The week before last, the weather yo-yoed a bit between fabulous sun and dull and a bit moist, but this last week, the weather has settled into a sunny, dry and mainly warm pattern, although an occasional and rather vicious wind from the east blew part of the chicken run roof off. That would have been the opening photo, but I just could not resist this cherry tree in full bloom. It was humming with bees and the scent of the blossom was heady and gorgeous. It's a pity that the resulting fruit, when not stolen by birds, is pretty well inedible as it is just a wafer thin coating of red on a pip. Still, if the birds like it, and the bees like it, who are we to complain?
Most of the plum blossom is over, there is still some peach blossom around, but that is also mostly over. The pears and cherries have taken over, with early apples ready to ping, and more apple and quince blossom for later in the month. It is a beautiful time of the year and the leaves are unfurling almost as you watch, so each day the scenery changes a little bit. The daffs are pretty well over but the tulips are coming into their own. Next week i should be able to show off my whimsical wellies, but today the frizzy edged tulips we planted 6 years ago are putting on a display.
Before we get into Spring videos, I thought I'd better share the videos I took off a trail camera that had been put on a crossing point between two ponds. I thought I would get some interesting coypu footage and perhaps a few ducks. The coypu footage was really very dull - generally a tail disappearing in one direction or another, or a coypu sitting in the dark, thinking. In some animals, that might be visually appealing, but in coypu, it isn't. There were a few ducks towards the end of the two month installation.
I hadn't expected to see any badger activity down there, but they were around, including this bit from January.
These two deer were around in February. The one closer to the camera looks like it might be pregnant with a couple of lumps around the belly area, but the other one looks like a fawn from last year. I welcome thoughts.
Naturally there were boar doing the rounds in February - after dark so moving between areas of cover, I think.
They were back again in March and in force - they didn't leave much of a mark in the pond they were heading for bottom right of the screen.
The final segment is of the fox, living as it should and not raiding dustbins. The pine martens were around too but didn't stay still enough in that area to give anything more than a quick sight of a fluffy tail disappearing in any direction.
There is a phenomenon over here in France for selling off undelivered and misdirected packages - I'm sure it is the same anywhere where there is a flourishing home delivery service and drivers who aren't given enough time to do their rounds. They are "blind" sales in that you can generally have a good feel of the packages, but you can't open before you buy - it's a grown up lucky dip, but instead of a fishing rod with a hook on it and a bucket of parcels, you have a number of tables heaped with all sizes and shapes of packages. In general, you pay by weight - today it was 3.50€ per 100 grammes. It is important to remain sensible and not spend more than you can afford to lose, and we steered clear of anything that could have been clothes or shoes as they would have been unlikely to fit, but we came away with 3 mystery packages each as a sort of Christmas stocking (many months late I know) for the princely sum of 18 Euros.
These were my three packages. The flat one bottom right, which I thought might be a lipstick, was in fact some jollop for thickening eyelashes - not really me. The cylindrical one to the left was some highly concentrated car wash liquid - might be useful at some stage. The box style one at the top was a no blue light click light, presumably for use in a bedroom or office setting, which might actually be useful, if it works, and is rechargeable too. It was a lot of fun, but I have to emphasise, a complete lucky (or unlucky) dip and never pay out more than you can afford to lose.
Next week is set to be lovely again, so I must work in the garden, getting the other half of the potatoes planted and weeding and pruning and cutting back and preparing beds and sowing seeds and all that good stuff. Have a good week too!