Rural Life

Well, it's good for the ground water...

Thank goodness I got the last of the potatoes up before the vegetable beds turned into a fair facsimile of a battle field!  We have rain - it has rained for much of the week, since last Sunday, and is forecast to continue raining until at least the 5th November, but more likely the 10th November.  I think that date is also pretty arbitrary as the 11th is a holiday here and of course the day for Remembrance.  It could rain until Christmas!  The only thing that seems happy about that is the cristophine vine.  At one stage, we thought there were just 9 more and then it could go.  Today we totted up 12 good sized ones, including the one shown below which had been hiding, plus another 6 small ones that are unlikely to stay small, and are in any case a size that one might see in the shops.  It is a phenomenon.

It rained during the night, it was raining this morning when we got up, it is raining now, but for about an hour and a half, it stopped and we had sun (and a strong wind).  I was able to check the trail camera, which appears not to be suitable for rain forest conditions - something going on there.  I was able to spot a recently hatched butterfly - a comma I think - sunning itself on an apple tree.

Monsieur Clause was able to sun his portly self on the steaming roof of the wood barn - at one stage he looked like he might jump down onto me, and as he is a good 7 to 8 kilos, I was not so keen so moved out of range.

And then more rain came along and we headed home.  I have taken advantage of the poor conditions to do a bit of boring work, but soon I will not be able to find any more excuses and I will have to start on the hundred odd tasks of housework I have been avoiding for the past 10 years.  Dusty corners are sneering at me, and spiders' webs are growing in number, size and density.  There are still 4 kilos of chestnuts that need peeled, steamed and peeled again - and I know I will be pleased when they are done, but it is SUCH a boring job.  There is a final jam batch that I am trying to avoid too, but in a few minutes, I will be able to avoid it no longer, and jamming will begin again.

I am very jealous of the Cats at Home - they can just lie around, snuggled into fleeces and cushions, and sleep the next four months away!

Two cat photos in one post - that show's how bad the weather has been!  Stay warm, stay dry!

 

Mixed up seasons

Earlier this week I had to be out and about earlier than usual, visiting a house and garden.  I found the early sunshine tricky driving east, as it was in my eyes.  In addition, after a few months of not needing to, I had to remember how to demist the windscreen of the car.  It was all a bit different, but once I got to my destination, something made it all so very worthwhile!  The large yukka in the garden was in full bloom and catching a beam of morning sun - what a beautiful sight!

The warmth and the sunshine were lovely, but other things are harbingers of winter and the days are certainly getting shorter.  This morning we were at the One Acre Wood to see if there were any more mushrooms - spoiler alert, no there weren't!  What was amazing were the quantity of holly berries - there were trees we have never seen with a single berry covered with them.  I don't know if it means a harsh winter or that this year was good for fruit (and it certainly has been a good year for fruit), but it is very jolly.

It is a sign that Christmas is approaching and indeed the Christmas puddings are made and wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil, and tucked away in a box "maturing".

As well as the trail camera (more on that in a bit), I have succumbed to a mobile app for identifying bird song - the Cornell Lab one, I am sure others are available!  It is fascinating as it will identify up to about 300 birds found in northern Europe based on their song.  You set it to record, and as it goes, it matches song to bird, so you can follow along in real time to see who is having a chunter out there.  It is mildly addictive and I am sure pretty accurate, although I very much doubt we have a green sandpiper at The Orchard.  It does also show that I am shouted at by Robins pretty well continuously, and wherever I am too!  It also managed to identify this wee flock of long tailed tits that were doing the rounds in the gardens by us.

The tree is dead by the way and not in our garden.

So yes, the trail camera - I went to check it yesterday and the batteries were low, so it came home for battery recharge and so I could download and check the files.  I can triage a bit when it is in situ using bluetooth and an app, but the images on my phone are very small and indistinct.  I had thought that the night of the 30th September, there had been wind and I had loads of photos of waving grass, but no, the boar were in.  (And goodie - the software links are working again!)

Actually things seemed to enjoy charging through as some young deer did a similar thing.

The badgers are also still out and about, but don't charge around like the boar and the deer - much more laid back.

So there we have it - a week in the weird season.  Today I dug up the last of the potatoes, eyed up a parsnip, but didn't give in to temptation and picked a courgette.  To find a nice one of those at this time in October is just madness!  Have a good week!

 

Preparing to hunker down - edited

Last week there were the first portents of serious autumn starting to happen - sadly not so much with vivid coloured leaves.  I'm hoping that will yet happen, but fear that leaves will just go brown and fall with none of the flaming yellows and reds of a good brisk autumn.  The trees need frost to trigger the colours, and the first forecast frosts for us are tonight and tomorrow night.  Yesterday was a mad rush of getting the delicate plants under cover, both normal houseplants that have been out enjoying the weather, and those in pots that live outdoors but need to be kept frost free.  Somehow when a shelf or a window sill is left empty over the summer, it acquires a load of other stuff, which then has to be moved. 

The giant cristophine vine also warranted some protection as there are still some 15 viable fruits on it, and after a couple of days, it's going to get warmer again.  We used to buy cheap garden shelters, but they were always getting caught by the wind and shredded, so we invested in a more permanent pergola for which I make covers.  We still have a couple of cheap covers hidden away in the shed in case they came in useful, and one is now protecting the cristophine.

As you can see, there are still viable fruits, and we prefer to leave them on the vine to ripen up fully.  By our reckoning, so far we have picked 18 fruits and there are still at least a dozen that are eating size on the vine, so it makes sense to try to keep it going until they are all ready.

On Thursday evening, as I was putting the chickens to bed, I heard a bit of tap-tap-tapping in the area, and looking across could see one of our neighbours trying to get the new slates onto the roof of the building he is renovating before the rain came.  He was assisted in his task, as it was after 7:30pm so pretty dark, by the fact the building is right by a street light.  Even so, he gave up as I think the shadows were falling unhelpfully, but all was not lost, as the promised rain turned out to be a scant 1 millimetre!  He and his woman are doing a pretty amazing job on the roof.

Today I finally had no more excuses and got round to putting together the Christmas puddings.  The raw mix as in the photo will stand overnight, fermenting, then will be stuffed into bowls and steamed for 10 hours tomorrow during the day, before being laid down until Christmas 2023 and 2024.  It's not technical, it's just finding all the bits required and chopping, peeling, shredding and juicing.  Once all the bits are ready, you just shove them in a bowl and mix a bit, and make wishes.  The magic happens in the 24 hours after, as they rest and then are steamed.  But the steaming is tomorrow's job.

This morning I got the steamer out and the mix into two basins and they are now cooking away, and keeping the kitchen warm.

It's not just us hunkering down - when I took the lid off the water butt to fill watering cans, I found two friends sheltering on the side of the barrel.  Not natural playmates I would have said, but they seemed happy enough and not too cross with me for disturbing them.  I put the lid back on when I had all the water I needed.

So that's it for the Monday update - apart from the fact that England won, France lost, and while today and tomorrow are cold, it will warm up again on Wednesday so the cover will come off the cristophine.

Have a good week!

 

 

Hints of Autumn - finally

Here in France, Autumn is late, very late.  I am happy to be indoors with my computer as the temperature in the garden is over 30ºC at the moment.  Earlier, I was digging up potatoes - hard work in temperatures nearing 25ºC in the shade and the soil is pretty solid clay.  I can't totally complain, as look what just one seed potato produced!  They are huge and unblemished, and will take some baking later in the year.

But other, more autumnal signs are there - including my first bright orange, evil, jelly slug of the season, spotted mooching around between the raspberries and the wood store.  They are deeply unpleasant to my eye, but also seem to be harbingers of mushrooms.

I saw this fellow yesterday, plus there was a giveaway headline in the local paper this morning that mushrooms were appearing, so we just had to go for a walk in the One Acre Wood before doing any work at the Garden.  For once they were not wrong - there were mushrooms a plenty, but many had gone over or had bad slug or fly damage.  We found three nice ones for lunch - a delicious cèpe and comté omelette, made with free range eggs from the garden.

It goes without saying that if you aren't confident about identifying mushrooms, don't pick and eat!  We only eat what we know.

We also need to prepare to pay our rent for the Garden, Orchard and Meadow.  The payment is in a number of forms - obviously providing all the necessary luxuries for Donald, Spooky and Monsieur Clause the cats is part of it, keeping the Meadow under control with an annual mow as per legislation is another part of it, and then there is the tribute of a shoebox of walnuts too.  Knowing that the boar like the good nuts best, well they aren't totally stupid, we have to gather them as soon as they fall, before drying them so the inner skin isn't unpleasant and bitter.  We think we have the required tribute spread out in the sun!

The Meadow got mowed finally this weekend too.  Between Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB and the LPO, it is difficult to spot at time when you can do this without being berated for being a vandal and putting life at risk.  Seed heads, chrysalids, eggs, nesting time, flowering cycles, shelter etc. are all cited as reasons to not mow.  The reasons to mow include seed heads (some things aren't supposed to be allowed to spread, including ragwort and thistle), brambles, old man's beard, not required saplings, improving conditions for low growing wildflowers and those that need a short sward to flourish (including cyclamen and wild orchids), and a legal requirement not to cause a nuisance. 

I prefer to mow in September, but we didn't have a working mower available until now.  It should also be noted that some bits of the Meadow didn't get done last year for no good reason.  Anyway, it was jolly hard work in the hot sun, and at the end I was half human, half wild carrot seed, and it doesn't look good as the saplings didn't get properly trashed, so I will have to do some of it again during the week, but finally we can see across the Meadow again!  There are large banks of scrub for shelter for my friends the hares and for any pheasants that the fox  hasn't had too.

There are no new wildlife photos to share this week as last Sunday the hunt went through our land and the valley.  They don't come into the Garden, as it is well fenced off but do treat the Orchard and Meadow as their own.  While I recognise very clearly the need to control the number of boar, as there really are too many, what annoys me about the hunters is their sheer arrogance as they stalk through other people's property.  Plus I don't trust them not to fire towards us in the Garden if they spot something interesting.  We sang and whistled very loudly while they were close by.  Once they have done a sweep through, we see very little large wildlife for at least a couple of weeks, until they find their way back to us.

I leave you with the flowers of autumn, the cyclamen that pop up everywhere it seems and spread gloriously through our gardens and the Wood.  They always make me smile.

Have a good week!

 

Dangerous beasts

For a few days last week, we had a ferocious door keeper - actually it was quite tricky at times to close the door as we didn't want to squash him or her!  While last year we saw practically no mantis, this year there have been quite a lot and this one has decided our front door area is their stalking point.  If I am in the way, then I too am a stalking point.  Either mating or cold will eventually kill them off, but until then, I enjoy the company.

Rather less fun was the hornet sting last Sunday, which is still a bit painful and blew up overnight on Sunday to rather unpleasant proportions, and made yoga moves a bit challenging.  My experience, if it helps anyone else, is as follows: the pain of the sting is like a searing hot needle into the arm.  Get the hornet off you, as they can sting more than once - to be sure, have a large person jump up and down on the blasted creature as well in retribution.  If you know you have sting allergies, get yourself to a chemist or doctor asap or use the EpiPen you carry or take the antihistamines you have been given.  There is a rumour that a cider vinegar compress as soon as you can will also be helpful - I didn't spot that advice until a bit too late.  Hydrocortisone cream will sooth, but needs fairly frequent application, and an anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen will help with the swelling, but count on pain for four to six days.  All in all I don't recommend the experience.

The trail camera has been in to have its batteries recharged - the new camera is heavier on batteries than the old one, and seems to use up the rechargeable batteries in three weeks.  It is back now keeping an eye out for boar, and indeed the boar are about a bit, keeping an eye out for walnuts.

More interestingly, when I was going through what was on the memory card, were a series of short videos of a fox with something - frequent reviews of the set of 6 videos tells me that it was probably a blackbird.  I've loaded up a few of the videos for those who don't mind watching nature red in tooth and claw.   For me the interesting aspect of this, other than that foxes don't like feathers in their teeth, is that foxes, like cats, play with their prey.  Now TypePad and YouTube don't seem to be playing ball anymore so I am hoping that if you follow this link, you can see video number 1 - but do press any back arrow to come back to this post, same for the other two links, if you can spot a back arrow or back function that is (I really hate technology at times).  Then if you follow this link, you can see video number 2.  And finally, if you follow this one, you can see video number 3.

The cristophine vine goes from strength to strength as this unseasonably hot autumn continues.  We have harvested off 8 fruits now, and counting today, it looked to me like there were a further 23 that might do something if we don't get a frost, including 6 that actually need to be eaten in the next week as they are fully ripe.  One tendril has disappeared 15 foot up into a birch tree, and the canopy the leaves provide over the structure we made for it are fairly waterproof.  It is a thing of wonder - well, to us at least, as other British gardeners over here in France seem to be singularly uninterested.  French people with relatives in the overseas departments are fascinated.

I'm not sure whether the recent full moon was the Harvest Moon or the Hunter's Moon, but it has been spectacular.  Here it is rising between houses.

We are still working our way through the quince harvest.  I have poached more and of course we do have some eau de vie de quince from a successful year about 3 years ago, so I have come up with Cocktail Maison - two small measures (a 2cl shot glass) of eau de vie, three good small measures of quince and spice syrup, and full to the top with fizzy water.  It slips down very nicely!!

Cheers! Until next week.