through the evening quiet.
In our countryside surrounds, outside the village of Trevignano, it is often so quiet that you can hear the village bus change gear as it climbs the hill, more than half a kilometre away. This rumble had seemed like a minor explosion and left me wondering if a neighbour's roof had fallen in or if the village bus had chanced on a close encounter with the bin lorry.
What in fact had happened was that about 20 yards of a neighbour's terraced garden wall had collapsed, partly taken down by the first monsoon rains of the autumn but more specifically undermined by the roots of pinus pinea or Roman pine trees. Ah yes, in these parts, pinus pinea is an agent of no small damage.
The problem all goes back to the 1960s when the Commune (village town council) opted to develop our rural, out-of-village area into a residential zone. Some genius decided that pine trees would give the new quartière an exotic, seaside, holiday feel.
The problem is that pine trees are not suited to an inland zone that is dominated by an indigenous holm oak forest. In particular, the roots of good old pinus pinea tend to be strong on the horizontal and weak on the vertical.
In other words, rather than going down deep into the earth, they travel out flat just below the surface doing long-term damage to the stability of whatever object they come across, be it garden wall or asphalt road surface.
For all its destructive tendencies regarding walls, however, a good word needs be said on behalf of the Roman pine. Namely, that pine cones, when not crashing loudly and expensively onto the roof of your parked car, offer up pinoli, much loved in the Mediterranean cuisine.
Wherever you look in these parts, trees tend to be a major part of the picture. For example, our house backs onto the aforementioned indigenous oak forest. Which is all very well, wholesome and picturesque until such time as the ancient old forest goes up in fire at the end of yet another long, hot summer.
You stand there with your pathetic little garden hose at the ready, making fast and furious calculations about wind direction and the effectiveness of the road as a fire break.
All the time you are thinking, surely this sort of thing only happens to upstart yuppies from California in a T. Coraghessan Boyle novel.
So far - repeat, so far - the road-cum-fire-break has held good. It makes you wonder, though.
Your correspondent cannot complain about wood, however. This is the time of year when the evening chill begins to make itself felt, not to the extent of turning on the central heating (that traditionally happens in mid-November) but to the extent of lighting the open fire.
Like many others in the village, we have amassed our own collection of firewood.
It is a bit like wines really, with the diminishing, tarpaulin- covered wood stacks graded from "green" to "fresh" to "dry as a bone", depending on the year they were felled and the type of wood.
Two ailing Lebanese cedars most reluctantly cut down four years ago are now powder-keg quick on the grate. Rather ugly, spindly larch trees, one of which had the impertinence to crash on to your correspondent's office roof, make for good burning too, but only 18 months after being felled. However, if and when the fire is roaring too heartily, a few logs from last winter's crop of felled larch will slow you up nicely.
Olive and cherry wood, again felled only in case of old age or disease, also make for good burning, with the cherry in particular giving off a wonderful aroma.
When friends walk into the house and see the fire lit, they often ask why we have no cooking utensils around the hearth. To the average Italian, it seems merely good sense to use the wood fire not just for heat and comfort, but also as a barbecue.
We thriftless Irish, of course, have much to learn but at least we have worked out how to contain the malicious intentions of old pinus pinea towards the garden wall. A quick, not too deep dig and snip at specific pine roots puts a halt to that particular gallop.