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!
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