Rural Life

2024 in review

As complaining about Dunkelflaute is probably getting rather boring, I thought I would take the opportunity, in this first blog of 2025, to look back at the year just ended to see if it really was that grey and sad.

It didn't start well in January, with my new found status of orphan, when the world stopped for a while and bureaucracy took over.  I would love to say that all is sorted but French Red Tape and notaires take forever to deal with very simple things and it will be another wee while before I can close the books.

But life does go on and with February, we had our annual truffle fest, a bit later than normal as it took a while for prices to stabilise and for me to be able to concentrate on all things culinary!  I now have some really good truffle staple recipes, so that the failures and the "why did I bother?" moments are reduced.

In March we were harvesting the last of the vegetables sown or planted in 2023, which really was a rather good year for gardening.  The multicoloured carrots were a revelation, although for some reason there were no black ones, even though the seed packet firmly showed that there should be a full spectrum of colours.  The leeks were excellent too, but perhaps a bit too prolific!

It was a spectacularly wet year, and at Easter, there was the added excitement of potentially excessive and damaging floods in Chinon.  The Vienne rose inexorably, and as la Loire was also in flood, there was nowhere for the water to go.  While there were calls for evacuations, the floods peaked perhaps 40 centimetres below the danger level, but were still very impressive.

May is the peak season for wild orchids and I go mad trying to spot and photograph each bee orchid that flowers on our land.  The challenge is to get the best photo, in focus, nicely framed, and ideally with a gleam of sunshine.  It was quite a long season for them this year and there were some very lovely examples.

The trail cameras were in permanent use during 2024 and there are a few very rich locations for them to capture the wildlife that share the space with us.  Summer months also bring babies, and this year the coypu (sadly) did very well, bringing up four cubs, or whatever you call a baby coypu.  Ugly, that's for sure, even if most baby animals are cute.

While much of the gardening in 2024 was disappointing at best, we did get a very good harvest of onions for the first time ever.  We are still eating them indeed, which is pretty impressive.  I don't know why they did so well - the shallots and the garlic were complete disasters, but that is how it turned out.

August is Comice time, and 2024 was Vaulandry's turn.  I ended up spending a lot of time on the village float.  As part of an overall theme of "the call of the forest", we went for the story of Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house in the forest, complete with witch.  The weather wasn't helpful, with rain on the Saturday and overcast conditions on the Sunday, but the final product was pleasing.

September is the annual pig roast for our boule de forte society, and is something we always look forward to.  Once again, we were lucky with the weather - I do remember one year when rain took over and made things a bit odd, but for once 2024 played ball and it was a lovely day.

The year has been wet and there have been quite a few named storms.  Kirk was a particularly unpleasant one, mainly for the volume of water it dumped on us.  In order to attempt to get a sensible reading of the amount of rain, one of us had to empty the rain gauge when it got to 35 millimetres as it clearly wasn't stopping anytime soon!  A field above the land we rent had been harvested but not resown, and there was nothing to hold back the rain water so it took the roadside down.

Gardening was difficult in 2024, with heavy and waterlogged soil, lack of sunshine, lack of decent summer temperatures apart from a week in July, and therefore all manner of challenges to deal with.  The number and size of slugs was incredible and they got everywhere!  This one was trying to get to the last remains of the mango seed I managed to germinate before I evicted it - roughly 4 inches or 10 centimetres long and too big to interest any bird, other than perhaps a buzzard.

The figures are in for sunshine in 2024, and the local press talk about a deficit of 400 hours of sunshine across the year.  I did count at one stage towards the end of the year and got to 17 days without a glimmer of sun.  It's not healthy and we keep checking ourselves for rickets!  December ended the year in murk, but we have seen the sun in January, so let's hope for a brighter 2025!

Happy New Year!

 

The final days of 2024

A few days before Christmas, our elderly neighbour tapped on the door to complain that our grey chicken was making a mess of her garden.  I immediately went to check the chicken run, and all 5 and a half feathery demons were safely impounded, but closer inspection of her garden did show something that looked like chicken damage.  In order to investigate this, I brought home one of the trail cameras, that had been placed where I wanted a particular shot - more of that a bit later.  I cleared off the files and reset the camera with a view of the foot of the washing line posts in next door's garden, so it wouldn't catch anyone human's face or even feet, and left it for a week.  I wondered if a dog was popping in or a cat was being unhelpful. 

I retrieved the camera yesterday and checked.  The first image was a cat, not one of ours, but on our side of the fence.  The second was one of our cats and on our side of the fence.  The third was the rogue grey chicken, and yes, it was one of ours - Groucho!  The fourth image was a wild bird and that was it.

The shame of it!!

The trail camera had been placed overlooking the pond that used to have large fish in it, until it silted up and sprung a leak.  I was convinced it was used by boar for having the odd mud bath, so set the camera to see if I was right.  Most of the images were of birds using the shallow areas for bathing and drinking and questing for worms, but the first two files confirmed that boar will go in there for a plodge when the mood takes them.

There is also a short video of what he was getting up to.

That trail camera has now been reset and positioned somewhere else, and in about 10 days I will get another in for a check over and to download anything good.

Christmas happened - very quietly!  We have tried to be restrained with food, but scallops are in season, and there are the small matters of Christmas cake and Christmas pudding.  I'm sure we will be good in 2025 - or that's what we are telling the GP!

While in general the weather hasn't been conducive to nice long walks in the country, we did get out on Monday to do firewood.  It was a better day than most that we chose for that, and looking up in the One Acre Wood, there was a hint of blue in the sky and the occasional glint of sunlight.  

However when we went back yesterday to carry on the good work, the air was thick and moist and you could barely see 200 metres down into the valley.  On a good day from this point, you can see for over 5 kilometres!

There are rumours that the Dunkelflaute (see the week before last's blog) will dissipate in the New Year - I'll believe it when I see it.  Tomorrow is another Red Day for electricity prices, so while I am sure someone is making a lot of money in electricity generation, we will be huddled around the log fire or doing active things outside to keep warm, assuming we can find a way to energize ourselves!

Have a good week and enjoy your New Year celebrations, however you choose to mark the day.

 

It's that Christmas time of year

2024 is crawling towards its damp and muddy end - today adding strong winds to the mix.  Given the vile weather today, we took the advice of the television weather presenters and found fun indoors, going to the Baugé Christmas market.

For a small town, it packs above its weight in this regard.  Over three days, the cultural centre is taken over by craftspeople, food producers, wine makers, charities and Radio Parcay for a high quality event.  We spent a happy hour going round all the stalls.  We bought nougat from our favourite honey producer, an air plant for the bathroom, because it seemed a nice idea, and were tempted by a book by a local author.  He had a sculpture that visually described his profession in a bad French pun, which he happily explained to us as we were foreign, before telling us about his books. 

People were spending money which has to be good for the local economy, and we managed to miss any of the "special" events that were being put on by local music groups and musicians.  Indoors is too enclosed for a brass ensemble!

The village is nicely adorned with relatively low wattage Christmas lights, while town is festooned with them, as befits a Petit Cité de Charactere d'Anjou.  We can see a few from the house, but they are more in evidence when we walk to and from the pub on a Friday night.

This weekend, the hunters have been out, doing their best to bag a festive deer or boar for Christmas Day, although I'm not sure how lucky they have been.  There were a few fresh tracks in the Meadow and Orchard, as well as some festively coloured poo down by the ponds.  I'm not sure who the culprit is, possibly the pine martens.

A sure sign that winter is with us, is that the bird feeder is starting to get visited.  We put out fat balls from December to mid March for blue tits and great tits, and I think the long-tailed variety and tree creepers like them too.  We aim to attract tits as they will also attack the few nests of pine processionary caterpillars that we have in the pine trees.  Once they get into their stride, I will need to add four fat balls a week to the feeder, at the moment, it is just two every 10 days.

A gleam of brightness in the gardens is nice at this time of year, and some of the roses are putting out odd flowers.  The Silver Wedding rose we were given over 9 years ago has decided to bloom for Christmas, as it often does.  The white flowers are delicately scented and a joy when not much else natural is looking pretty.

So, not much more to be said today other than:

• Pay homage to your household gods
• Eat too much
• Drink too much (and DON'T drive)
• Count your blessings
• Spend time outdoors
• And have a lovely Christmas!

Until next week!

Cold, dull days

There is a German word, Dunkelflaute, which describes a gloomy, windless weather system, that is cold.  We have had that here for the past couple of months, interspersed with periods of just wet, windy and nasty.  Germany is currently suffering a major bout of Dunkelflaute, and that is placing a really heavy strain on the European electricity network.  Germany's electricity generation includes some 20GW wind capacity, and currently the turbines are not turning.  The knock on effect, combined with two country interconnectors being down, is that the power grids are doing all they can to reduce peak electricity use.  In the UK, you might spot a slight fluctuation down in power.  Here in France, if you are on the extremely interesting Tempo electricity contract, it translates into Red Days.  Days when daytime electricity is 3 times the unit price of the regulated tariff.  Tuesday to Friday was like that, and tomorrow will be too.  It is rather constraining!

The run into Christmas isn't totally fun when your feet and hands are always cold, and you are keeping the lights off as long as possible!  There are odd rays of joy - the very last cyclamen flowers are still going in the One Acre Wood for example.

There is little to photograph at the moment, as nothing much changes with the dull weather, and when you do take a photo, such as of a small amount of water in the lower pond in the Wood, it is singularly underwhelming.

I have had to resort to searching trail camera archives to find pretty photos.

The jay is handsome, although not as handsome as the male pheasant (who knows it too!).

However today, my spirit bird is this rather hacked off female pheasant.  I can feel my blood pressure boiling over the stupidity of HMRC and the unfairness of the amount of tax they suddenly feel I need to pay every month.  This is not good for me, so I need to go and find somewhere warm and cosy and try to forget about it all.  Being near computers only makes it worse!

Isn't she splendid?  Actually, just looking at her makes me feel better!

Anyway, I hope your week is not affected by Dunkelflaute, and now I had better get back to writing Christmas cards!

 

Reflections on Trail Cameras

It has been another strange week for us, with pretty nasty weather, friends over from the UK, a cat needing eye drops very frequently and weather that continues to depress.  While the good news is that we seem to have saved Poirot's eye, we are still on a regime of regular eye drops (two sorts, each every four hours) to shift the rather tenacious ulcer that caused the problem.

What has been going on the past couple of weeks, is that I have brought in for checks two out of the three trail cameras dotted around the Meadow and the Orchard.  I think we have had trail cameras for the past three years, and it has been a learning curve.  The first one was excellent, with a capability of checking what was on it remotely, well, about 6 feet away, and it took rechargeable batteries and was a delight.  But after about 18 months a small piece of plastic gave way, and as it was the on/off switch, it was quite an important bit of plastic, so a pity it wasn't stronger!.  Reluctantly, the supplier offered us a new one, as it was still within its two year guarantee, but as that model was no longer available, I had to go "posher".  The new one was Bluetooth and very funky, but didn't like rechargeable batteries, needed 12 AA batteries in any case, and basically blew up two SD cards.  After a lot of hassle I got that replaced, but I wasn't happy.  Instead I got a pack of three very simple trail cameras, taking rechargeable batteries, each only needing four AA batteries anyway, but with no remote or WiFi capability.

These have turned out to be excellent.  Robust, easy to understand, not overly heavy on batteries and I can put them up and leave them for 6 to 10 weeks and not worry about them.  When I bring them in for cleaning, a battery check and to download what is on the SD card, I then have a lot of work on my hands.

Assuming I have found a good place to put the camera (and that in itself is an art), I have anywhere between 200 and 2,000 files to go through and check.  I would say that between a third and a half of all files can be ditched easily - they are of my bottom walking away from the camera, or something interesting went past too fast for the camera to spring into life.

At first, I would also hang onto partial images - a fox's tail, a disappearing badger bottom, a blur of something that might be interesting.  Now I am more selective, although as with the image below, I've not a clue what it is, but it is big and interesting!

Quite often the photos are a bit blurred, although some are enchanting.  The videos take up a lot of space, and are a mixed bunch.  These badgers are lovely, but why do they have to be off to the right of the image?

Or something really interesting is going on but just a couple of metres too far away from the camera to be stunning.

Some things are nice, but could do with a bit more context.

Other captures would be really excellent if the wretched animal didn't decide to do most of what they were doing behind a tree!

Some would be great, if only the subject had decided to do the really interesting thing during daylight hours for that extra crispness.

Sometimes however, things are nearly perfect, and I could try to kid  you that they are deliberate!

And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, things work just right!  That magpie was just begging for his close up!

I know magpies aren't favourite birds, they are a bit mean and they make a lot of noise, but they act like they have characters.  I also didn't know they liked walnuts!

For anyone who is interested, the cameras are Num'axe PIE1066.  You do need an SD card reader to download the images as well, not supplied with the cameras.  Two have been attacked by deer and boar and have survived, and all have been covered in bird poo from time to time.

I hope you enjoyed the videos and have a good week.

 

Nursing duties

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!

 

Winter approaches

It's been another of those weeks where the weather could take centre stage, with rain, wind, snow and today, bizarrely warm temperatures.  The 18ºC we see today is a blip caused by a weird weather pattern, and amusing after the snow that fell on Thursday to the horror of cats, chickens and us!

The Douceur Angevine meant that the snow here quickly disappeared during Thursday morning, which was good as we were heading to Paris for a 24 hour trip, but further north and east it kept going and Paris in driving snow is different, but a bit uncomfortable.

Once in Paris and off the metro, we learned that our "smart" phones and Google maps don't like snow and what should have been a 2 minute walk to our hotel took 15, as we were taken from the metro in a sort of spiral.  Dumping our case and things not needed for the rest of the day, like a decent camera, we headed back out into the blizzard to find the Musée d'Orsay and the rest of the gang for a much needed hot chocolate.  We had occasional stops to admire buildings and views that were transfigured by driving snow flakes.

If it is before Christmas and it is snowing, clearly the right thing to do is go to a Christmas Market and the big one at the Jardins des Tuileries had opened.  It therefore seemed churlish not to go along and partake of the Christmas spirit and some welcome vin chaud before a turn or three on the big wheel.  As we don't like crowds, it was probably the best time to go, despite the snow, as a nice, dry evening would bring out the hoards I'm sure.  We were amused at how little French we heard while we were there!

Once we had done the fun of the fair, we headed south to find dinner - sadly we didn't go far enough and had an average and expensive meal near the Beaux Arts.  Still the place was able to cope with 7 of us, each with different food and drink needs, and more inclined for chatting and laughter than haute cuisine.  Walking through to the river, I did take the compulsory Eifel Tower shot!

Then it was time to head in different directions to respective hotels and we strolled up into the St Germain des Près district to find a café for a nightcap.  We found the Deux Megots - famed for its illustrious clientele such as Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the like, and us!  St Germain is also famous for jazz, and Thursday night is jazz night, so we settled in for inspired music from an instrumental trio, expensive drinks, and the most amazing floor show of people watching.  That is what Paris nightlife is about!  

The following morning and the storm had gone, as had much of the snow, and Paris is much prettier in the sun.  We wandered around the district, finding another couple of amazing cafés, one for breakfast, and one for a restorative cup of hot chocolate - the sort of hot chocolate that is a large spoon of quality chocolate spread, with a bit of scalding hot milk added so that the spread melts.  If you let it go too cool, it then resolidifies!  We also found the Palais de Luxemburg or the French Senat.

And so we are home again, after living the high life for 24 hours.  And it is good to be home.  There was a Christmas Market here too today - no snow, no fairground rides, lots of French being spoken and rather than some tacky baubles and overpriced foods, local craftspeople were showing off their wares.  There were felted gloves, repurposed wood and furniture, home woven textiles, an animal psychologist, producers of seeds, and of course food stalls.  We succumbed to spice sachets for vin chaud, tomato ketchup and smoked chilli paste before heading home for lunch.

I had thought I wouldn't bother with Christmas cake this year, but I have been ranted at from Australia (and not even a family member too) about lack of respect for tradition rather severely, so I had better go and look at my store cupboard and see what I need to buy in addition for cake making on Wednesday afternoon.  I know it is leaving it a bit late, but on the other hand, the Christmas pudding has been maturing for well over a year now, so these things balance out.  That's my excuse anyway!

Have a good week!

 

Unwelcome Autumn visitors

Late autumn often brings nasty surprises - tax bills for example - and we have had a number this week.  The last, but most impactful for me is a virulent head cold, which is making every task seem much larger than it really is and more painful too.  It will go in time - taking seven days if I use treatments, and a week if I let it run its course - but I am on day 3, normally the worst, and feeling sorry for myself.

Yesterday (so day 2 of nasal misery) I came face to face with another nasty surprise, an over wintering House Slug.  Not a normal slug: in its resting mode it was a good four inches (9cm) long and half an inch (one and a bit cm) wide, so clearly a flesh eating House Slug.  It was resting on the side of the pot that holds my tiny mango seedling, grown from a pip of a fruit given to us by our new neighbour, and it is the first time I've managed to get one to germinate.  The seedling was living quite happily in the garden until it got attacked by a slug or snail, so I put it indoors to be guarded by the Country Cats.  We had a discussion about how they were slacking, but they paid no attention.  I evicted the slug and hope it was found by a questing fox or buzzard.

We have had two nights with a slight frost this week, enough to further chill down the house after an October that hit the record books for being one of the two dullest (i.e. lack of sun) on record.  It was a relief on Monday to see a strange yellow glow in the sky, but it didn't last long.  

But in amongst all this gloom, there are some truly French things that remind me why we live here. 

There was a note in our post box a couple of weeks ago - "come along to my garage on Sunday morning for a wine tasting (there will also be nibbles)".  A neighbour has a chum with a vinyard over the border near Chinon, and once a year, they lay on a tasting of bottled wines and wines "en vrac", i.e. buy a canister and bottle it yourself.  We weren't much taken with the bottled offerings, but the "en vrac" was rather splendid, so we put in an order.  The word on the street was that the wine would arrive on Saturday evening.  So yesterday evening, along with a bunch of others, we strolled down the road with our wheelbarrow and brought back our 20 litres of finest Chinon red.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I am going to take my festering head cold away from my freezing cold office and down to the warm, where I will help bottle 20 litres of red wine, which seems a very sensible way of spending a November evening!

Have a good week!

 

Quiet times

In the end we had 13 consecutive days without a glimpse of the sun, just dull, foggy, dankness.  On Friday, the sun finally made an appearance for three hours, one and a half of which I was in an office and for the rest I failed to bring out my phone and take a picture as proof.  And now the greyness is back for a few more days - how nice!

I did threaten to bring in a trail camera, as I thought the batteries might be running out.  I did that yesterday, and discovered that the batteries gave out about 3 weeks ago - my bad!  Actually there wasn't much activity recorded in the three weeks it was working.  It was placed in the Orchard, with the hope of catching boar family antics, but while there was one night time video with a couple of snuffling sounds, there was not a hint of boar.  The camera was by something we call Badger Road, and sure enough, there were numerous shots of a badger passing through at speed, so most weren't much good.  This is one of the best.

There were lots of pictures of us passing by the camera (well as many "lots" as you can get when there were only 160 files in total), which have all been removed, leaving just 49 files with anything at all, including a few of our cats.  There was a nice image of a deer, with an accompanying video I've not had a chance to load onto YouTube - for another day!

There was also a nice one of a couple of jays, again with an interesting video to follow.

Finally, there was a fine shot of the fox, showing off his magnificent bushy tail!

Other wildlife fun this week has been observing a few Asian hornets in the zone.  They are mainly workers at the end of their life, fulfilling a desire for sugary things - rotting apples and ivy nectar in the main.  A good frost and they will die off, but we will be vigilant from February, keeping an eye out for the next batch of queens to trap and destroy.  European hornets are natural, the Asian ones are non-native and causing havoc among the insect population as they seek out protein from May to August to feed the colony.

An important discovery for us yesterday was that our favourite café in town has reopened.  About a month ago I guess, I spotted that it was closed with curtains drawn, and after waiting a couple of weeks in case it was just holidays, I reluctantly decided it was gone - another blight on the year.  But yesterday, the curtains were gone, there was a new painting on the plate glass window and when we went in, the coffee was still the best in town.  Good luck to the new owners!

And now I must turn my attention back to a slightly poorly puss cat.  Poirot, the doyenne of our group, has an eye infection, which means anti-inflammatory drops four times a day and anti-biotic paste in the eye twice a day.  Fortunately she is very food oriented, with a passion for Dreamies and for cheese or salmon flavoured creamy gloop.  She is not resisting eye drops or paste as she knows that she will get a copious and tasty treat straight afterwards.  It is not so easy with cats that don't like treats!

Have a good week!

 

Half full or half empty?

While last week I showed a photo of a sunny day and a cat in a hammock, I had hoped for much more sunshine this week.  Indeed every day the forecast was for sunshine "tomorrow" or "the day after tomorrow" and today even "this afternoon".  But it hasn't happened - the high pressure and sodden ground has kept fog and low cloud in place all week with no respite at all.  The ground hasn't dried out at all, making lifting potatoes unnecessarily hard work, while the lack of light saps the spirit.  I think the constant broken promise of sun tomorrow has made it all the harder to bear and I am sick of it.

There are odd chinks of colour to look out for.  I have always been a fan of nerines, and sometimes they flower for me, but mostly they don't.  This year I have been lucky and one has flowered and I have been able to admire the circle of bright pink flowers each day for a couple of weeks as I go to feed the chickens.

The trees haven't done much by way of autumn colour - we haven't had much of a cold snap, just constant, bone aching dank.  It is possible there will be a late flush of colour but I'm not holding my breath.  However there is another plant that provides a pretty reliable splash of colour in the autumn, and because I grow it in hanging baskets, I get to admire it rather than having it covered in dead tree leaves.  The strawberry leaves are quite spectacular this year, with odd fruits hidden away.  The fruit isn't interesting as it needs sunlight to produce a bit of sweetness and flavour, and we haven't had any of that for a while (see above), but you can't have everything.

I had to visit a house and garden during the week and was stunned by the display of dramatic flower heads on the yucca plants there.  Mine have done nothing this year, and of course indoor ones don't get the conditions to do this.  For me there is no rhyme or reason to when yuccas flower, but I am grateful to see them doing their thing this year.

As the leaves fall, it becomes obvious where Asian hornets have been building nests.  While I've not spotted any in our area, not least due to the successful trapping and destroying campaigns in Baugé en Anjou, I did see this one when visiting the house and garden with the yuccas.  The nest had been breached as I saw a bird or two flying in and out - perhaps the amazing tit family have decided they like to eat them, much as they do with pine processionary grubs?

It's not all gloom I guess.  The lack of frost and the moist conditions mean that the cristophine vine goes from strength to strength, with leaves the size of dinner plates and hidden fruits.  In the gloom it looks a bit like a hut or shelter, and actually it does do a good job when it rains.  Assuming no prolonged period of intense frost this winter (unlikely given global warming, although it would be good), this brute will be back next year!

Most of the garlic we planted last year was not worth lifting, so I didn't.  But I noticed today that those bulbs are pushing back up and will provide tasty scallion style garlic "spring onions" through the winter.  It might be worth planning next year's potager plots after all!

With that in mind, I am now off to cook chicken Béarnaise, otherwise known as garlic chicken. 

I am minded to bring in a trail camera during the week, as there is one that has been in place for a couple of months now and probably needs to be checked over.  All things being equal, there could be much more exciting things to write about next week than autumnal murk!

Have a good week!