Rural Life: Piggie fun and other stuff

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with the report for the Marches Mosses BogLIFE last weekend and helping some people move out of their lovely maison secondaire this weekend, which included moving a lot of furniture, and not all of it ours. We have had our much-loved DFS sofa and armchair for over 30 years, and while they started out stylish and comfortable, the sofa had become a lot less comfortable with time, while my beloved armchair was visually a thing of shame, if not horror when some of the innards splurged out. The friends who are leaving had two smart small sofas and no desire to keep them and passed them to us. My armchair went to the tip, but the sofa moved next door (!), and their sofa went to the tip as well.

We also have an embarrassment of storage units, shelving units, garden chairs and tables, extension cables and running blocks, chainsaws, rakes, spades, mowers, books, DVDs and bedding. At least I know what I will do with the excess bedding...

Taking a breather from moving storage and shelving units around, we had a chat to the neighbour of the people moving out. His garden is immaculate in general, although his front garden has too many gnomes and white stones for my taste. There was a vine of some sort going along the fence and in passing I had tended to assume it was a form of bryony, but discussing it with him, it turns out I was completely wrong. A tender but thug-like vine, the cristophine (or however it is spelt), is a semi-tropical or tropical savoury vegetable, which looks pear-shaped but knobbly, and tastes rather like salsify to my mind. It makes a very nice gratin. Here is a baby fruit, which was about 3 inches long.

We moved the trail camera to nearer where the boar were finding food, and frankly it was a bit of a disaster. The camera was normally upright for at most 12 hours before they bashed it over, looking for food. Instead, we strapped the camera to a suitable tree and a bit higher up than normal too and waited to see what we caught. I had hoped that there might be some badger action, but I think they stay out of the way of the boar. The following five videos were over the last week, with three during daylight hours and two at night. It is a sizeable family group, with two parents, possibly a couple of young from the previous litter and smaller ones from this year's litter. First the night time marauding, then the daytime playful ones - they seem to regard our orchard as a safe space - at least until the hunt come through the area (although they don't access "our" land).