I've lost count of the number of official heatwaves we have had so far this year. The current one - is it 5 or 6? - has been going on a long time and still has a day or two to go, although we are past the peak, thank goodness. Everyone is getting bored and tetchy with it all - the continual heat, the challenges of keeping the house faintly cooler than outside, the restrictions, are all wearing people down.
The latest heatwave has brought in local restrictions on access to woodland areas and what you can do in or near them. This is a sensible precaution as there is a breeze, everything is tinder dry, there is little standing water outside of major lakes and water courses and we still see the ravages of the big forest fire from 3 years ago. The Prefet has therefore banned all access to woodland areas between midday and midnight from Friday 15th August to Tuesday 19th August. This has upset a lot of people.
This is because at Vernoil le Fourrier every 15th August there is the Festival of Hunting. The grounds they use are, I gather, rather spectacular, on the edge of a major forest and partly wooded to ensure shade for horses and dogs (and humans). It runs from 10am in the morning, with demonstrations, stalls, exhibitions, feasting and drinking, and is rounded off by fireworks before closing at midnight. Despite arguments from the organisers that they had lots of tanks of water around the site, that all their visitors were responsible human beings, that it was all a bit unfair and "nanny state", the Prefet was unmoved, and they could only open for 4 hours, from 10am to 2pm. The weeping and wailing and calling it all unfair has swept across social media and the press.
Not far from the land that we rent, there is a rather splendid chapel - Notre Dame de Montplacé. The 15th August is a bank holiday in much of Europe for Assumption, celebrating Mary's ascent into Heaven, if you believe in such things. There is therefore a pilgrimage to the chapel, and a well attended Mass is celebrated at 11am, drawing in the faithful from a fairly wide area. It isn't too close to woodland, but it is surrounded by fields and copses.
When we left that area on midday on Friday (tending our plants and cats, not attending Mass), there were lots of cars parked up at the chapel, and yesterday when we left that area, we found that there had been a scrub fire at the end of the track leading away from the parking area. Today we stopped to look and photograph the damage.
It would appear to have been a car fire, burning furiously hot (chunks of melted metal and evidence of totally destroyed tyres), which spread into the surrounding grassland, fortunately stopped by broadleaf scrub and presumably some form of fire extinguishing intervention. Certainly the bulk of the car has been taken away.
I'm not at all sorry the Hunting Festival was brought to a halt at midday. If a few pilgrims can lead to a small fire, what could a few thousand people on the edge of woodland do?
The heat is doing great things for the garden, however!
This is becoming a daily standard of what gets harvested. OK we don't have aubergines every day, but the tomatoes are becoming a challenge commensurate with the courgette problem that has been going on for some 6 weeks now. Then there are the Victoria plums - I've picked loads, and loads have fallen off, and still the tree is overloaded!
I've made jam, I've made crumbles for the freezer, I have a recipe to try for plum fool, and I have a burping barrel in the cellar that takes anything that isn't perfect or that falls on the floor.
And while it is still only mid-August, there are signs of autumn creeping up on us. Trees that like nice moist soils (poplar, willow) are giving up and their leaves are turning colour and falling. The swallows and house martens are starting to think about who they want to travel south with (the swifts are long gone). The evenings are drawing in - while we aren't allowed to water vegetable gardens until 8pm at night (and only until 8am), the gap between 8pm and sunset not long after 9pm gets ever shorter. The smoke from the wildfires in Portugal has also shortened the light at dusk, which doesn't help any either.
However a happy harbinger of autumn is also appearing, as cyclamen flowers appear in the lawn, hedgerows, and woodland (when you are allowed in). Such a pretty flower!
Next weekend is the Comice and Sunday is the parade of decorated floats, and I'll be on ours. So the blog will not appear until Monday, because I will be way too busy to do anything else next Sunday!
Wish me luck, not least with the weather, and have a good week!
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