Rural Life

Change and new beginings

I'm not sure how much I am in favour of change - but I am sure it will happen whether I like it or not.  This year is one of farewells - some French friends moving south, some moving village, and British friends, tired of the challenges of Brexit, selling their second homes and settling full time (or an approximation of full time) in the UK.  They all say they will come back and visit, how many do, and how often remains to be seen. 

While the removals take place, there is the frisson of having a trailer that can be used for trips to the dump.  We also pick over the spoils of what won't be taken away, what is no longer needed or is too expensive to take "home" (there really is no Brexit benefit).  A local cat charity now has more pillows, towels and duvets than they could dream of.  Someone else has a 'new to them' sofa.  We have a bunch of things to put on sales sites to share around, and the awful process of triaging much loved libraries of second hand books to see what can be slipped into book swap kiosks, what might sell for a few centimes, what could be given to hospital libraries, and what, with the best will in the world, is best sent for pulping (Thomas Mann in the original is high on that list!).  How many copies of the RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening does one need - purely rhetorical!

But that excitement declines very rapidly, as we try to find a bit of cupboard space for 6 tins of chickpeas, and regret the company, the laughter, the trips and events that will no longer animate the summer months.  We would prefer to keep the people to all the books, sofas, DVDs and chickpeas.

The moving stuff around this week has meant that we have also been out and about a bit.  Did you know that as well as building a tower in Paris, Eiffel also built a railway bridge in Chinon (OK it is a long way in the distance)?  You can also see that the river is chronically low.

We also visited the village church at Gée, just 15 kilometres away - it has been very well restored, presumably a nice legacy from someone.  The village also has a very good restaurant that does a very fine 15€ lunch!

I don't know if I should blame the cats for this, but I had a chance to take a very close look at one of my favourite moths - the tiger moth.  With their wings at rest, they are handsome and sober, but when they are in flight or when you look at the underside, they are the most marvellous and vibrant orange.

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It is still stinking hot and dry as a bone here - water restrictions are incredibly tight.  You can only water food plants, anything else has to take its chance unless you use grey water from doing something else.  Even watering food plants is frowned on between 8am and 8pm, and should ideally only be done with grey water or rain water that you have stored.  We are down to our last 800 litres of stored water, and while there was a promise of rain and thunder for Thursday on the weather sites yesterday, it has now been downgraded to a 20% chance of mild drizzle.  The sweetcorn hasn't worked and has been sacrificed for aubergines, butternuts and borlotti beans, while the chillies are doing well on the water that the chickens don't drink in a day.

The fact that there are cool shady corners and a bit of water/bog at the bottom of the Wildflower Meadow means that the trail camera has been working hard.  I did accuse John of knocking it over with a mower when he cleared the paths, but looking at footage from the camera, I then had to apologise.  The camera is on the move to a distant site where someone wants to know what is causing trouble, so I will be spending a lot of time clearing the SD card, but these videos were downloaded by phone and show that new beginings are possible.  I am pretty sure the faun was born in the meadow, and I may even have footage of the labour/birth when I go through the hundreds of files.  Anyway, enjoy these and see who you think pushed over the camera on its log!

Looking at that more closely, I think the young buck has a problem with one foot/leg.

This is the only time I have seen one here, and it is also surprising to see it in daylight.

He didn't really go far for a couple of weeks, and stayed with Mum in the zone in that time.

He (or she) really is rather cute!

Well, I know who my money's on!

Have a good week!

 

Surviving the heat - just about

Well, I have to say that temperatures over 40ºC are just awful.  Monday was the killer day, although Tuesday was still jolly hot.  By just after breakfast, it was already over 30ºC and just kept climbing.  We had to go out to a meeting in the afternoon (fortunately somewhere that was air conditioned), and just the few kilometres in the car (with the air con on) were nearly unbearable and with the air con, extremely expensive in fuel too.  It didn't get down to 33ºC until well after 9pm, when we sat out for a bit but not for long.  In town, the two pharmacies agreed it was over 40, but couldn't decide if it was 42, 43 or 44.  Any were too hot!

The following morning I went to The Garden to check on the boy cats and see the damage to the potagers.  The cats were fine, but very pleased to have gravy.  As for the plants?  Well I was pretty convinced we had lost at least 2 of the butternut plants, half the chillies, half of the leeks, and some of the beans.  Some plants had just rejected the fruits they were carrying, so the five set butternuts were yellow and gone, the courgettes had no viable female flowers, and the aubergines had no flowers full stop.

Nature is amazing though - among the photos below taken today, there are aubergines ready to be picked, flourishing borlotti beans, a newly set butternut, some small chard seedlings that survived and are pulling away, the parsnips that survived (2 didn't make it), and a chilli set on a different but equally abused plant.  The leeks are flourishing too.  Sadly the sweetcorn has been provoked into flowering too soon and too short to produce much of interest, but hey!

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How did the wildlife survive the heat?  OK as far as we can tell - there is evidence that the resident doe and faun made it through and in fact the faun looks pretty healthy to my eye.  The local buzzards are making a lot of noise as are the wood peckers.  There are no obvious corpses - I think they just head for cover and wait until it's over.

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It's the opera season in Baugé, so I must cut this short and do a bit of ironing before making salads for the interval picnic (it's a Glyndebourne style opera festival), but this week has seen a notable anniversary.  It is five years since Zola's Gotcha Day - to celebrate she rolled around on hedgehog pee for a happy 5 minutes.

Until next week!

 

Scorchio!

As of 30 minutes ago, it's official, here in Maine et Loire we are on red alert for high temperatures.  I won't disagree as in my office on the north side of the house, it is 29ºC and heading to 30ºC.  One thing that means is that I will not be doing battle with YouTube to load up more video, you will have to make do with stills.  If you don't believe me, see the outdoor thermometer, hanging in the shade in the garden at 2pm (so two and a half hours ago).

It has been hot, averaging 28ºC or higher for over a week now, although last weekend there was a bit of a breeze.  Even so, we have seen the ravages of relatively mild heat stroke and I can only exhort people to be careful. 

As an example of what the heat is doing, here are two photos of one of my butternut squashes - the first is in sunlight, the second this morning while still shaded.  The squash has a natural defence mechanism to allow the leaves to flop when really hot and then repump up when it cools down, however the yellow scorch marks are not part of the plan.  A couple of squash plants have set fruit, but they may well reject them if this continues.  The courgettes  have given up for the moment too - I had to buy a couple at the market yesterday!!!

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We grow potatoes under weed suppressant mat.  It keeps the awful perennial weeds at bay, saves the need for earthing up and bizarrely provides habitat for a number of useful critters - slow worms, snakes, toads.  This year the potatoes are planted in soil that is as near to clay without being able to use it on a potter's wheel as you can get.  It's really heavy and horrible when wet.  Currently the top layer resembles pusilane - the pumice-like rocks you can get as decorative mulch or for use in a septic tank filter bed, but about 4cm below the surface, there is still a hint of moisture in there.  There are also potatoes - look what we got from just one plant, noting that it has hardly rained and I do not water the spuds!  Dinner in the making.

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I have rarely had a conversation with a farmer when they didn't complain about the weather in some way.  There is chuntering going on now about drought and poor yields.  They are working day and night to get the cereal crops in, collect in straw and hay, turn the stubble so it is less likely to catch fire (although that process can also start a fire if a plough hits a flint), and get water and feed to grazing cows and goats.  This year I can understand their angst, as I watch a crop of fodder maize near us develop - it is very early, but the cobs are meagre and the leaves are now curling with the heat and lack of water.  Maize is a very greedy crop.  Sunflowers, once they germinate, need less water.  Again they are a bit early this year, and fields have gaps where germination was poor, but there is still little better than a field of sunflowers against a blue sky, even when slightly past their best.

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The local wildlife has to cope with all this too.  The southern part of the Meadow includes a small bog and three small, spring-fed ponds which means that the deer, boar, badgers and others have somewhere to go and drink.  I strongly suspect that a family of boar are actually living in the bog at the moment - they would be foolish not to - but it is off limits to us at this time of year due to scrub overgrowth.  The doe and her faun are knocking around the area, while the faun develops - they seem to come past the trail camera every couple of days.  She enjoys eating the lower leaves off the good pear tree, but fortunately not the pears (we have other plans for them...).  The faun is getting braver and larger.

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And with that, it really is too hot to sit by a computer any longer!  I'm off to watch the end of the Tour stage at Carcassone.

 

Mediaeval madness and new critters

I am now officially Covid free, so have been able to enjoy fun and games at the Fête Medievale in our village, celebrating the 600th (well actually 601st, but last year wasn't doable) anniversary of the battle of Vieil Baugé, turning point of the Hundred Years War, and the first major defeat of the English.  The French were helped by boggy ground and Scottish mercenaries.  There is a small military encampment, there is a jousting tournament, there are sword fights, there were demonstrations of horsemanship, fireworks, a 10 pig roast banquet, a fair, and trebuchets.  They were firing trebuchets and my word that is fun - a video next week perhaps!

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A friend of ours who makes clogs as a hobby (well, it is in his family history, and he enjoys it, and it is harmless enough) was demonstrating his craft and had a load of his wares for sale.

It is very hot and dry at the moment, so I was surprised to find Mr Tiggiewinkle wandering the garden after midnight last night, until I realised there was a bowl of water out for the cats, which could well have attracted him.  The cheese rinds we threw for the chickens may also have been appealing if the chickens didn't eat them all - some chance!

On the trail camera, there is a lot of deer action still, including this nice still of the doe and her fawn.  There was also a new face on the camera - I need to check if it is a pole cat or a pine martin.  Whichever it is, lovely to see, and I'm so glad we don't have chickens round there!

 

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That's all for today, but I may update during the week.

 

Caught by the plague!

Last Sunday, when I was drafting my last blog, I thought I didn't feel quite right.  On Monday, I knew I didn't feel at all right, but a Covid test was negative, so I assumed a summer cold.  Tuesday morning I did another test, as I was supposed to be taking someone to an appointment - VERY positive!  Fortunately someone else could step into the gap, but I was not a happy bunny and didn't enjoy my brush with SARS-Covid-19 or whatever it is calling itself currently.

I thought I should perhaps share that positive test, but decided against it as too many of us have seen them now.

So the week was shaped by feeling a bit pants, wanting to sleep all the time, feeling cold (and actually the weather wasn't as warm as it might have been), and looking for elements of joy.  Well the garden is always good for that!  How about many shades of pink on one rose bush?  This shrub has been neglected and maltreated for over 22 years, but hardly ever stops flowering, it is a marvel.  And no, I don't know the variety.

Other handsome flowers out at the moment are this multicoloured daisy type thing, wild chicory flowers a deeper blue than I remember seeing before and each flower stuffed with a questing bee, and flowers on a cactus we bought years ago and abuse roundly.

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The vegetable plots are starting to feed us properly now.  On Saturday we enjoyed our first aubergine and more courgettes, while yesterday we had potatoes and more courgettes, flavoured with herbs from the garden.  The butternuts are starting run rampant which has to be a good sign, and I am hopeful that next weekend we will have haricot beans from the garden.  Planning for winter, we planted leeks where the potatoes were, and I have sown swiss chard (Bright Lights) seeds for next winter.  We have also spent time watering.

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Last weekend I moved the trail camera to the edge by a field of corn that I thought would be harvested soon (still there yesterday morning), as I wondered what would come off the field and into the meadow when it was done - perhaps hares?  The place I chose seems to be popular with wildlife and they appear to be used to the camera now, so there was a lot of deer action, a passing fox, a rather ugly young pheasant, and did I mention the deer?  Yesterday, when I was downloading video, a small faun was watching me from the shelter of the fruit trees.

Anyway, here are a selection of short reels for you to enjoy.

 

 

 

I think you can see a doe feeding a faun in the background of this one.

 

Anyway, apologies for the delay in posting - blame the Covid, I do!

I hope normal service will be resumed next week.