Rural Life

Lockdown III, Day 16 - the garden as a hunting ground

Now that many clients have had a first cut at least of their lawns, home finally gets to the top of the list, and I had cracking service from John the Paysagiste (highly recommended), who mowed and strimmed and didn't attack what may be our first home bee orchid (or it may not).  I can now see where asparagus might come up and there doesn't seem to be any demolished stems so I might even have got away with leaving it quite so late!

The lawn is now even (apart from hidden traps built by chickens), so the neighbour's ginger kitten has had to stop pretending to be a lion stalking chickens (really ostriches) hidden by scrub, and has to try to emulate a cheetah racing across the veldt.  The chickens had been quite happily mooching around destroying things, when I heard a kerfuffle and there was the pretend cheetah charging around the lawn - he took quite a bit of evicting.  Once one of them gives him a good hard peck, it will be OK, but it is annoying in the interim.  Here is the lawn without scenes of Africa being replayed.

Ginger Boy is not the only cat stalking the garden, as our own Zola is trying to make up for lost time in her quest against lizards.  Yesterday evening she sat patiently among flower pots, pretending that she wasn't at all interested in lizard activity, but watching and waiting for her arch enemies.  It was perhaps just a little too cool by the time she took up her post, so no luck, and I have filled in the Zola sized gap with another plant pot since then.

It's not only outdoors where cats stalk - or rather intimidate.  Poirot used to sit and sleep on top of the wardrobe/linen press in the bathroom, but has given up jumping.  Instead she sits on the chest of drawers (she has a circuitous route to there avoiding all jumping) and glowers at you while you are on the loo, until you can't concentrate and have to give up and give her treats.  

We are up to 7 Asian Hornets in our trap in the garden now - that is rather a lot!  As they are all queens, this is a good thing of course.

 

 

Lockdown III, Day 15 - preparing for summer

Sunday morning means hard work at The Shack, but only for a limited time with powered tools, the rest of it is sweat of our brows.  Yesterday I made a start on planting the potatoes that should keep us fed next autumn and winter, and today I carried on.  I thought working in the morning might be a bit easier than in the afternoon, like I did yesterday, as it wouldn't be quite so warm.  How wrong can you be?  As that bit of the garden is relatively exposed to the east/south east, I was in full sun as I picked over the soil for wood, rocks and bundles of roots.  I then retrieved a piece of weed suppressant mat with ready cut potato holes from another part of the garden, laid and stapled it, and planted another 16 seed potatoes in the holes.  Now it is nature's turn to work her magic.  There is still another chunk of plot to pick over and cover, and another 28 seed potatoes to be planted, but not for a few days, as I have clients who need me and the Azay One to visit on Friday.

While I was cleaning and picking over the potato bed, John was out with the strimmer style brushcutter, trying to clear paths round the ponds at the bottom of the orchard and the wildflower meadow.  While deer, badgers, cats and pheasants can get round there, up until today, we couldn't.  It is still a work in progress, and we look forward to the day when we break through to have a circular walk around pond 2 and actually find pond 3, but it was rather wonderful to walk around the other side of pond 2, as if I too were a wild deer.

I got back to the garden to find the most awful violation of 'elf and safety violation going on, but in a good cause.  How many unsafe working practices can be seen here?

Having said that, it was totally worth it.  One day we will have one of those picnic benches here, so we can sit with sandwiches and cats and admire this wonderful view of rolling Anjou countryside.  Today we stood and admired and watched the tanker from the dairy drive through the view to pick up milk from the farm, and thought that life is good.

Finally, to note that we are getting into wild orchid season, with the first, an overblown early purple style, coming out in the middle of the wildflower meadow.  It will be two or three weeks before the bee orchids send up their flower spikes here I think and then another couple of weeks before the lizard orchids do the same.  Nice to see the first one though.

A demain!

 

Lockdown III, Day 14 - food and fertility

Apologies for yesterday, but I did warn you that there mightn't been an update - visits to Azay-le-Rideau take time, emotional energy and a bit of recovering from.  But this morning I was up and about and ready to seize the day, so relatively promptly to the market in Baugé.  If there is one thing that would convince me to grow our own vegetables, if I didn't already, it was standing in a queue for 25 minutes this morning for the fruit and veg stand!!  Unfortunately we are in that gap in the year when we don't have much variety, other than leeks and sorrel, so have to buy in things like citrus, carrots and (joy of joys) mangetout peas.  The queue for fish was much shorter and the options almost overwhelming - in the end I got a couple of pollock tail filets, which will take a sorrel sauce very nicely.

This afternoon was spent at The Shack (we will catch up on the funeral that we recorded shortly), and while John spent a happy couple of hours tinkering with ride on lawn mowers, I finally got round to sowing a couple of patches of bee friendly flowers in the Fergus memorial shrub bed - none of the shrubs are big enough this year to take up the whole plot, so it is better to fill the gaps with flowers than leave the couch grass to take over again.

I like to start planting my spuds on Good Friday and then make sure they are all in by the third week after Easter - well Easter was a bit of a blow out this year.  I had to work Good Friday, then the Azay project had to take precedence, so it is only today that I finally started on planting the potatoes, with the first 16 in.  It is jolly hard work, not least as the plot hasn't been used before, just rotavated and left, so it is all to do.  I'm hoping to get another 16 in tomorrow morning, but first I get to see if I can still move!!

During one of my rest moments, I watched various insects working their way along the row of flowering broad beans - this one is a dark blue carpenter bee (I think - masonry bees are smaller and make nests in inset screw holes in our woodwork, while the carpenter bees seem to like living in our back wall).  I applauded her industry!

Once the planting and sowing was done, and I had tidied away my stuff, I beat the bounds and admired the apple tree in blossom - either Canada or Russet I believe - the apples don't look particularly nice, but if the tree and the other one like it do their thing again this year, we can do a single variety juice pressing in the autumn, and this variety of apple makes a really tasty apple juice.

More tomorrow!

 

Lockdown III, Day 12 - out and about

Well actually the big excitement today was going to Super U for cat food and Cheddar cheese and one or two other bits and pieces - but you have to take variety and excitement where you can at the moment!!  I also washed all my scarves as I have a nasty rash on my neck, probably due to something I brushed against yesterday while mowing, but you can't be too careful.  So clearly an incident packed day, and not photogenic.

Much more photogenic were things I saw at The Shack today, including another of my pots of experimental seed sowing.  This was an old and open packet of coriander that I really held out very little hope for, and yet look what I found today!

I was able to dig up four leeks and a spring garlic (just like a spring onion but garlic) which will go nicely in a stir fry for dinner.  The leeks are starting to run to seed - I could probably have held that back by watering them rather better all the time they have been in the ground apart from the 4 solid months of rain.  Actually they would probably have been bigger and better if I had done that, but last summer's drought meant water had to be doled out very carefully.

Spooky Cat used to be very nervous about going down the garden, even just the bit attached to The Shack.  On Tuesday he accompanied me on a circuit of the three areas - the garden, the orchard and the wild flower meadow.  I was very impressed.  I'm not sure if he is more or less secure in his world, following the demise of Fergus Sunshine Supercat, but he allows me to pick him up, cuddle and stroke him and only mildly chews me.  These vicious claws are only used to attract my attention when dishing out food!

The quince blossom at the wild flower meadow is finally out - so pretty, but so delicate!  The frosts are due to stop soon and the harsh wind (or bise) from the East is due to drop at the weekend so hopefully the bees will do their thing and there will be viable fruit in the autumn.  Unless there is a glut we are unlikely to do another quince eau de vie for a year or two, but quince jelly is fab on porridge, while stewed quince and apple makes a superior crumble.

Tomorrow I am off to visit Azay le Rideau so there may not be a blog, depending on when I get back.

 

Lockdown III, Day 11 - a bit about food

Yesterday was a special day, as there were enough eggs from Mac and Jak (2 - one each for us) to see whether they were getting it right.  We also had a couple of shop bought free range eggs to test them against and to make a normal meal out of it.  "Our" eggs are on the right - smaller, as the girls are still very young, but with nice bright yolks and whites that were very upright.  They also tasted better than the shop bought, perhaps as they were that bit fresher, perhaps because we are biased!

Today I was daring and went outside the permitted 10km, so had to have an attestation, in order to make essential purchases - well I really can't miss la Flèche market two Wednesdays in a row!  It was heaving as clearly everyone else had the same idea, but all were wearing masks, and in 95% of cases, wearing them correctly too.  I staggered back to my car laden with cheese, milk, butter, croissants, bread, paté, vegetables, kippers and fresh crèpes.  What a wonderful feeling!  The town was looking very pretty, so while I was too busy shopping to photograph the market, I did take a picture of the river and the pressure-fed fountain.

The cold winter weather was good for the fruit trees, and they have responded in most cases with lots of blossom.  Of course now the harsh late frosts are savaging the blossom and affecting any set fruitlets.  I am hoping that I will have saved some fruit on the Victoria plum in the garden as the blossom has never been so good as it was this year.  My tactic was horticultural fleece, held in place with clothes pegs.  We think of it as a small tree, but it needed about 20 metres of fleece just to look like this - clearly not as small as we thought.  Time will tell for the fruit.

Now to go and sit in the late afternoon sun with a cat or two and 6 chickens who are not quite as in disgrace as they were this time last week.

 

Lockdown III, Day 10 - a trip to The Shack

We are having rather nice weather at the moment here - very cold overnight, which isn't so good, but lovely sunny days.  If you can find a place out of the wind to sit and contemplate, it is very nice indeed.  I sat under the birch tree at The Shack and while cuddling a cat, admired a humming bird moth sipping nectar and hopefully pollinating our broad beans.  As with humming birds themselves, it is very difficult to take a good photograph as they move so quickly, and certainly so with a phone!

This delightful reverie was broken when cat wars broke out on the shallot bed - thank goodness I planted so many, as four got well trashed with two large, fat cats rolling around on them!  Quite a good action shot though, if I say so myself!

Two of my favourite flowers are out at the moment.  Firstly we have a lovely big patch of honesty by The Shack, in the shade between another birch tree and the yukkas.  The purple flowers are a lovely colour and very simple, while the seed pods, later in the year, are pretty and dramatic oval disks.  You can peel them apart to make a nice dried flower/seed head display.

The other is periwinkle - a lovely deep blue flower.  In the garden at home we have a variegated version - the leaves are yellow and green - but I prefer the plain green version, which grows in profusion at the top of the orchard.

Lockdown III, Day 9 - that orchid rant

It's been a long day and I had to be out and about rather earlier than normal so got the full benefit of the hard frost and scraping the car, but when you are faced with a view like this when you arrive where you need to be, really it's not so bad!

Back in March, I introduced Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper - our two new chickens.  I think one was hatched a bit earlier than the other, but anyway, yesterday, finally, when I let them all out for their daily vandalism session and checked the coop, I found our first new Black Chicken egg!  Isn't it sweet?  As there was another today, I know what we are having for lunch tomorrow!!

Back in November, when we were all enjoying Confinement Lite or Lockdown II, I noticed that one of my miniature orchids was doing something interesting.  I posted a few photos of it before the end of the year - you can see a nice "branch" with lumps on it which might turn into flowers or more "branches".

Well, now we are in April, and my mother's rather larger orchid has had a whole new flower branch and two large flowers, which have been out for a number of weeks in the interim.  Yesterday, we finally have an open flower!  Talk about taking your time!  I've bought more orchid "compost" or a bag of dodgy looking bits of bark, but don't like to disturb things while they are doing their best to bloom.  On this basis, I will be repotting in October!!

O so pretty and o so tantalising!

 

Lockdown III, Day 8 - down at The Shack

Sunday morning is generally our big time for doing work at The Shack - there is a period of 2 hours between 10am and midday when we can use petrol motors, so John can play with chainsaw, rotavator, strimmer, brush-cutter and other noisy things, while I supervise cats and do "stuff".  Yesterday and overnight we had the first proper rain for ages, so the machines didn't come out to play but we did have a good check round and cuddled cats.

I sorted out my box of seeds about a month ago, throwing out most opened packets and anything over 7 years old (!).  Those between 5 and 7 years old and interesting (10 packets of seeds for kale and while it may be a super food, I'm still not going to grow it) I took to The Shack along with a stack of 6 - 8 inch pots.  A couple of weeks ago, I filled 7 pots with my miracle horse poo and leaf mould mix from the bin, and sowed the whole packet of each of cat mint, dill, coriander, basil, lettuce Webbs Wonder, chard Bright Lights and Autumn King carrots.  It felt rather good to be quite so profligate!  Anyway, despite pretty awful germinating conditions - first unseasonably hot, then unseasonably cold - today's inspection showed that so far at least the chard and the carrots are coming up!  Yes, I have spotted there is an interloper among the carrots - it has been removed.

Inspection of the bed planted with garlic, shallots and Hispi cabbage showed really good growth on the shallots, well apart from a Donald shaped gap!  I'm sure the delayed ones will catch up in due course and no one was rolling around on the wet soil today!

Things aren't so good on the fruit front.  While I have a small Victoria plum tree in the garden at home that is wrapped round with fleece at the moment to protect the fruitlets, the big tree at the end of the wildflower meadow does not have that luxury.  You can see the fruitlets are nearly black and when I picked one off and dissected it with my thumb nail, it was clearly unviable and frosted.

The cherry blossom has also been affected - I'm hoping that it is just that the petals have been fried by the frost and that the fruit will somehow survive, but with more nights of frost over the next week, I fear my ability to stand and scoff a kilo of cherries while allegedly doing something useful in the meadow will be severely curtailed this year.

Tomorrow I am likely to have a rant about orchids.  Just to warn you.

 

Lockdown III, Day 7 - by way of explanation

With this lockdown being announced for the 4th April, there was a certain inevitability that I would be informed on the 3rd April that we finally had a date when a room would be available in a carefully chosen nursing home.  So much to be done, so many arguments and discussions to be had, and of course lots of work to do as well.  And then lockdown itself to contend with.  Hence going dark for essentially 3 blogging days (I don't think posting an Armadillo really counts), while, depending on your point of view, someone entered prison or a caring and safer environment.  As I left on Thursday, I admired a group of ladies of a certain age, sitting on the sun-drenched terrace wearing rather fetching boaters, drinking lemon squash and keeping each other company - I didn't feel quite so bad!

Nibbles has felt the undertones of what has been going on and this morning both sulked and lived up to her name - hopefully that sort of behaviour will wear off soon and she will go back to ignoring me and sleeping or seeing off young intruders from the garden.

And as if cat shaming isn't enough, I am now going to chicken shame.  We have 5 - yes FIVE - full sized chickens and a small freeloader, so why did I have to buy this today?

Finally a comment on lockdown rules or my notoriety locally - I'm not sure which.  Yesterday I was driving home at about 6pm after having visited a client.  As the visit had been outside the allowed 10km, I had an attestation on my phone as well as my ID card, so when I saw the police block as I drove between the Chateau and the Tribunal in Baugé, I pulled over as indicated and started to prepare.  I put on my face mask, turned off the music in the car, prepared to get my ID and phone - but the lovely young policeman just looked in at me, and said with smiley eyes, "no don't worry, on your way, Madame!"  I was a little upset at not showing off my lovely new WARP (Withdrawal Agreement Residence Permit) card, but having said that, with Vieil Baugé stickers on the car and being convinced I'd met him before, I guess I wasn't surprised! 

 

Lockdown III, Day 6 - not back to normal yet

Apologies for the disruption to service and I promise I will get going again properly tomorrow to review the first week of Lockdown III.

In the meantime, enjoy this photo from September - because everyone needs to see an occasional armadillo!