The acquisition of a couple of beach style chairs gives us an opportunity to sit and gaze through the gap in the hedge/overgrowth/trees towards the far hill and its path, and let our minds wander. Sitting in the shade and gazing into the distance is one way, after all, of passing time on these endless hot, sunny days. Records are falling for heat, lack of rain, lack of water, size of cracks in the ground and buildings, crops being early and crops being poor. While the early cereal crops exceeded expectations in quality and sometimes quantity too, the later ones will be poor, and where the farmer has followed the rules and played the game, exceptionally poor. Any hint of rain is fallen up as a good sign, such as this week, with clouds to the west giving us a vivid sunset, hopes only to be dashed the following morning with just 0.3mm of rain in the gauge - not enough to even change the soil colour on our "lawn". Perhaps one different signal is that while the first cyclamen flowers are coming up, they are a good three weeks later than last year!
Even in this heat, the show must go on, particularly in the more touristy towns and villages. This weekend, Chinon held its mediaeval fair (probably fayre, but I object to that), with some celebration of Joan of Arc, who manifested her first miracle in the chateau at Chinon. I wouldn't have wanted to be Didier in all this finery yesterday!
Over in the Country, two of the cats momentarily decided that 31ºC was not too hot to cuddle up on one of the garden chairs, while watching me eeking out the stored rainwater on the aubergines. I found another, probably more helpful, garden buddy, when I went walking to beat the bounds, in the form of a rather magnificent slow worm. He (or she) was about a foot long and definitively basking in the late afternoon sun!
The trail camera is installed at a secret location, to monitor what is making a mess of someone's garden. In order to prepare it for a professional job, we recharged the batteries and I cleared the SD card, which hadn't been done since April. My word there was a lot of material on there - nearly 400 videos and 400 photos. Now while some included my fat bottom walking away after doing my WiFi checks (instantly deleted), some included John passing with various mowing machines (bizarrely I kept a couple of those), and many seem to have been triggered by a gust of wind or a fly landing on the lens, there was an awful lot that wasn't. When I do my remote WiFi checks, I use my phone to review potentially interesting things and download them, but if the sun is in the wrong place, I don't have reading glasses with me, or there are a lot of files since my previous visit, I don't get the full richness of what has been happening.
Today I therefore offer up some links to videos that are interesting or a bit special in some way - I hope you enjoy them.
First off - there seem to be more jays around this year than previously, no idea why. Here is a video.
I found more videos of the young wild boar, actually quite a few, but this one is rather sweet and gives a good close up of young Stripy.
Perhaps rashly, I accused the boar of attacking and knocking over the log the camera was attached to. Reviewing one of these two videos of the pine martin, I need more evidence before deciding on the culprit.
I know they are small, but they have no respect!
Probably the star of the trail camera recently has been our family of deer, and in particular the one we think of as "our" faun. Every few days, with his mother, they would spend a couple of days lurking near the camera, before moving on to find fresh grazing; then coming back. The first video is a solo venture, the second includes Mum, while I'm not sure how many deer there are in the final one - best watched full screen and to the end!
Next weekend "they" promise rain, in which case I will sort out more gems from the deer family and the boar family and perhaps a badger or two as well. Have a good week!
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