Rural Life

Full on harvesting

Down the road at Fontaine Guerin, they might be celebrating the ancient arts of harvesting, but here we are just trying to keep on top of things and failing to a greater extent.  Last weekend we did manage to gather about 4 pounds of blackberries, which were turned into the first Bramble Jelly I have made in years.  The temptation to eat it all very quickly must be constrained, not least as the less durable jams need to be made and used first.  It always looks lovely when it is doing its hard boil phase!

We are now up to 188 courgettes, not counting the ones that "got away" and turned into chicken food about a foot long.  I'm testing freezing courgette cake (savoury with cheese and chilli), and if that works, will be making more for the freezer.  You can't eat a loaf of that a week or you end up looking like a cake yourself!!  I must also give the courgette bhaji recipe another go now the onions have been lifted.

We are drowning under tomatoes, and that is before the main red ones get going, that is just drowning under small, sweet, pear shaped yellow tomatoes.  The Coeur de Boeuf tomatoes are huge and starting to turn colour, although that does take quite some time with them.  The Corne d'Andes are also starting to ripen, and I don't like to think what is happening in the triffid zone that is the companion planting paradise of tomatoes and cristophine vines!  The individual Coeur de Boeuf tomatoes can weigh as much as 1 pound (450g or so)!

I picked a mixed tray of produce today, and we counted it a victory to off load 2 courgettes, 2 chillies, and 5 tomatoes of various sorts on our unsuspecting next door neighbour.  He looks like he needs feeding up anyway!

In a few weeks more, it will be sweetcorn time.  Yesterday I counted 24 lots of corn silks, which is manageable, but we have 59 plants so I suspect there will be a few more than that, even if some are small and more suited to chicken treats.  For some reason, the computer and all the software don't think you should be allowed to see that. 

But its not all about fruit and vegetables (although it seems like that sometimes), there are flowers too.  Most of the flowering plants and shrubs are over, but the variegated Birthday Rose that climbs over the front of the house is still going strong, and the flowers are beautifully scented in the evening.  Don't bother asking what rose it is!  It is a climber we bought locally 15 years ago, and that is all I can remember!

The cats all deal with summer in their own ways.  Monsieur Clause over at The Garden has decided that the only way to get through this summer is by living on the ride on lawnmower, on the seat, protected by a tarpaulin.  He gets room service delivery of food and cuddles, so why should he change?  Rebus has discovered the Gutter.  It is a stage all our house cats go through it seems, but there is something comforting for them about the zinc gutter on our neighbour's house and makes it the best place to slump of an evening.

Next week promises heat, courgettes, tomatoes, plums, peaches and more courgettes - that's me sorted out, how about you?  Have a good week!

 

 

Respite!

This photo was taken (not by me) in our garden on Tuesday afternoon at about 4:30pm.  This was the height of the latest heatwave and I have to confess to being slumped on a sofa, in front of a fan blowing air over 3 5 litre cannisters of ice.  The weather was uncomfortable, the Heath Robinson air con worked!

I finally went outside at about 10pm to lock the chickens away and do a bit of watering, as well as my regular stroll to the top of the hill in front of the house.  I was rewarded by a lovely sunset.

Today that all seems like a distant memory, with rain, soft, gentle, wet rain, and much cooler temperatures.  It won't last but today we are enjoying the change!

Yesterday we were in Chinon for dinner.  Next Sunday morning, the town will be the focus of the cycling world as the Tour de France sets off from there, for its ninth stage, heading south towards Chateauroux.  Naturally we will go along and see the spectacle, although how much there is to really see will be interesting.  We saw a stage finish once in Tours, and it was 2 to 3 hours of standing around for 10 seconds of whoosh!  The town is festooned with yellow bunting, flags and other decorations, and a line painted on the road for the official start line when the four jerseys line up behind the lead car.  The real start is about 10 kilometres out of town, but it is all about the spectacle in town.  One of the pharmacies had a suitable window display.

On Thursday morning, a bunch of us braved the metal convection oven that is the Comité des Fêtes storage barn to crack on with the float for the Comice.  My illness and successive heatwaves had slowed progress considerably, but we are on a deadline and fortunately a strong team of 7 were able to do all the panels that were prepared.  I have checked the photo and I'm not giving away any secrets when I show our admirable team at work.

One more session is all we need to get the panels finished!

A combination of heatwaves and the arrival of a new computer have encouraged me to deal with a trail camera - down in the corner where the Meadow meets the Plantation.  I was delighted to see that the hare uses this corner quite a bit, or was using it in March anyway!

It is very much an area where deer like to hang out - it provides cover and food and yet also allows a good view in the "vulnerable" directions.  This stag had a pretty impressive rack of horn in April and used his antlers to trash the trees and greenery a bit.  They are a menace when you have young or vulnerable trees, it has to be said!

By June, the results of a previous rutting season were around.  When very tiny, the fauns are stashed in long grass or cereal crops, but as they grow, they follow Mum around learning to feed themselves, and being left in slightly more interesting places, like among the trees that edge the Meadow.  These were learning to feed.

There is a water source nearby, which is also an attraction for the deer at the moment.  Some of the ponds are looking very dry, but two are fed by tiny springs that don't seem to fail, and keep the local wildlife going.

Next week may be all about the Tour, depending on the next bout of heatwaves and the speed of my internet connection (we will soon go over to fibre, but there are Things to be Done before that can happen), so may be a day late.  All very conditional I know!  Anyway, 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!

 

Between two events - apologies for the delay!

Last week I was a few hours early posting, before heading off to tend bar at the village Trout Fishing Day.  This week I am a day late after being one of a handful of stall holders at the village PTA car boot sale.  In between there have been all sorts of excitements with a poorly cat, a septic tank issue and wild orchids - it's hard to know where to start and what to include!  Perhaps at the beginning, with a picture of a lovely sunny day for trout fishing?

Yesterday was rather a contrast, dull skies, rain in the night, a third of the booked places not taken up due to the weather and few punters for all the goodies spread out for their delight.  We did alright during the day in terms of large and/or heavy items sold, as well as a lot of smaller stuff, but the heavy rain at lunchtime scared off buyers, and while we hung in to the end, we did little business in the afternoon, despite lovely sunshine.

There is nothing exciting about septic tank inspections, so I will gloss over that, other than to praise highly the integrity and helpfulness of the local inspector, who tried her best to approve things, but where they couldn't be approved, is helping us to find cost effective solutions for my client.  

Much more exciting is that the bee orchids are finally putting in an appearance, possibly stirred into action by a very small amount of rain at the start of the week.  They have mostly cropped up in or very close to the recently mown path through the orchard.  This kind of confirms my view that bee orchids need either grazing animals to keep the grass down or a simulation of that (mowing) in order to push up their flower spikes.  They don't much like competition and it seems long grass and tall weeds are not their friends.

Another orchid related excitement was the discovery of a new (to us and to the location) type of orchid, this time relatively happy in the long grass.  I've not had a chance to look it up yet, but it is some form of pink pyramidal orchid.  I've not seen any like it in the area, so I'm not sure how it arrived, and John says it is nothing to do with his mowers!

Early in the week I met the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen in the rough grass in the country - large, and on some level rather disturbing.  Way back in the 70s there was a Dr Who episode called something like the Green Death, which involved giant maggots, and I have been iffy about maggots and caterpillars every since, particularly that size!  The Peugeot key fob gives an idea of scale.  I hope it grows up into something nice!

As we head towards the end of no-mow May - something I rather disapprove of in general - I thought I would highlight how you can do it sensibly.  Make nice wide paths that are kept mown through the area you are interested in.  This has been particularly a thing with us this last week, as it is a bumper year for tics and we are picking off a good number each week from the Country Cats.  One of the cats has developed anaemia and the vet thought it was entirely possible that this was due to the number of tics he has picked up.  The blood tests to diagnose the problem were costly, although not as much as if we lived in the UK (expensive is relative I guess), and there is a prolonged course of medication and a long way to go until he is back to full Spooky Power.  

And here is the anaemic patient in his cat carrier at the vet's - Spooky the indomitable.

So keep checking for tics - you and all your loved ones! 

Well, that is it for this week, and it promises to be a quiet week so I should be back to the normal schedule next week.  Have a good one!

 

Flower Power

There is a rather lovely song by the French singer/song writer Laurent Voulzy called Le Pouvoir des Fleurs - basically it is an appeal to improve the world with flowers.  it dates from the late 70s or the 80s and while perhaps a bit naïve, it sums up my feeling for today as I went through the week's photos, to see what to put in today's entry.  At this time of year, it is all about the flowers, from the carefully bred black iris that has just snuck under the fence from our neighbour...

to the equally intriguing but absolutely wild and uncultivated spider orchid that crops up in a friend's garden in huge numbers.  I've not seen so many anywhere else!

Bees are having an absolute orgy with all the blooms - our rather trashy red hot pokers provide a smorgasbord for insects of all sorts.

The peonies, although I only have one in flower, but more generally, are the favourite source of sugar for ants I am told.

On Friday, and in perfect weather, I had a trip over to Chinon, and while wandering around the mediaeval centre, found Rabelais directing people to one of his wine caves!

And now I must sort myself out to start my shift at the bar (behind the bar) for the village trout fishing day.  Next week's blog could be full of photos of happy punters pulling trout out of a rather lovely lake on a magnificent sunny day, and hoary peasants supping beer and rosé at the bar, or I could be too busy to take any photos at all!  We'll see!

Have a good week!

 

More mundane activity than recently

The unseasonably hot weather has gone, leaving us with mild spring conditions, much more conducive to the French resident's annual May bugbear task of sorting out the tax return.  It is an existential grey cloud that hovers over you, with panics about declaring non-French fiscal instruments of all sorts, trying to decide which pensions are classed as private or public (not as obvious as it sounds), where to put that charity donation and have you got the paperwork to back it up if audited, and as a special for this year, how to do a tax return on 19 days pre-decease for my Mum. 

Actually that last one was so much easier than I had feared it would be, as naturally, the state was already aware of when she died and kept telling me it was just a 19 day tax return.  The only problem was the bit about "do you still live at the address we have for you" - I don't think the lawyer's office counts as heaven, hell or purgatory in the eyes of the French state.

The cooler, but still quite warm, conditions make it easier to get moving on the gardening tasks that are becoming urgent - mowing, planting, sowing, pruning.  We've done a lot of all that!

All bar one of the potatoes we planted are now up and the first ones are starting to think about flowering.  I am hopeful that we will have some new potatoes in June.

[photo of growing potatoes] - This photo just will not load - somewhere an AI bot has decided that it really is too dull, but the others are now there!

Last weekend I bought tomato and pepper plants and I have been able to get those planted now all fear of frosts has gone.  I regard tomato plants as the ultimate heart breakers, as I put them in so full of hope, and quite often by mid-July I am prepared to burn the wretched things as they are full of blight or broken and twisted.

While watering the peas, I noticed a bit of movement around my feet - a rather unsteady Red Admiral.  My Dad used to tell me lovely stories about a Red Admiral and a Painted Lady - I think they were very much stories on two levels as my Mum used to like to listen too.  Sadly he never wrote any of them down.

Once all the hard work had been done today, I walked round the grounds listening to birds and met a rather pretty damsel fly - it would be nice if this photo worked, as the only one to go on so far is of a boring vegetable bed!

So there she is!  I'm pleased that one worked, and perhaps tomorrow I can get more uploaded and the blog republished, but clearly the internet is clogged up with French people doing their tax returns on a Sunday afternoon and I guess I have to respect that.  Alternatively, I need to get signed up for fibre and then I won't have this problem (in theory).

Have a good week!

 

An aestival interlude

Actually I would spell it estival rather than aestival, but I think the American spell checker objects!  Whatever, April and the first couple of days of May have been a wonderful foretaste of what summer should be like, but wasn't last year.  We wait to see how this summer pans out - I have little faith in the long term forecasts peddled by the tabloids. 

We started the week with aperos in the garden with our elderly cat, and on Friday had a book signing on the pub terrace with a renowned Anglophone historian and writer (click on the Eighty Years Ago this Week link on the right of the screen when you have finished reading this for more information about Adrian Phillips, author of, among other titles, Winston's Bandits, the book being signed here).  What a week!

In between, there have been markets, a bank holiday with picnic, a final afternoon at the Mairie making paper flowers, and an extremely hot and sticky session in the Comité des Fêtes's hangar, taking down last year's cabin structure and building the new frame for this year's tableau - very hush, hush for the moment. 

The natural flowers are an absolute joy this year.  At the bottom of one of our downpipes we always have a good display of campanula growing out of the wall and a bit of tarmac, but this year is the best ever I think.  They should keep going for another week or so.

The peas I sowed in pots to keep them away from marauding mice all came up and those have now been planted into the vegetable beds, with columns of sheep netting to climb up.  The last three days have seen all of them pull away gratifyingly and I am hoping for tasty snacks of extremely fresh peas in early June.

Down among the ponds, there is one place where there is a large bank of wild marsh iris, and we have the best ever display we've seen of flowers on them at the moment.  Soon the other foliage will completely block the view of them for the rest of the summer season.

The unseasonably hot weather brought on the flowers on the false acacia rather more quickly than usual - I hope this doesn't adversely affect the honey harvest.  The trees themselves are awful - covered in sharp thorns, they spread by suckering and are a non-native invasive species, practically impossible to get rid of.  But for a couple of weeks in May or June they are coated in tumbling white flowers with a heady, honey scent, which makes them borderline tolerable.

The favourite orchid featured last week continues to flower beautifully despite being mugged by surrounding oxeye daisies, linseed and various meadow grasses.  While I tried to bash my way through to my favourite cultivated irises, I found a second example of the orchid, possibly more spectacular than the first.  Well, see what you think!

The weather has changed in time for the UK bank holiday.  We have another ourselves on Thursday, with Victory in Europe day, which will be full of reminders of the end of the Second World War.  Sadly it seems we are gearing up for the Third World War, but I will not pursue that line of thinking, this week anyway. 

Have a good week!

 

In praise of weeds

Of course pedants would say that a weed is only a plant in the wrong place, so perhaps this should be called a rather less provocative "in praise of wild flowers"?  Whatever, looking through the photos of the week, many of them are of flowers, not all in the right place, not deliberately sown or planted in most cases, but all looking too gorgeous at the moment.  Suddenly the weather has gone spectacularly nice, even those days forecast to be wet and horrid were only grey and mildly disappointing.  The forecast for the week to come is spectacular, so as soon as this is written and launched, we are getting the abri cover out so that sitting in the garden is a real thing and a pleasure.

Anyway, here is the first of this week's pin ups - probably a lady orchid, and the best it has looked for perhaps 6 years, as in 2020 it was deformed and lopsided and hasn't really done well since then.

An unsung hero of pretty weeds is the speedwell, often overlooked, but the intensity of this patch in the Orchard is really rather pleasing.

On Easter Monday, we made a pilgrimage to the One Acre Wood to admire the new leaves on the trees and see how the ponds were doing.  The upper one was alive with "things", probably baby newts, the lower one was quiet and neither had much water.  Up at the top, where we leave our car, there were lots of wood violets.

Further down in the Wood, the lily of the valley were up and in flower.  It is traditional to give sprigs of these lovely flowers to friends on the first of May, but I think most will be over by then, given the weather conditions.

There are some cultivated areas, with this bed full of non-flowering broad beans, young peas, onions and some rather slug damaged pumpkin plants.  I hope we will have food from some of them, but I am starting to despair with the broad beans.

That bed is overlooked by one of our bird boxes.  It is inhabited - I have spent a lot of time this last week watching two great tits flying a relay between any good sources of grubs and yucky things and the box, and today the babies were definitely screaming to be fed a lot of the time.  If all goes well, I guess they will fledge in a couple of weeks and perhaps then there will be a second use of the box.

We had a visitor in the courtyard yesterday - damaged, so probably dropped there by a cat or a bird, but still able to wriggle around and look threatening.  John got his litter picker out and took it over the road to the long grass, in theory so that our cats did not find it and play with it.  Rare and protected, but not from other wildlife or cats!!

So that is it for this week.  It has been challenging getting the photos to load up, I think all part of a cunning plan to get us to change our broadband line for a fibre one.  It isn't helped by the age of my computer or running a version of Windows that Microsoft would prefer I didn't, either.  A project for another month I think!

Have a good week!

 

Bells and cats and stuff - version 2

It had taken me half an hour to write 500 words and load up 4 photos, and then we had a 15 second power cut and the whole lot disappeared.  There should have been a draft saved on the server somewhere on the West Coast of the USA, but while it had three versions of last week's blog, it had nothing of today's.

On a rather dull Easter Monday morning, I have decided to try again - we'll see how it goes!

This stage of April brings bluebells dotted around the garden.  They all came from my parents' house in Kent.  There they were rampant, and once we had bought the house in France, if Mum was doing some gardening and found a few bulbs, she put them in a bucket for us to take away and plant here (you could do that pre-Brexit).  Here they battle with irises and brambles and chickens and are not so rampant, but are always delightful when they bloom.

During one of the less lovely days last week, I started to scan old transparencies I found in my Mum's desk.  Remember them?  It always took about 4 goes to get each one correctly oriented in whatever viewer you were using, and of course some were good, in focus, well composed and with a good balance of light and colour, and some were not.  They all date to before I was born - Dad gave up photography, and with his artistic talents with a pen or pencil, why bother indeed?  I did find some fascinating ones of the winter before I was born, 1963, and the snow surrounding the cottage where the bluebells came from and where I grew up.

To keep pretty flowers out of the reach of the chickens (a k a feathered vandals), we put things in pots and planters.  Sometimes the chickens get in and then they are all destroyed, but some things survive, including this rather pleasing variegated periwinkle.  We top up the soil with used tea leaves and tea bags, which is why the contents of the container look a bit weird, but only one chicken likes to eat tea bags.

With spring comes all the rutting and flirting and hormones that Nature uses to ensure species continue.  The bird song at the moment is incredible for example, and in the evening the cuckoo is incessant.  The local feral cats are also around posing and trying it on with anything that moves.  We had two boys in the next garden over singing the Song of their People very loudly until we went to throw something at them.  So a timely reminder - if you have cats, please ENSURE THEY ARE NEUTERED.  These boys are likely to end up under a car while in thrall to their hormones, and also make a horrid smell.  The photo of the two boys in question is not very clear, so to illustrate this bit, I offer a photo of a neutered male cat, Monsieur Clause, one of the Boys in the Country, suitable edited to cover his shame, because he does like rolling around on his back on any surface.

The weather broke rather on Thursday evening and we have had perhaps 8 millimetres of rain since then, as well as grey skies and colder temperatures.  We have also had the amusing phenomenon of pollen rain.  The colza (or rape) is currently in full bloom.  It is dramatically and almost artificially yellow, and produces an awful lot of pollen, as any allergy sufferer knows.  When it rains, the pollen gets stuck on rain drops and then falls to the ground, where it accumulates as the water runs away or evaporates.  This is in the centre of town so some 4 kilometres from the nearest field in full flower.

While the unbroken sunshine we basked in for 10 days was lovely, for a really interesting sunset, you need cloud as something for the sun's rays to bounce off as it sinks into the west.  This was a rather lovely example from earlier in the week.

Well it would appear that America has woken up and it is now taking ages to load photos and they take a few goes to get right.  So it is clearly time to stop, and go and have some lunch, and hear about a nice old man, who died after meeting an American...

Have a good week!

 

 

Full of the joys of Spring

Back in early March, I introduced my upcycled planters for tulips.  You could see early leaves poking out of the top and I was seriously excited to see how they worked.  They are now in bloom, and while I am a bit upset that the two types of tulip were out of synch for flowering, overall I think I am happy with the result.  Next time I do bulbs in them, I shall ensure that they have the same mix in each I think.  Still, a hit I think for the whimsical wellies!

Another sign that spring is here is that we have got the garden sculpture out again and he is on his plinth under the birch tree.  We bought this heron, created using a chainsaw, at a Comice (although they call it Ruralities) in the village of Beauvau some 10 years ago now at least.  It has had some surgery, as it got hit a couple of times by branches, and fell and broke its neck on each occasion, but the wonderful Olivier, a local craftsman in all things wood, has done a fix.

I have been getting a bit depressed about local markets recently.  The biggest and best near us is at la Flèche and was a lifeline during Covid lockdowns as you could go there and get real food, rather than what the supermarkets felt you should want to eat.  The town councillors seem to think that the market is a Bad Thing however, even though they make money out of it, but perhaps it is too much competition for their personal businesses?  Who knows!  Anyway, they have removed all the parking spaces within easy reach of the market, and have set up a shuttle bus, which few people take as it is never where you need it to be.  I caught it once, and found it too cramped for comfortable seating and was lucky I had no shopping with me, as there was no space for that either.  Last week my lovely fishmongers said farewell - I was in tears!

On a much happier note, Baugé market on a Saturday seems to be well supported by the local council and over the past month has acquired a fresh pasta stall, a stall selling food inspired by Guadeloupe, another selling Thai specialities, and my personal favourite, there is a new butcher too!  Long may that last!  The photo was taken by, and from, the Facebook group supporting the Saturday market.

The excellent weather over the past couple of weeks, albeit a bit unseasonable, has meant I have had absolutely no excuse not to get the potatoes all planted.  The final batch of 16 went in this morning and I can feel it in my haunches!  With the coverings (two of which are on their seventh season now), we don't need to draw up soil around the shoots as they come up, and it provides exciting habitat for toads and slow worms among other fauna, which keeps the slugs under control.  There is some protection too from cat bottoms, although not from cats rolling around in the sun and dust.

The onions are all in now, and I started peas off in old modules that we acquired with geraniums in them over the years.  I like to reuse these when I can and when they aren't too battered, and peas are vulnerable to mice and birds and mould when sown direct, so it seemed like a good idea.  Now they are nice looking seedlings, but need to go into the ground as the roots are starting to come out of the bottom of the modules, even though they are quite deep.  A job for tomorrow I think!

Next week there should be wildlife content, all things being equal, as I brought in one of the trail cameras today - it's been by the badger set for a couple of months, but the grass and weeds have grown up around it, so something needed to be done.

Have a good week and be nice to the Easter Bunny!