Rural Life

Day 49 of lockdown - I met a frog

But before I get on to the frog, I should point out that the weather cheered up yesterday afternoon and aperos were taken in the garden, surrounded by chickens and guarded by Nibbles.  It was good to be out in the fresh air, although by 8:50pm, when we were trying to get Zola in for the night, somewhere within earshot there was a most tremendous row going on.  Zola was fascinated, which made scooping her up and getting her in a bit easier.

We were promised a hot and sunny day today, but I think "day" was over-egging it a bit.  We have had a lovely afternoon, warm and rather sticky and are forecast storms over night.  Anyway a dry day meant both of us were out dealing with lawns that had enjoyed last week's rain, indeed enjoyed last week's rain a bit too much in my opinion! 

One thing that loves hot and wet weather is bamboo - people plant it as they think it will make a nice and quick growing screen.  Yes, it does, but it is also a highly invasive, non-native species that turns into a right thug.  The stems in the picture below are about 3 to 4cm in diameter, they can go up about 4 to 5 metres, they spread by sending suckers underground that then pop up as far as 3 metres away from the parent visible stem and grow at a frightening speed.  The low one in the centre of this photo is only 2 weeks old and already 1 metre high.

And so to the frog that I met after I had finished mowing and was inspecting my work.  When I observed him, he was still and quiet, but as soon as I moved away, he started hurling abuse at me.  It put me in mind of my favourite joke about the Wide Mouthed Frog, but as it needs appropriate visuals, I will leave it there.

Day 48 of lockdown - another Vieil Bauge Sunday

And hopefully that has you humming a hit by the Monkees!  Except this isn't status symbol land.

Today is supposed to be the last yukky day for a while - I hope so as it really does get monotonous and as we are nearly at the end of week 7 of lockdown, it is just that bit harder.  The NCIS rolling repeats are ones I've seen for the last 4 Sundays I think, radio palls after a while and however often I look at seedlings, they haven't done anything miraculous, but I have got wet looking at them. 

There was a bit of a queue at the boulangerie this morning, so I took the opportunity to photograph the church from an angle I often see but rarely notice, if you see what I mean.  it is an historic monument, but at times when I look at it, I do wonder if it isn't about to fall down.  When we first moved here, the bells sounded the half hour, and twice on the hour, two minutes apart, with wild peels at 6:30 am and 7:30pm, and marking the hour all through the night.  Someone has complained, and now they only go on the half hour and on the hour (and once only) between 6:30am and 11pm.  I find this sad - the original was more authentic, but I guess some townies moved in and decided it wasn't good for the children or something.

This afternoon I went for a walk on my own to get a bit of exercise - the ounces are building up and we have roast pork for dinner.  There is a circuit I do, I could add perhaps another 500 metres to it, but haven't yet.  It takes about 45 minutes and takes me out into the country, before coming back along the repurposed railway line towards Baugé, and cutting back down to the village via the Pont de Godot (where you can wait...).  There is some uncertainty as to whether the Voie Verte is an authorised route, but when I was on it today, I was on my own apart from many small brown birds.

Truth be told, we are feeling rather flat - and I am pretty sure that is weather related.  If the sun is shining, we can sit in the garden and ignore the paperwork that needs to be done, the cleaning that needs to be done and all the other household chores.  But with a rain shower every 20 minutes or so, you feel like you have to attack business accounts or, worse than that, the French tax return.  Poirot is good at reflecting our mood.

 

Day 47 of lockdown - another wet one

I know, it's good for the plants, not least the fruit trees.  And better it rains a lot now and then dries up for the second half of May so that the cherries don't split, but in lockdown, wet days are just that bit harder to cope with.  The house also cools down in the rain - we actually had a fire yesterday evening!  It wasn't that cold, but we needed something to ensure the cats were suitably comfortable (OK and us too).  Nibbles approved!

The boys in the country needed feeding today, so I left John making pots of rice pudding (with cardamom flavouring - yummy) for the week, while I went to see how they were doing.  I got the biggest, fattest tick I've seen in a while off Fergus while he stuffed his face on fish flavoured cat food.  Once they had all scoffed enough, they escorted me down the garden to pick more broad beans and check on the other good things growing down there, and then tried to see if all four could fit on me in some way at the same time.  I need to be like Vishu and have 8 arms I think, to satisfy all their cuddle requirements.  That will be the instant good news come 11th May - we can go and see the boys together and then come home via the One Acre Wood - that is going to be such a good day!

Anyway, once that was all done, I went to check on the wild flower meadow.  The view down across the valley from there shows that while not raining hard, the air was think with moisture, and it wasn't the best day to be out.

The orchid torture continues.  While the early orchids are nearly over, the lizard and bee orchids are starting to send up their flower spikes to take over.  I've been looking for the bee orchid flower stems for a while, and today I found some.  I reckon by the time lockdown is lifted, we will have our first flowers.

Once home from all that, and as John had finished his creations, I decided it was time to deal with the black bananas hanging over the kitchen work surface, so made banana bread.  It should be nearly ready by now, so I had better stop typing and get this loaded up.

 

Day 46 of lockdown - a strange bank holiday

Yes, it's May 1st - celebrating workers.  Normally in France on May 1st, it is difficult to avoid people selling sprigs of lily of the valley, and if you are in a big city, the unions, the Communists and the Front Nationale (or Rassemblement Nationale as they now like to be called) are all out demonstrating at the wonder of the common man and the evilness of all governments of whatever complexion.  But this year it is all different.  I was strangely moved to receive a sprig of lily of the valley from the boulangerie to thank me for my fidelity through the current crisis - of course I would be faithful to them, they are the cornerstone of my morning!

The unions decided that standing on your balcony banging a cooking pan was a good way to demonstrate this year (and sod any health workers who live nearby who might be trying to sleep, or indeed any babies and their frazzled parents).  The Communists were more into sending electronic bunches of lilies of the valley to sympathisers - I've received a few today!  Marine le Pen gave her usual press conference rant to the massed media this morning and for once I kind of smiled.  She was wearing a mask so you couldn't read her lips, and her voice was very muffled behind the high quality mask she was wearing so it was hard to understand what she was saying (a bonus on any day).  One reporter asked her why she was against all the government strategy, and if she had been in power, surely she would have closed things down as well?  As far as I could tell her response was yes, they closed things down, which she would have done too, but a) they did it a month too late and b) they aren't her.  The wonders of hindsight...

The Day of the Workers is the day that NOTHING at all happens in France, no papers, nothing.  So apart from odd farming noises as animals still need to be fed, it is extraordinarily quiet out there, more than a normal lockdown day.  And quite cold.  Clearly birds are starving as I put 4 fat balls out in the feeder this morning and by mid afternoon half the volume had gone.  I went out just now to release the chickens and there was perhaps half a fat ball left.  Those sparrows are greedy so and sos sometimes!

Finally, a photo from earlier in the week of my favourite irises that come up at the edge of the wildflower meadow.  I keep thinking I really must lift a corm or 3 once they have flowered to bring home - I'm sure they are getting too congested where they are!

Day 45 of lockdown - technology is starting to creak a bit

I'll keep it short today, after yesterday's rant.  Typepad (the bunch that power this blog) are usually jolly reliable, but occasionally something goes a bit skewiff out there in the ether, and today is one of those days.  I gather the blog hasn't been available for a chunk of the day, and it is taking ages to do anything.

However I said I would do a post a day during lockdown, so here goes.

I had planned a rant about face masks - I'll save that for tomorrow, when the system is hopefully a bit more robust.

Instead I will say that while not as thoroughly wet as yesterday, the weather has not been totally kind, with a solid hour of heavy rain, so that in the past 30 hours we have had about 24mm rain.  Once the sun gets on it, this should ensure the asparagus goes mad tomorrow - yum!

While yesterday was just very wet, today has had the added joy of strong and gusty wind.  I'm not a fan of strong winds at the best of times, but certainly not when the trees are in full leaf.  The seedlings are also stuck in the BBQ as it is too windy for them to be out, as they would get blown away.

Anyway, I have a curry and naans to make, so I will leave it here, with a photo of Sanity Clause the Cat giving his view on technology.

Day 43 of lockdown - no politics here

This afternoon at 3pm (French time) the lovely Prime Minister stood up to give a speech in the House of Deputies about the plan for getting out of lockdown.  I gather it went on for at least 1 hour and 6 minutes.  I've not listened to it and I'm not going to talk about it here (or at any rate not today).

The other thing I'm not going to write about today is face masks - I'd planned to have a nice cathartic rant about stupidity and face masks, as I thought the weather was going to be pants.  It wasn't so I won't.  Perhaps tomorrow or Thursday.

Instead, more of the usual - cats, plants, vegetables - you can zone out here if you like.  I won't know so I won't be offended.

This morning we discovered a rat burrow - actually not so difficult to discover, as there was a vast pile of freshly dug soil and rubble outside the chicken run - like a giant mole hill.  John has borrowed our next door neighbour's old but effective rat trap and placed it in the burrow entrance - of course if we catch any, we will have to deal with them as it is a live trap, but we really didn't want to use poison as it is too indiscriminate.  If a mouse eats some and is then caught and eaten by a cat, the cat gets very ill (how I lost one of mine I think).  The contents of the trap could be tomorrow's excitement!  Our neighbour is very excited anyway.

This afternoon was cat in the country feeding time.  Fergus was cross with me as he swatted Spooky who wanted a cuddle, so I told him off. He went and had a really high quality sulk at me at a distance.

Once I had dealt with three of the boys, I went to check out the wildflower meadow - all was looking very lovely, although the pesky bee orchids are still being very shy.  In a couple of weeks I expect I won't be able to move for the wretched things, but currently they are hiding.  I did meet this very fine furry caterpillar though - eating its way through what seemed to be clover, it was about an inch and a half long.  I wonder what it will be when it grows up?

Donald decided to help me take photos in the meadow, including my favourite irises (for tomorrow), and other bits and bobs.  I suspect this is not how to take selfies!

Finally, I picked a few broad beans - they are still very tiny, so ideal for pretentious chefs, but I'd got to that stage where I could wait no longer!

Day 39 of lockdown - cats and gardening

It is a widely accepted truth that cats love boxes - there are lovely films of panthers and cheetahs and tigers all unable to resist the lure of the delicate rectangular shape, with or without an obvious entrance.  Look what we managed to trap yesterday in a cardboard box!  Our own little panther.

This morning was cloudy and cool so I took advantage to go and see the boys in the country and also plant the first of the potatoes (yes, I know, we are late, but that's just the way it is).  Cats also like well raked soil, freshly turned soil and weed suppressant mat.  It took a while to remove the roots and stones from this newly cultivated piece of land.  A similar amount of time to remove all the cat poo that accumulated in the 3 days since it was rotavated, and mere seconds for cats to appear on the weed suppressing mat once it was on the ground.  There are 20 seed potatoes under that lot somewhere!

I think the broad beans may be not so far off a first picking!

Finally, I am always amazed at the resilience of well established plants, and this one is my particular favourite.  Perhaps 12 years ago we had a small bed here, where now there is just pavement.  We also had the wall repointed which is I think when the little bed started to disappear, before being totally covered when the new pavement was put in place.  Somehow this lovely campanula manages to survive and each spring produces this wonderful ball of mauve flowers which last a couple of weeks.  Some years it is the only splash of colour in April, this year we have early roses and geraniums that survived the winter in flower, but this is still pretty special in my book.

 

Day 38 of lockdown - further orchid torture

They are out to get me!  Those orchids keep doing this - massive, pregnant buds that don't open for days, they just get larger and larger.  Every time I look at them (so several times a day as they are by the loo) I imagine them shouting "feed me Seymour!" like in the Little Shop of Horrors.

I spend the morning Skyping with a client in Birmingham - she is not having an easy time of it, living in a nice maisonette, but without any real outside space.  She is juggling work and writing up her PhD thesis.  I really am quite lucky, not least as I spent the afternoon playing on TWO ride on mowers, making a property look very beautiful.  A slight frustration is that only the ducks will admire what I have done, but hopefully they like it!

Reasons for mowing when people won't see what you've done?  Well, left to itself, nature has some lovely flowers and insects and it has thugs with few natural predators.   Those thugs will take over, and while after 50 years you might have an interesting ecosystem, in the meantime you develop a thatch of bramble, thistle, nettle, rush, horsetail and old man's beard which strangle the orchids, lords and ladies, milkmaids, stitchwort and other charming flowers of spring.  

We sat out yesterday after work, enjoying the warmth, the bird song, and I would say the quiet, but there was all that bird song.  The first swifts are turning up, but not enough yet to start the big screaming aerobatic displays.  The swallows are frantically nest building.  The starlings are very proud of the chicks they are raising in our eaves and makes a lot of noise about it - I think someone plays a lot of old school computer games around here, as that is what our starling sounds like!  The cuckoo was also giving it some yesterday, while today where I was mowing, two were shouting at each other across the valley.  The starling likes to perch on the apex of the roof to "sing" to the world - I think he has ambitions to be the god on top of a Thai palace!

 

Day 37 of lockdown - is it getting to me?

The mystery of the plants was solved once John got home - it was his payment for helping someone to fix their ride on lawnmower.  Excellent!  This afternoon I planted 9 of the tomato plants and six of the lettuces where the boy cats live.  They may or may not survive - we know that deer can't get into that bit of the land, but I've seen some monstrously huge snails there, and they will need regular watering if the dry weather continues.  Fergus worried that I was overdoing it this afternoon, so pinned me down for a while.

It was very good of him to notice that I needed a bit of TLC.  I don't know what it was that caused it, but I woke this morning with a thumper of a headache, and none of the usual things would shift it - not tea, not rinsing my hair under the shower, not even ibuprofen worked its usual magic.  So I missed out on going to the market this morning - I just could not face it.  I'm OK now but it took a while.  But then, it is day 37 of lockdown...

In other news, we had a visitor to the garden yesterday - we all kept a couple of metres apart, but for those living on their own, and who don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time, and who aren't much into reading, it's getting tough.  So we sat outside at a good distance apart and caught up after not having seen each other for about 40 days.  It certainly seemed to perk her up and it was nice to have a change of conversation too, and all in French!!

The first of the "red" irises is out - this one is at the front of the house in the courtyard and tends to get munched by snails so it is good to have a relatively perfect flower.  The ones in the back garden aren't flowering yet, and are generally a bit more lush.

The wind from the east has dropped again, and the rain has stopped, so Nibbles has returned to her fine weather perch, ensuring that nothing and no one could get in the bath window if it was open.  I'm sure we all feel safer for that.

 

 

Day 35 of lockdown - apologies for the delay!

So this is about an hour and a half later than my usual blogging time and for that I am sorry.  I got a piece of work away to a client so decided to celebrate by doing a bit of yoga.  I would like to say I feel a lot better for it, I am acutely aware of my calves, but the real test will be my ability to sleep without really weird dreams tonight.

I think I have mentioned that we were adopted by a bantam just before Christmas.  She is very pretty but quite unapproachable, so doesn't live with the four normal sized chickens.  Once we got to February, she started to lay eggs, little white ones.  The first clutch we found were in the shed, hidden behind an old jerrycan.  She laid one egg in the chicken coop when the others were out and about trashing the garden.  John set her up with a wheelbarrow and a grass collector from a dead lawnmower filled with straw which she used a couple of times.  What she doesn't like, is that when we find her stashes, we take the eggs.  She doesn't do sharing.

Since mid-March we haven't seen any of her eggs - we thought she might be laying them in a neighbouring garden.  It's a bit rough on us as we feed her and provide water, and as there aren't any bantam cockerels around, the eggs shouldn't do anything.  About 10 days ago, we stopped seeing her, other than an occasional and very loud visit once day - she had clearly got enough eggs to brood.  And she's not a nice broody either - if spotted by us or one of the other chickens she has an awful lot to say.  I don't speak chicken but I don't think any of it is polite.

Yesterday I was pottering in the shed when I spotted a bit of a mess.  On closer inspection, it was dried egg yolk and nearby there were egg shells and a couple of whole eggs.  There were also tins of wood stain and wood polish scattered around, which should be on the top shelf....

I looked up and around at some of the shelves, and finally I spotted her.  But I tried not to make eye contact, so that we know where she is for a while.  There is very little you can do about a broody chicken or bantam.

The other chickens are doing fine - here is a photo of two of them clearing weeds out of a raised bed.