Rural Life

New shoots, new beginnings

Many thanks to everyone for your kind wishes over the past week.  The funeral ceremony went well on Friday, with a nice party afterwards, as Mum would have wanted.  Now I have to roll up my sleeves and get down to the paperwork and clearing stuff out.  That's my retirement sorted out then!

After the freezing cold and dull days, the weather has warmed up significantly, catching quite a few things on the hop.  I saw a Brimstone butterfly this morning, which is crazy, and a demoiselle fly as well.  Neither will prosper I fear.  We spent a lot of time today at the gardens looking around and taking stock and listening to the birds.  It was while doing this at a different vantage point to normal that John was horrified to see the little b@st@rds below.

These disgusting critters have no redeeming features at all - they are pine processionary caterpillars.  They are a non-native invasive species with no natural predators in this hemisphere (although greattits and bluetits will eat them now) and the spines, which shed very easily, are extremely toxic to animals and humans, causing if you are lucky, an itchy rash that lasts (from experience) for at least 15 days (they can do much worse).  John sprayed the blighters with an insecticide we use on the chickens, and when I am next there, I will wash the area with boiling water and then cold water to flush away the spines.  The only good thing about seeing them today is that they are about 2 months too early, so we have to hope that a nice sharp cold snap kills them while turning into moths.

On the other hand, the winter sown crops are starting to grow visibly, so it's not all bad.  The broad beans sown just before Christmas are now mostly up and looking healthy - once again I have dodged the bullet that many around here are caught by and the seeds were not all stolen by voles!  The first batch of garlic went in more recently and is now showing too.  I planted more today, so we should be safe from vampires in 2024.

When we planted our quince tree, we put crocus and snowdrop bulbs around it - perhaps 20 years ago now?  Anyway, the crocus did well for a while but are long gone, as are most of the snowdrops, but one clump comes back year after year, tucked in close to the tree trunk.  Today they are looking wonderful.

The new beginning?  There are new people at the boulangerie La Fontaine in Baugé!  So far we have sampled their croissants and their almond croissants - both found to be very good.  We have also tried their flatbread - they tried to explain it to me, the different type of flour that they use, the different way it is cooked on a hot plate.  I looked at it and my immediate thought was stottie cake!  It's not as fluffy inside as a stottie, so rather thinner - perhaps a mix of stottie and pitta bread.  It is totally yummy though - particularly warmed with farm butter and tuna rillettes.  So when you are next in Baugé, try them out, because these people need to be encouraged!

Have a good week!

 

A very different aspect of French life

It was going to be a very boring blog this week about gnawing cold seeping into ones bones and the stones of old houses.  Also, perhaps, reflections on how personalities affect how one views getting involved with village events, as I snuck back onto the Comité des Fêtes du Vieil Baugé after a six year absence.  But then on Friday, my world changed and I became an orphan.

My mother hasn't been particularly well for a long time, and there has been a distinct downward progression over the past 14 months or so, but even so, when you get the call, it is still a shock.  On the Thursday I had already been informed of problems with hydration, and while I was concerned, I prepared myself for the usual Friday visit, with expectations divided between sitting and listening to her snoring, or the hydration fluids having done their thing and trying to entertain her with silly little stories of nothing at all.  But instead of a Friday afternoon at the nursing home, it was a Friday afternoon at the funeral home, choosing coffins, linings, words for the press notice, and the date and time of the cremation.

They don't hang around over here - it is a legal obligation for ceremonies to be done within 6 days (working days fortunately).  Such a difference to England, where for my father, it took I think 5 days to get the documentation that meant we could go to the Registrar and then choose a funeral director, and it was a good month wait before the date of the cremation.  It meant we could do something a bit more elegant and considered, but such a long time to get it over.  Then of course, there were all those awful Covid ceremonies, with few people and huge restrictions - one neighbour said to me in the queue outside the boulangerie at the time that she felt she had been done out of the community sharing of grief and memories that make a bad day somewhat more easy to endure.

Once you find the number in the local directory and call up, you are enveloped in a well oiled process of professionals, who communicate amongst themselves to get everything done with minimum angst.  It might be all new and bewildering to you, but to them it is totally normal.  While it felt like an endless process on Friday afternoon, actually it took less than 2 hours to get things to a point where we now just wait for a call from the celebrant, and turn up on the day.

While my mother spent the last 20 years of her life in France, a country that she loved passionately, she was born in the Black Country and survived the War and air raids without recourse to evacuation.  With her school certificate and a shorthand and typing diploma in her purse, she headed to London to seek her future, shedding her accent somewhere around Watford Gap I would guess.  She did bits and bobs of modelling but her main role in London was secretarial, including time working for the massive organisation that ensured the Festival of Britain happened in 1951.  It was in their offices that she first saw and met my father, and they married in 1953.

After 10 years in London, with two smallish children, they moved to Romford Cottage in Pembury, and for the next 40 years that was her home.  She created a loving space, where there was always cake and/or flapjack in a tin, a bottle of wine open, and a tasty dinner could be conjured out of the contents of the store cupboard and the fridge.  She engaged in village life, reluctantly at first - this was not someone who wanted to be a stalwart of the WI - but then passionately, fighting inappropriate development plans, and was parish councillor for a while too, responsible for keeping footpaths open.  At 50, she needed to go back to work, but electric typewriters and computers were not for her, and she did a catering qualification before doing office and directors' table catering in the City of London.

She retired earlier than she wanted, but was able to spend more time with my father and enabled him to stay at the Cottage until just a couple of days before his death.  She didn't then realise that she would have to wait 27 years to join him.  She tried not to be in too many paintings but there are odd sketches when Dad was itching to draw.

The Cottage was a lovely home, but impractical, not least as it was miles from anything useful, and when we decided to move to France, Mum jumped ship first.  She used our house as a base for finding her own piece of France, settling on a four bedroom townhouse in Chinon.  She loved that house and made it her own, although she hadn't really been upstairs for about 7 years, and then only in company, restricted by failing joints to the ground floor.

She tested the French health and social care system to its limits - and it is a marvellous system.  Now she is, I hope, at peace.

There may well not be a blog next week.

 

Different kinds of cold

Cold shouldn't be surprise in winter - it is right and proper that it is cold.  Fruit trees benefit enormously from a good cold spell during the winter to rest and be inspired to bloom and then fruit in the warmer seasons.  A good cold snap will also kill off many undesirable residents of house and garden (as well as some desirable ones sadly).  In fact people often dream of those ideal winter days - sunny, frost glistening everywhere, puffed up birds tweeting in the hedgerows and around bird feeding stations, breathe freezing in the air, and then going back indoors to sit beside a roaring log fire, with a mug of something soothing, as your toes warm up again.  Something like we had on Thursday in fact.

It's been cold all week - but not that cold, as only once has the chicken water fountain frozen solid.  Instead, and apart from Thursday, we have had the less appealing cold winter weather - grey, slightly misty, never getting warmer than +1ºC or getting colder than -1ºC, unrelenting and dreary.  The stones of the house never benefit from a bit of sunshine, the house is mostly extremely cold as the electric heating only goes on between 10pm and 6am, there is no brightness to lighten the heart and spirits, just grey, drab, cold and depressing.

Yet amongst that frozen soil, there are the growing tips of broad beans starting to come through, and even with the cold, there are more every time I count them - today there were 27!  And hanging from that pine tree there is a bird feeder that is alive with great and bluetits, chirping and stuffing themselves with fat and seeds, and hopefully finishing off their meals with pine processionary caterpillars from the nests high in the tree.  My birdsong app on the phone tells me that Firecrests, song thrushes, dunnock, chaffinch and linnets are around in the hedges, while my ears are well enough trained to spot jays, green and greater spotted woodpeckers, blackbirds and magpies making their presence felt.  It's just me that is hating the dull days, so I flop on the sofa with cats.

There is a fine tradition in France of leaders offering their best wishes to their populations of interest for the New Year.  In rural communities like ours, this includes a ceremony (this morning) where our village mayor and the mayor of the district, plus local councillors and a representative of the Youth Council stand up and say their piece.  They review the year that has gone and outline the plans and hopes for the coming year.  The big event for Baugé en Anjou will be the passage of the Olympic Flame through the area on the 28th of May, although at the moment it is hard to get too excited about standing around outside waiting to see a passing flame.  I'm sure by late May I will be more enthralled!  Anyway, if you make it through the one hour twenty minutes of speeches (that was this year's duration), you get a glass of fizz, a couple of sugar buns and a chance to catch up with people you haven't seen for a while.  The photos are the official ones taken by Maryline Margas - one from the perspective of the presenters, one from the perspective of the audience.

So now I've lost feeling in my toes, as after two days of heating, my computer room has only struggled up to 17ºC, which means that I'm going to proof read this, post it, and go and find a fire and a couple of warm cats to put on my feet.  Have a good week!

 

 

Changes for the New Year

Happy New Year!

Good health, a bit of joy in every day and may your feathers not all fall out at once!  We have four chickens and a bantam and we haven't seen an egg in weeks - I actually had to buy some yesterday, as we didn't have enough to make an emergency omelette if we needed to.  Bridie the Freeloading Bantam only lays when she thinks the weather is going to be right for some serious brooding, and winter is not that time.  Mo the Pensioner hasn't laid an egg since she came to stay until the day of her demise.  Well, she looks no different after nearly 2 years and hasn't fallen off her perch.  The economic migrant kept laying last winter, but gave up in March 2023 and hasn't produced an egg since - although she now looks rather splendid.  That means that all the laying work has been done by Mac and Jack, and they have decided to go on strike and to produce new feathers rather than eggs.  One is starting to look a bit more sensible, but I was faced with this horror this morning when feeding them.  It has to be cold round her bum!

Another change for the new year is that it has finally stopped raining!  We were down near Saumur during the week, stocking up on fizz, because a house round here without an emergency bottle of fizz is a very bad thing.  We parked by the Thouet, which joins la Loire just west of Saumur, coming up from Montreuil-Bellay and over the border with Nouvelle Aquitaine.  It had broken its banks in an impressive manner and was travelling at speed, feeding into an already swollen Loire, so respite from more rain is welcome.  However, be careful what you wish for, as it is turning colder, much colder.  Colder indeed than we have known for about 5 years apparently.

Cold weather anticyclones bring an interesting phenomenon, not totally pleasant, cold weather static cling.  It is annoying if one is human - it's what makes wearing a hat and taking it off and having your hair upright a thing in winter.  Yes it would happen anyway, but the cold static cling makes it worse, and crackly to deal with.  For cats, and particularly quite floofy cats, it is a sartorial nightmare and can be a bit uncomfortable too.  This morning, Spooky obliged me with a demonstration of how rather smart black fur can look horrific in these conditions.

My way of life is changing a bit too.  With no more work in the UK, I am now able to concentrate more on doing what I have been evaluating other people doing for nearly 10 years, and managing an area for wildlife.  I am hoping to get a visit from the naturalists that take an interest in the ENS (roughly translated as the area of natural interest) that just encroaches on the Meadow and the Orchard.  How to manage the pond/wetland area is one big question, not least as it is impenetrable due to bramble and dead man's beard, and I'm sure that allowing a greater diversity of vegetation would be better for wildlife.  What to do about the meadow, with the range of orchids that sometimes thrive there, the badgers and the sea of butterflies including one that I think is a species of conservation interest for the ENS?  Then getting a plan of action and seeing it through.  I fear my big fish are history, but you never know!

In the interim, I will enjoy the irises, that are just starting to show, and the narcissi, when they come through too.

On the growing front, there are the first signs of the broad beans coming up that I sowed in December.  Today I took advantage of a bit of sunshine to plant a first batch of garlic - as I'm a bit late with it, I had to buy a huge bag of planting garlic and have found space so far for about half.  They say you plant on the shortest day and lift on the longest day - well I missed the shortest day by about three weeks I guess, but it shouldn't make that much difference.  I'm prepared to wager 5 grown bulbs that I lift the crop before the end of June!

Our cheap electricity deal means that for the next week, we won't be able to afford heating in my office (when load demand is high, the unit price is three times normal, as a way of smoothing demand - when load demand is low we can light up the house like a prison yard).  Running the washing machine becomes a challenge and life is concentrated in the living room.  In preparation for the red day that is tomorrow, I must therefore close and go and use electricity in a wise manner.  Have a cosy week!