Rural Life

Day 45 of lockdown - technology is starting to creak a bit

I'll keep it short today, after yesterday's rant.  Typepad (the bunch that power this blog) are usually jolly reliable, but occasionally something goes a bit skewiff out there in the ether, and today is one of those days.  I gather the blog hasn't been available for a chunk of the day, and it is taking ages to do anything.

However I said I would do a post a day during lockdown, so here goes.

I had planned a rant about face masks - I'll save that for tomorrow, when the system is hopefully a bit more robust.

Instead I will say that while not as thoroughly wet as yesterday, the weather has not been totally kind, with a solid hour of heavy rain, so that in the past 30 hours we have had about 24mm rain.  Once the sun gets on it, this should ensure the asparagus goes mad tomorrow - yum!

While yesterday was just very wet, today has had the added joy of strong and gusty wind.  I'm not a fan of strong winds at the best of times, but certainly not when the trees are in full leaf.  The seedlings are also stuck in the BBQ as it is too windy for them to be out, as they would get blown away.

Anyway, I have a curry and naans to make, so I will leave it here, with a photo of Sanity Clause the Cat giving his view on technology.

Day 44 of lockdown - a bit of a rant

Well after a day yesterday that felt like it had been stolen back from the gods of bad weather, today we have had what my French chums would describe as a truly British day.  I was lucky in that I got out to go to the market early (for me at the moment), so there was only a very short queue to get into the market place and my usual stalls didn't have many waiting either.  My only limit was that I had little cash, so had to do my bulk purchases where they would take card payments (cheese, fruit and veg).  I was out of the square by 10:25am, which was quite good as the rain radar had indicated that the rain would start in la Flèche at 10:30am.  Impressively for the forecasters, I felt the first spots at 10:27am.  By the time I got home it was properly raining.

It then rained solidly until about half an hour ago, so I've been truly confined to quarters.  As my big project is now put to rest for a while, all I have had to do is some bits of electronic tidying up, soI've had time to think.

When I got home from the market this morning, John had the internet radio tuned to Classic FM.  We were both fed up with Radio 2 and the false cheery, "we're all in it together", worthy projects and jollification, or fake sincere and practiced choke to the voice, hushed tones and doleful stories of death or loss.  Commercial pop and rock radio stations had inane adverts for things we didn't need and couldn't buy anyway, traffic reports for roads we don't use and government exhortations to good behaviour.  I had suggested trying Classic FM, and within seconds of tuning in, John was apparently happily conducting an imaginary orchestra through a rousing piece of music.

I'd also seen yesterday on Facebook a rant about orthodoxy in revering the NHS (no problem with that) and saying politicians in the UK were doing their best (don't get me started).  I had noticed an increase in people doing things to raise money, and all for the NHS.  People - you pay for the NHS every day of your working life - it's called National Insurance contributions and taxation.  It is the politicians who decide if what you pay actually goes to the NHS, but unless you are a tax and NI dodger, if you are a normal person, you pay every day for the NHS.  If you can't walk up stairs 35 times a day without getting sponsored, find a proper charity.

And here is where I really start to rant.  Many of the charities, and organisations you may not think of as charities, that make our "normal" lives so much better or safer are struggling with no revenue, having to pay furloughed staff, little if any government support and are facing huge challenges in keeping going.  If you want to benefit from any of the following post-Covid-19, think about donating a few pennies to them, to make sure they are there afterwards:

Wildlife Trusts; RSPB; YMCA; NSPCC; RSPCA; Lifeboat Association; Friends Of your local park, cinema club, library; shelters for the homeless, abused men, women and children; PDSA; festivals; small music venues; groups who look after local heritage including buildings, arboretums, prehistoric sites, meadows, forests; local fauna and flora groups.  I could go on, but you get the picture. 

The NHS and ALL their staff do a fabulous job, and we owe them gratitude for what they are doing for us now, not least in ensuring that once the pandemic is forgotten, their working terms and conditions are improved significantly (surely the best legacy we can give them).  But the world afterwards also needs beauty, kindness, art and culture, and you could do no worse than donate to them too, so they are there for you.

You may also wish to offer a sacrifice of something to the weather gods so that it doesn't rain all day tomorrow, otherwise you risk more of this!

Day 43 of lockdown - no politics here

This afternoon at 3pm (French time) the lovely Prime Minister stood up to give a speech in the House of Deputies about the plan for getting out of lockdown.  I gather it went on for at least 1 hour and 6 minutes.  I've not listened to it and I'm not going to talk about it here (or at any rate not today).

The other thing I'm not going to write about today is face masks - I'd planned to have a nice cathartic rant about stupidity and face masks, as I thought the weather was going to be pants.  It wasn't so I won't.  Perhaps tomorrow or Thursday.

Instead, more of the usual - cats, plants, vegetables - you can zone out here if you like.  I won't know so I won't be offended.

This morning we discovered a rat burrow - actually not so difficult to discover, as there was a vast pile of freshly dug soil and rubble outside the chicken run - like a giant mole hill.  John has borrowed our next door neighbour's old but effective rat trap and placed it in the burrow entrance - of course if we catch any, we will have to deal with them as it is a live trap, but we really didn't want to use poison as it is too indiscriminate.  If a mouse eats some and is then caught and eaten by a cat, the cat gets very ill (how I lost one of mine I think).  The contents of the trap could be tomorrow's excitement!  Our neighbour is very excited anyway.

This afternoon was cat in the country feeding time.  Fergus was cross with me as he swatted Spooky who wanted a cuddle, so I told him off. He went and had a really high quality sulk at me at a distance.

Once I had dealt with three of the boys, I went to check out the wildflower meadow - all was looking very lovely, although the pesky bee orchids are still being very shy.  In a couple of weeks I expect I won't be able to move for the wretched things, but currently they are hiding.  I did meet this very fine furry caterpillar though - eating its way through what seemed to be clover, it was about an inch and a half long.  I wonder what it will be when it grows up?

Donald decided to help me take photos in the meadow, including my favourite irises (for tomorrow), and other bits and bobs.  I suspect this is not how to take selfies!

Finally, I picked a few broad beans - they are still very tiny, so ideal for pretentious chefs, but I'd got to that stage where I could wait no longer!

Day 42 of lockdown - a change in the weather

Lockdown has been reasonably tolerable because of the lovely weather this spring (although I guess we will pay for it later in the year).  There have been few days with rain or mist, and while we had the cold east wind (the Bises), it was tempered by the strong sunshine.  The lovely light and the warmth have meant that sitting in the garden or strolling around the garden admiring new growth have been good ways to shake off itchy feet and feelings of doom.  But all good things come to an end and a depression (meteorological) is coming through bringing storms.  Just after lunch we could see them lining up further south in this screen grab from the lightningmaps.org website.

Then they got closer and I could look at the map and see where the lightning struck as I heard the thunder outside (that really is quite fun to do, if you are a sad Herbert like me!).

We've had 5mm of rain during the afternoon and the air is now humid and rather cooler.  Being outside is less of a distraction, which is a shame as I have now finished my report, and don't know where the next work is coming from!

I have had another welcome distraction this afternoon, as I was approached by an academic researcher who is looking at British Art and the Spanish Civil War as to whether we had anything in my Dad's archives that might add interest to his thesis.  While I found nothing of interest to him, I did enjoy going back through the stuff I have written up to date, and thought I perhaps ought to go through my "To Do When There Is Nothing That Will Pay Bills" box of stuff and move that project on a bit.  Surely lockdown is the time to get that sort of thing done, and I should be grateful for the chance to crack on with it?

Looking back over little projects in this run of blogs, I think I posted photos earlier this month of a tray of modules sown with butternut squash seeds.  Half of the seeds had been stored in the fridge and half in a paper bag in the seed box that lives in the living room.  I think it is now time to reveal the result of the experiment - 6/12 of the fridge stored seeds sprouted, compared to 12/12 of those in the bad in the living room.  Now I have to decide what to do with 18 butternut squash seedlings.

 

Day 41 of lockdown - haute couture

Well the sunken cake didn't kill us - yet.  It tasted much better than it looked, but I must work out what went wrong.

This morning I had to go out to feed the boys in the country.  They were all present, correct and in need of cuddles, so it took quite a long time.  It was extraordinary, sitting with them and all I could hear was purring, birds singing, insects buzzing and the odd cuckoo a bit of a way off.  I recorded it for the blog, but haven't yet worked out how to get that off my phone and onto the computer.  As the forecast for the week is wet and stormy, that is a project for another day, not a Sunday.

Once the cats were cuddled out and I had finished my chores at the site, I went to check on the meadow and the orchids.  The bee and lizard orchids are still not showing themselves, but the two lady or early spotted orchids (whichever they are - my identifying flowers books are not brilliant on orchids, but a new one is not an essential purchase at the moment) were looking good.  Here is the one in the centre of the meadow (subtle it ain't).

Once I had taken this photo, I started back to the car, but noticed a flurry of yellow further down the meadow.  I followed it and watched it and it turned out to be two swallowtail butterflies playing (or something else) over the top of the flowers.  I charged after them, phone at the ready to get that one shot that will make me famous, but they separated and led me a right dance.  In this photo, you can see a yellow blob, and that is as close as I got to a swallowtail to photograph it!

This afternoon we've been taking it slowly as no one really needs to be out and about on a Sunday afternoon.  As all the talk is about wearing masks and whether it will be compulsory when leaving the house, I thought I would take a look at the free pattern supplied by the local paper and make our own.  I'll not go into our thoughts on face masks today, but if it is what is needed, so be it.  An old duvet cover, for a size of duvet we no longer have, provided the fetching material for these works of art, while I had just enough elastic to make two (how lucky is that?).  Here is yours truly modelling our post-confinement face ornaments.  Alternatively they will come in useful when I go into robbing banks.

If I don't look comfortable, it is because I wasn't - they really are as unpleasant to wear as the health care staff say, and I am full of admiration for them for doing an amazing job, while wearing this sort of thing and not complaining about it.

 

Day 40 of lockdown - baking failure

Day 40 - this is closely related to quarantine, which indeed can be related to the French word for 40 (quarante) so wouldn't it be nice if this was nearly the end?  But no, we have another 15 days of this to go as a minimum, and it isn't really clear what "normal" life will be like on the 11th May here in France.  I guess we just keep smiling?

I was at the supermarket yesterday - first time in about 3 and a half weeks I think (John did the previous visit).  Some things were still a bit scarce on the shelves - pasta and rice were limited, as was flour and certain cat foods (notably those for older cats), and wine boxes.  There had clearly been a run on red wine boxes!  I got the last of the own brand cabernet sauvignon red - victory was mine!  This is a bit bizarre as the warm and sunny weather usually means a run on white and rosé.

Anyway, knowing that flour is scarce due to lots of home baking, naturally I too had to jump on the bandwagon, plus we have a lot of eggs at the moment.  I thought I ought to reprise my quatre-quarts chocolate cake, but with a few tweaks.  I swapped out some white sugar for light muscovado, some ordinary (well, local, organic) flour for chocolate powder and chestnut flour, and swirled in chunks of dark cooking chocolate at the end.  I used a relatively low oven, a cake tin with a protected base and a double layer of paper liners.  I checked at 35 minutes of cooking and it had risen nicely but needed to cook more.  I checked again 25 minutes later, and it was cooked, but o dear - really badly slumped in the middle.  Let's hope tastes better than it looks!

And if it tastes as bad as it looks, well, we do have a very good bakers in the village!  They are also one of a very few allowed outlets for my friend who grows and sells flowers (cut flowers) to get her product out there.  Up until now, I have benefitted from free flowers in exchange for services rendered, but this week I supported another of my local businesses and bought my own bouquet - isn't it lovely?

After taunting me for nearly a week with huge and pregnant buds, the orchid has relented and opened up; one bud yesterday, and another today.  Was it worth the wait?  Well judge for yourselves with this close up of the flower that opened up yesterday.

 

Day 39 of lockdown - cats and gardening

It is a widely accepted truth that cats love boxes - there are lovely films of panthers and cheetahs and tigers all unable to resist the lure of the delicate rectangular shape, with or without an obvious entrance.  Look what we managed to trap yesterday in a cardboard box!  Our own little panther.

This morning was cloudy and cool so I took advantage to go and see the boys in the country and also plant the first of the potatoes (yes, I know, we are late, but that's just the way it is).  Cats also like well raked soil, freshly turned soil and weed suppressant mat.  It took a while to remove the roots and stones from this newly cultivated piece of land.  A similar amount of time to remove all the cat poo that accumulated in the 3 days since it was rotavated, and mere seconds for cats to appear on the weed suppressing mat once it was on the ground.  There are 20 seed potatoes under that lot somewhere!

I think the broad beans may be not so far off a first picking!

Finally, I am always amazed at the resilience of well established plants, and this one is my particular favourite.  Perhaps 12 years ago we had a small bed here, where now there is just pavement.  We also had the wall repointed which is I think when the little bed started to disappear, before being totally covered when the new pavement was put in place.  Somehow this lovely campanula manages to survive and each spring produces this wonderful ball of mauve flowers which last a couple of weeks.  Some years it is the only splash of colour in April, this year we have early roses and geraniums that survived the winter in flower, but this is still pretty special in my book.

 

Day 38 of lockdown - further orchid torture

They are out to get me!  Those orchids keep doing this - massive, pregnant buds that don't open for days, they just get larger and larger.  Every time I look at them (so several times a day as they are by the loo) I imagine them shouting "feed me Seymour!" like in the Little Shop of Horrors.

I spend the morning Skyping with a client in Birmingham - she is not having an easy time of it, living in a nice maisonette, but without any real outside space.  She is juggling work and writing up her PhD thesis.  I really am quite lucky, not least as I spent the afternoon playing on TWO ride on mowers, making a property look very beautiful.  A slight frustration is that only the ducks will admire what I have done, but hopefully they like it!

Reasons for mowing when people won't see what you've done?  Well, left to itself, nature has some lovely flowers and insects and it has thugs with few natural predators.   Those thugs will take over, and while after 50 years you might have an interesting ecosystem, in the meantime you develop a thatch of bramble, thistle, nettle, rush, horsetail and old man's beard which strangle the orchids, lords and ladies, milkmaids, stitchwort and other charming flowers of spring.  

We sat out yesterday after work, enjoying the warmth, the bird song, and I would say the quiet, but there was all that bird song.  The first swifts are turning up, but not enough yet to start the big screaming aerobatic displays.  The swallows are frantically nest building.  The starlings are very proud of the chicks they are raising in our eaves and makes a lot of noise about it - I think someone plays a lot of old school computer games around here, as that is what our starling sounds like!  The cuckoo was also giving it some yesterday, while today where I was mowing, two were shouting at each other across the valley.  The starling likes to perch on the apex of the roof to "sing" to the world - I think he has ambitions to be the god on top of a Thai palace!

 

Day 37 of lockdown - is it getting to me?

The mystery of the plants was solved once John got home - it was his payment for helping someone to fix their ride on lawnmower.  Excellent!  This afternoon I planted 9 of the tomato plants and six of the lettuces where the boy cats live.  They may or may not survive - we know that deer can't get into that bit of the land, but I've seen some monstrously huge snails there, and they will need regular watering if the dry weather continues.  Fergus worried that I was overdoing it this afternoon, so pinned me down for a while.

It was very good of him to notice that I needed a bit of TLC.  I don't know what it was that caused it, but I woke this morning with a thumper of a headache, and none of the usual things would shift it - not tea, not rinsing my hair under the shower, not even ibuprofen worked its usual magic.  So I missed out on going to the market this morning - I just could not face it.  I'm OK now but it took a while.  But then, it is day 37 of lockdown...

In other news, we had a visitor to the garden yesterday - we all kept a couple of metres apart, but for those living on their own, and who don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time, and who aren't much into reading, it's getting tough.  So we sat outside at a good distance apart and caught up after not having seen each other for about 40 days.  It certainly seemed to perk her up and it was nice to have a change of conversation too, and all in French!!

The first of the "red" irises is out - this one is at the front of the house in the courtyard and tends to get munched by snails so it is good to have a relatively perfect flower.  The ones in the back garden aren't flowering yet, and are generally a bit more lush.

The wind from the east has dropped again, and the rain has stopped, so Nibbles has returned to her fine weather perch, ensuring that nothing and no one could get in the bath window if it was open.  I'm sure we all feel safer for that.

 

 

Day 36 of lockdown - I was only out for half an hour...

Yesterday's yoga seemed to help with the sleeplessness and weird nightmares - well, I woke up less often and the weird dream was much more pleasant and drifted around nice things, so a better experience.  So once I had done most of the work I wanted to do today, I decided to go for a walk.  As John is out working, I had to walk places where I knew I wouldn't be far from real life if I did anything silly.

I started out from our house and cut through the Pas de Mule park to the road past the plan d'eau - our little fishing lake and park.  Normally in mid-May I help out with a trout fishing day here, but it has been cancelled for 2020.  This is a shame, although as it would attract more than 50 people, it is a no-no.

I carried on up the other side of the valley, heading for the route de Beaufort, and before I got to the bridge over the Voie Verte I became very aware of the pungent smell of hawthorn blossom (or may flower) from the trees that line the path.  I think that is a good sign on a number of levels.

I carried on to the route de Beaufort and headed in the direction of Baugé.  The commune had been out and about cleaning the ditches with a digger - in my view there is little point in cleaning the bottom of the ditch if you spread broken plastic waste up the sides, but what do I know?

Once I got to the route de Pont de Godeau I turned back towards Vieil Baugé and went past one of the crossing points/access points for the Voie Verte - it is the route of an old railway line, so is ideal for cycling and joggers and for those that don't do hills.

I followed the road back into the village, past a bee keeper capturing a swarm, and up and round the church, stopped for a while at the Mairie to read the latest notices and then drifted back home again.  It was perhaps 2 kilometres and half an hour out of the house but I felt better for it.  I then released the feathered vandals and went back to the house to get a glass of squash, finish the work task for the day and write this blog.  Like I say, I was only out for half an hour, so where did the lettuce and tomato plants come from?  Goodness knows what I am going to do with the tomato plants as I've got 19 Gardeners Delight in pots anyway, while the feathered vandals will likely trash the lettuces as soon as I plant them, but someone really was very kind!