Apologies for not rounding off the 30 Days Wild with a wild post yesterday, but I was anything but wild - tied to the computer until 10:30pm getting a report finished for a client. With a couple of chums, I've been doing a quick scheme review for the Fifth Continent Landscape Partnership, but at a distance. It brought back memories of afternoons on the sands at Littlestone when I was small, walks on the shingle at Dungeness when I was older, and the litany of villages we used to have to go through to get down to Littlestone (Matfield, Brenchley, Goudhurst, Sissinghurst, Biddenden, Tenterden, Appledore, New Romney). My Dad used to love it down there.
Anyway, now summer should be here and soon the holiday makers will arrive, but it will be a strange summer, as so many of the festivals and capers of summer have been cancelled. There will be no 14th July festivities and fireworks, no Comice at Echimiré, although they promise they will do it next year instead, no festival of the giant croissant (and at 800g each, they are indeed giant), no car boot sales, no concerts. We will have to make our own entertainment.
And that is where things can get bizarre. We grew small pumpkins (potimarrons) last year, but didn't eat many of them, as they weren't as tasty as the butternut squashes we also grew. They sat in the garage and slowly went off. "What happens if you bury a whole one?" he says, and does that in the wild flower meadow. I imagine that they sit in the soil until some enterprising worm or beetle nibbles through the hard outer shell, at which point the seeds, which are in a nutrient rich soup of putrid pumpkin, go "weh hey - an escape tunnel" and go for it. One has produced four seedlings, the other? Well see if you can work it out!
With life here in France returning to close to normal, I'll not be doing a daily blog, but I will provide updates a few times a week. I will leave you with the portrait of Fergus I promised a couple of days ago.
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