Rural Life

Rewarding Volunteers

While we were still in the grip of snow, ice and freezing temperatures, we had a hot date with all the rest of the volunteers who worked on the Comice at Chartrene.  All?  Not quite.  Some decided that temperatures around -8 degrees were too cold and could not be tempted out, some had to work on the Saturday, and others were not invited due to administrative cock-ups.  However there were a good 300 of us in the Centre Rene d'Anjou on the 9th January, prepared to be rewarded for our efforts in August.

I should be clear that this was not a reward for making flowers for floats or for performing the Windmill in Old Amsterdam to massed ranks of rural dwellers.  No, this was for running a bar for half a day during the event and for John helping to dismantle stands after the event.  Others had done similar tasks and more over the two days and the preparations and dismantling.

The party started at 8pm, but drinks and nibbles didn't arrive until 9pm when we were invited to sitdown and enjoy a film of the event - it was well done, no pictures of Windmills in Amsterdam, but perhaps more views of ploughing matches than I was ready for when waiting for my dinner.  At 10pm the speeches started, with thanks to everyone, particularly those who had given up two years of their lives to the organisation of the event.  Then at 10:45pm the food -finally.  At 11:30pm the dancing started, with a short break for a reprise of the Chartrene performance of YMCA, before champagne and cake at 12:30am, and then more dancing.  We left early at 1:45am and the party was going strong - these rural types know how to party and they know how to dance - tangos, waltzes, quicksteps, polkas - for us English types it was culture shock of the most elegant variety.

Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures of the dancing - blame John's mobile phone!

 

Snow in Winter - whatever next?

I don't know about anyone else but I am getting a tad bored with the Arctic high pressure that has settled over North West Europe and seems to like it here.  While bright blue skies and crisp mornings are a pleasure, particularly if you don't have to scrape a car windscreen, walking timorously because of black ice loses its appeal very quickly.  And I defy anyone to find early morning temperatures of -8 degrees C a good thing at all!

We are using up fire wood at a scary pace, although I guess that is what it is there for, but the chances of refilling the wood stack in the next couple of weeks are looking slim.  While we will work with chainsaws in the afternoons in the wood if it is frosty, we won't do anything like that where there is snow on the ground - it is just too dangerous.  And that is what we have - a rarity in Anjou we are told, but 4 inches of snow fell yesterday afternoon and with a high of -0.9 degrees this afternoon, it didn't do much about melting.

The cats have decided that snow is quite fun if they can come in again as soon as their paws get cold, and pink paws get colder more quickly than black pad paws - not a lot of people know that....  The chickens are beside themselves - they don't know where to put their feet, there are no grubs and other yucky things to find, and if there were, they would need to dig in the snow to find them.  The chickens don't do going in the snow.  Or strictly, ours don't - Joel's don't have the choice, although they have spend a lot of time standing on the garden chairs today.

However, one can't really grumble - this is what winter is all about and hopefully the prolonged frost will put paid to all the nasty microbes out there like peach leaf curl and tomato blight and codling moth and fleas (not strictly a microbe but something that needs dealing with).

Keep warm!

Impact of two cats on garden wildlife

Back in the autumn I hinted that I had been keeping a tally of what Maigret and Poirot had been catching in the garden.  Some people on the Wild about Britain site chose to interpret that as meaning that I was a "sicko pervert who gets her rocks off on this sort of thing" - such charming types you do meet in cyberworld.  Actually we did it to see what sort of impact having two young and fit cats (as opposed to one elderly and cantankerous feline) would have on the wildlife population of the garden, particularly the sparrows, which are numerous here.

We kept a tally per cat through the year, counting only those kills that we saw our cats with the body for, and with lizards, it had to be the body rather than the tail, which detaches very easily.  Maigret was the more effective hunter - Poirot is not built for stealth - but Poirot got the bigger prey, and still yearns to catch and eat her own chicken.  Fortunately our neighbour regards this ambition as a joke and doesn't get cross when she tries.  We take the same attitude when she goes for ours, as we know from experience that once she gets pecked by one of the chickens, she will leave them alone.

Between the two of them, they have got 27 lizards, a nest of 5 baby robins, 4 baby blackbirds, 2 sparrows, 3 pigeons and 22 mice.  The robins were a shame, but we have suitably pruned the tree the nest was in with the hope of stopping the same thing next year.  The blackbirds had been left in the rhubarb patch on the ground - any cat would have got them.  The sparrows were babies chucked out of one of the 8 nests on the side of the house - they could well have been dead or dying anyway, and certainly given each nest had at least 2 if not 3 broods this year, it was not a major impact.

The toad fought back - so that doesn't count, and he is still patrolling the garden when not hibernating.  The hedgehog got jumped on a few times but again is fine.  I have no qualms about the mice or pigeons - both are vermin around here, and as I have said before, a good mouser is well regarded in this rural community.  So much so that next door's cat, Nenette of the kittens, who is also a formidable ratter, has been rented out in exchange for firewood, to rid a local small holder of their rat and mouse problem.  We gather she is having a wonderful time!

Apologies for lack of photos this time - some issue with Typepad and my computer not quite getting it together today, although there are nice pictures on the links in general. 

An update!  I have won in the battle for getting photos on, so here are the two savage killers, ready for the next victim.