Rural Life

Normal service is resumed!

This latest Covid variant is a doozy, so if you have the chance to get vaccinated, I heartily recommend doing so.  The razor throat gave way to a debilitating cough, which turned into a lung infection, all of which was during the first heatwave.  Now I feel better, we are slap bang in the middle of a second and worse heatwave!  June has not been my favourite month!  Still, my Poundland lily has been putting on a fine display and will go on for a few days yet, so not all bad!  I bought it over before Brexit really kicked in so it has been going in that pot for some 5 years now!

The weather is crazy.  May was so much drier than normal, and June has been the same - just 16mm of rain in the month to date and I don't expect any more between now and Tuesday morning.  At the start of April, we had 2,500 litres of rainwater stocked in our giant cubes, but to keep the vegetables going, we have had to pump a further 3,000 litres from the well to put into the cubes, and we will be topping them up soon, as the farmers are going to start pumping and irrigating big time shortly, so the level in the well will fall.  The fruits of the water can be seen in the impending courgette glut - they are delicious when small, but let them get to 8 to 10 inches long and they become less enticing!

The sweetcorn is not quite so triffid like but coming on nicely - there are 60 plants in this bed and if they all produce a couple of cobs each, we will be nice and regular through August and September, if you see what I mean!

We had a visitor - a rarity for us - during the last week for a couple of nights.  It was fascinating for us to see our life here and the local area through different eyes.  I handed him mirabelles and raspberries fresh from the tree/cane to try, to be met with a query of were they safe to eat, before tasting the freshest fruit he had had in his life I think.  They were approved!  Similarly our wells were a source of amazement.  We drove through Durtal, and the surprise on coming down the hill and seeing the Chateau for the first time - What is that!?  Just another normal facet of French life!

Last night as I took down the heat shutter from the bedroom window, I looked out to see a new moon on the horizon.  It doesn't look as though this moon will bring cooler temperatures, indeed the forecast, always a bit on the conservative side, for Tuesday is a suffocating 41ºC.  We will be up early in the mornings to water the triffids and feed cats, then snoozing through the heat of the day. 

I have a trail camera to check over and download and triage the photos and videos, so there may be wildlife in next week's blog.  Eating fruit, fresh vegetables, salads, and things that don't need much cooking is the order of the day - yesterday's queue for tomatoes, melons and apricots was just about bearable!

As I stood in that queue, I was able to admire another jewel of the Middle Ages, as our chateau at Baugé stands guard over the market square.  Sometimes I forget to marvel at the wonderful area we live in, but not this last week, my eyes have been reopened!

So, I am back in the world of the living, albeit dripping with sweat at the effort of moving my fingers in an office that is currently 29ºC, which isn't that comfortable.  So I am going to go and find a fan to sit in front of, and perhaps have a restorative snooze.  I think I am allowed!

Have a good week!

 

No post this week

Apologies!  It has been a dire week and there is nothing much I want to share about it, apart from the lovely flowers on my Curcuma plant in the garden (decorative turmeric).  Normal service should resume next week.

A plague on carriers of disease!

Either that cold was a real humdinger or we had Covid, either way, the extra symptoms and issues just keep on coming!  I have never before had to phone the doctor's surgery here for a medical appointment that wasn't routine, but yesterday I did manage to get an emergency appointment to look into symptoms.  Thanks to Google, I was convinced I had a failing gall bladder or pancreas - actually it turned out to be acute gastro, so unpleasant but solvable. 

Then last night I became convinced that someone was trying to kill me by forcing a knitting needle into my ear.  Despite serious pain killers, sleep was elusive at best and my ear is seeping gunk.  This time Google tells me it is an anodyne ear infection and to take painkillers until it sorts itself out.  Much of the earlier part of the week was spent trying to fool myself that the bugs had gone - all in all, I'm not impressed!

Still, we did get one thing sorted out, and that was very purposeful.  Twenty years ago, when we moved over to France, we realised we needed a decent outdoor table and chair set, so went to Casa and invested.  The chairs lasted perhaps 3 or 4 seasons, but the table has only just fallen apart.  Actually it is still doing service as a place to put plant pots, so not dead yet.  It took a while to find something we liked - most stores go for the metal and plasticised fabric things, but we wanted wood.  We also prefer to buy locally, but sometimes you can't, and the internet helped us out.  Of course it needed to be varnished before being put into use, which meant that Poirot took against it until I put a bit of hardboard on it, but we now have our new outdoor table.  Let's hope it also lasts 20 years!

The week has been very hot, which made the session on Thursday sticking paper flowers onto cardboard panels rather uncomfortable, to say the least.  Actually I blame that heat for the gastro, but I could be wrong!  Anyway, progress was made and that was the important thing, as while the Comice isn't until the 23rd August, the time will fly between now and then!

The hot weather is suiting the Mediterranean vegetables although they are now starting to ask for water as well, which is an issue as we haven't had much rain for 3 months now.  The progress the courgettes are making is really rather scary and this year I might have overdone the number of plants!

This weekend, the local business support group, Baugé Entreprendre, has its regular Fair or Exhibition.  I am always stounded at the range of artisans we have in the area, much smaller than a British district council.  There were a number of people who upcycle things - leather, furniture, tyre inner tubes as below ...

There is a guy who makes lovely shelves from offcuts of wood - I will invest in one shortly!

And of course there was a furniture restorer and a lady who does lovely upholstery, who will be getting our custom in due course.

Not only was it fascinating to see the inventiveness and skills of local people, we also met up with a load of chums as we wandered round, making it a very convivial occasion as well.  Hopefully this spotlight on local talents will ensure that they pick up more work and provide an excellent economic base for the area.

Well, I hope that next week's offering is more interesting and less full of complaints about health.  The weather forecast is set fair for a beautiful late spring/early summer, and over the last week, the douceur angevine once again spared us from devastating storms.  Long may that continue!

Have a good week!

Summer colds and cherries

When I was in the queue for the till at Aldi just over a week ago, there was a handsome man ahead of me, necking a litre bottle of orange juice while waiting his turn.  In between urgent gulps of juice, he spent a happy time coughing repeatedly.  I might have wondered if it was juice with bits and they were annoying: I might have idly wondered about whether the new strain of Covid was anything more than tabloid click bait.  I did not expect to spend most of the week trying to breathe without sounding like a pig with its snout in a trough of tasty sludge.  Silly me!  Half the week seems to have been blurry, seen through eyes partly obscured by mucus, interspersed with periods of great clarity and purpose.

Much of that purpose has been driven by greed.  For the first time in over 5 years, we have access to a crop of cherries!  There are two trees with tasty red ones, and I found one today that has lovely ripe yellow cherries too - or what we used to call white cherries back in the orchards of Kent of my youth.  Shortly I must go and stuff a kilner jar with as many ripe red cherries as I can, then top it up with (home produced) kirsch to be useful in the autumn and winter.

As far as I remember, the cherry season is short and intense.  It is a battle with birds who feel the need to eat some and damage as many as they can before I can get to them, and with the weather, which even in a record dry spell, will produce a downpour of rain to split the best, biggest and ripest of fruit.  That is without the, for us, new threat of people just wandering into the field and helping themselves, and the more familiar threat of deer, boar, pine martins, and badgers scoffing what they can, depending on craftiness and height.  The branch of cherries below shows the range of challenges, including a bit of mildew also making its presence felt.  Commercial cherry farmers should be feted for getting any to your table at all!

Fruit gluttony aside, the vegetable plots are starting to provide the odd side dish, and indeed meal.  Yesterday we had a small portion each of the tiniest petit pois to encourage the plants to keep producing.  I actually grew the peas as something to graze on while at the plot, as I love fresh peas, raw, direct from the pod.  The summer cold from hell has made raw peas about as appealing as eating pebbles, but lightly cooked and served with a bit of farm butter, they were close to heaven last night.  Tonight we have new potatoes and broad beans to accompany our extra fatty and skin on pork chops (fat is most appealing at the moment), and while the product of one plant isn't vast, we didn't eat all the potatoes from the 56 we planted last year, so eating some early this year is not going to deprive us during the winter I reckon!

The pumpkins that we set off from seeds from one that we bought during the winter for soup have suddenly decided that they like being planted in soil that is 50% kiln ready clay and 50% top grade compost and are sending tendrils everywhere.  Encouragingly, they are also sending out lots of female flowers, although if I am right, these three have not been fertilised and will come to nothing.  The hint being that the stems are yellow rather than green.  But it is still early days, and I would hope to have some set and growing nicely by the end of June.

The courgette plants in the ratatouille bed look as though they are getting ready for world domination.  Given that they were tiny when planted out, and some with very poor root balls, they have taken to the bed really well.  Rather better indeed than the expensive and posh pepper plants, which have yet to put on a new leaf in four weeks, and are now being cossetted with a protective cover!  The aubergines are also looking sulky, but I find they do that until late June and then become ravenous triffids.

Talking of triffids, it put on 20 centimetres in a week...

Anyway, cherries don't put themselves in jars of alcohol, so I'd better go and help them out.  Have a good week!

 

As spring ends, the summer triffid appears

We thought it had died, it took so long to appear.  Mind you, my Facebook memories hadn't featured it, so I probably shouldn't have doubted it.  The cristophine vine has shown its first shoots during the last week.  It is quite dry here at the moment, so we aren't seeing the rapid and lush growth we associate with this thug ... yet.  All we need is a good rain shower and it will be off.  Fortunately we have never bothered to dismantle its frame, so it has space to grow.  We are trying the companion planting experiment again, and there are 5 tomato plants around it.  Here we go again!

There has been little to photograph and little energy for taking photos this week - we were tired after the vide grenier and then the weather got seriously hot very quickly, and of course we have been tending to the needs of the poorly cat.  Spooky is now back up to fighting weight and regularly downing a small tin of gourmet food as well as most of a cheaper brand of sachet cat food.  Goodness knows whether he is blagging food off the neighbours as well - I sort of doubt it. 

The best photo of the week otherwise, is of the bright orange memorial rose (Orange King, in case you were wondering) that we bought to mark the demise of the resident ginger cat some four years ago.

However earlier in the month, I brought in one of the trail cameras for a check over.  Probably a good thing, as the batteries had failed, and it was also clear that there is an issue with the on/off switch - it is annoying that it is this, the cheapest relay in the whole unit, that is most likely to fail!  I hope I have found a work around, but won't know until I bring the camera back in soon.

This camera had been in place for a few months, and initially had been beaten up a couple of times, until we tied it in to a post very securely.  It was positioned to catch goings on near the badger set, and the route the badgers take to do their marauding elsewhere.  There is a small breach in the wire fence nearby and a small path through the grass that can be seen on Google Earth!  For at least the first few weeks, the plan worked well, as they didn't venture far from the set to look for tasty morsels and do their business.  Later they are just glimpses of a shape dashing one way or another, heading off to or coming back from, much more promising areas.

First, there is one badger nosing around for something interesting.

Then there are two badgers pottering around together.

There is one with a badger spotting the camera and running away.

Then there is the up close and personal.

Then the closer still.

And then a real good investigation before knocking the camera over!

The two trail cameras I've had that have had broken switches are those that have been attacked by animals, a badger in this case, and a boar in the other.  They are supposed to be robust, so I'm hoping it is just a coincidence.

Finally, because no sequence of videos is complete without the wild pigs, here is a family using the badger gap in the fence.

There are some nice stills in that batch of files, which I will dig out another day, when I am at a loss as to what to write about.  I have had the second trail camera in this week for a similar check up - I have to say that the contents were rather disappointing, with rather too much rat and mouse action, pine martens moving too quickly to be anything other than fuzzy and no ducks.  I'll see what is worth sharing though.

Have a good week!