It's been a strange week, with memories of this time last year when my Mum broke a bone in her neck with all the attending panic and worry, added to nursing a poorly pusscat with an abscess behind her eye, while trying to get rid of the last vestiges of a nasty cold that has been doing the rounds. Nursing duties for the cat have become more and more onerous (we don't begrudge her that), but it has been amusing to see how many of the medicines she has that I have also used, or my Mum needed to use after a corneal transplant. We are now on drops every hour and a half or so, day and night (assuming we can wake up), and tomorrow we find out whether we have been able to save the eye or not. I am not optimistic.
I brought in a trail camera during the week - I wasn't convinced about the batteries, and quite rightly - it had stopped doing night time photos and videos at the end of October! The change in the activity by this trail camera (it is a favourite position to leave one as there is a lot of activity) between the summer and October was extensive. The ducks that used to waddle past most days are not to be seen at all. There are only one or two shots of coypu and none at all of boar (although if they were around after dark, the camera wouldn't have picked them up as it was out of juice). The pine martens are still in the zone and bouncing around very happily, which pleases me hugely. One is larger than the other, so I'm not sure if it is a couple or parent and offspring.
There has also been some bird activity, with a Great Tit visiting more than once to see what might be lurking on the tree trunk by the camera. We encourage this species as they have adapted to become predators of pine processionary caterpillars, which are nasty, non-native invasive dangerous critters. There are a few caterpillar nests in the pine trees, so we do what we can with bird nest boxes and limited winter feeding to attract the birds that will predate.
The foxes are also around and there are some nice still photos that I need to work on to show what they are up to, but the stars so far of this batch of files have been the deer. Any fear they have had in the past of the camera has gone and they quite happily stand by it and in front of it and show off their best and not so best sides!
It seems to me that deer spend a lot of time itching and waggling their ears.
After a certain amount of nagging, I made the Christmas cakes on Wednesday, so still in November but a little on the late side in my view. They have already been "fed" once, and I will do them again shortly. There is a wonderful stall in the market at la Flèche that sells loose preserved fruits, including not one, but two varieties of glacé cherries, three varieties of sultanas and 5 varieties of candied citrus peel, and is the only place I know in France to supply dried currants. As I have stocks of treacle and the chickens provide eggs, while we have a fine range of our own eau de vie, there is no excuse for the cakes not being luxurious and alcoholic! Here is the mixing, and if you are good, there may be a picture of the decorated cakes in due course.
This autumn is one of the wettest on record, so it should have been no surprise to us that the two small ponds in the One Acre Wood now have water in them, a full two months before our earliest sighting up to now (so in the last 18 years). They are not natural ponds, but rather pits that were dug to provide clay for making bricks and roof and floor tiles (the chestnut coppice provided the heat to fire the bricks and tiles, while the few pine trees provided a resin to seal the tiles before baking). As such they are on clay, but with years of leaf litter build up on top, and when the clay contracts when it is dry, the water soaks away. Currently the clay is swollen with water and so the ponds form. Newts and salamanders like them for breeding purposes, so I am hoping they will last and we will have lots of babies in the spring.
So now it is time for the next batch of cat eye drops - this time it is serum made from horse bodily fluids (so not one my Mum used to have), then in another hour and a half, it will be antibiotic eye drops, and so on all through to tomorrow afternoon. We are fortunate that Poirot is a very gentle and forgiving old lady, and that she is very food orientated, which is making this process manageable on most levels. I'm not keen on getting up in the night however!
Have a good week!