Rural Life

Day 16 of lockdown - time for me

So, the report has gone and no reaction from the client - I took that as a sign that today was me time!  Actually that started yesterday with a profligate glass of sherry (it will be months until I can get my hands on another bottle) and trying out a new recipe - banana bread.  Excellent recipe and it turned out well - sorry, no photos, so you'll just have to imagine it!

This morning was market day at la Flèche, and as word had got out that it was going ahead, there were more stalls and more punters.  Don't believe the French don't know how to queue - if it is something they want (fresh vegetables, fish, cheese etc), they will queue and they will behave.  Well outside Paris anyway!  See!

This afternoon I was able to take time to look closely at cherry blossom and admire the bee going about her business.  It was wonderful to watch, but she didn't have many colleagues.  The tree should have been alive with bees, not like a social distancing market!

I'm not convinced how well the garlic is going to do this year - it keeps getting squished by a silly cat!

After that, I thought I would try the first of my yoga teacher's videos.  I do yoga for seniors, but after a gentle start, she moved on to stuff I'd not done before plus I had cat help.  As I now ache rather a lot, I'm calling it a day!

 

Day 14 of lockdown - an evil wind

Last week lockdown was not too bad in many ways, as being in the garden was nice, the sun was out, birds singing and the air was warm.  If you had the potential to be outdoors safely and legally, it really wasn't so bad.  Saturday was positively balmy and we knew summer was on its way.

All that changed on Sunday as the wind turned to its most cruel direction - north east.  Nothing good comes of that wind, particularly when it is strong and gusty.  The outdoor thermometer got bashed around and broke.  Being outdoors was painful and unpleasant, even if it looked beautifully sunny.  The wind dries out pots and planters, which then have to be watered, but you have to choose the right time or things freeze.

The medieval builders who put up our house knew all this, so we have few windows and thick walls to keep out the cold and the wind.  However the backdoor, which the cats use to move around their realm, faces that direction and when they are out, the wind comes in.  Soon the girls will be trapped inside and we can light the log fire and warm up a bit.

Of course the north east wind is not good for cats either.  For a good scientific reason (that I can never really get my head around) cold weather encourages static cling.  If you are a cat, covered in fur, this is annoying, not a good look and when you are being stroked by your servants, you are likely to emit sparks.  Fergus is modelling the pre and post- stroking look, and got rather worse after I was told to stop taking photos and pay attention by Spooky (the small black person with bad attitude).  One of the other cats, after producing two loud cracks of static, avoided me completely.

 

Day 13 of lockdown - clocks sprung forward, weather fallen back

For once the dreaded hour change and less sleep didn't actually make any difference.  We put the clocks forward but didn't set an alarm, and left it to the cats to tell us when they wanted breakfast.  Fortunately that was at about 9am, which convinces me they can't tell the time (we have wondered in the past), as normally they want breakfast at 8am.

Yesterday the weather was lovely - sunny, balmy, a very light breeze, but what a difference a day makes!  Today we still have sunny moments, but there is a cruel, cold wind from the North East, which makes shutters bang and rips the covers off tender plants.  While we went out for our permitted exercise this afternoon, it was too cold to stop and photograph anything.

Instead I will reflect on photos I took yesterday while sitting in the sun and enjoying the slow time.  Looking at cowslips for instance, where we have some mutants.  While most are yellow, we have a number of orange ones and one or two striking red ones.  I assume they have cross bred with the coloured primulas dotted around, but it is a very pretty effect.

Also from yesterday, I am always astounded and amused by the inability of cats to resist boxes.  Mr Clause is no exception to this rule and has taken over possession of this particular and rather large box.  I hope the wind hasn't taken the waterproof cover off and away into the surrounding fields!

Finally I sat and watched a blue tit attacking fat balls in the evening sun.  The photos are a bit grainy as I've had to tinker with them to remove all the extra sky and stuff, but it was lovely to have the time to sit and wait for him to get up the courage to stuff his beak while I sat and watched, with a cat at my side.

Day 11 of lockdown - nature notes

I am lucky in that occasionally I am allowed to go out to work for my husband, doing bits of gardening at people's maisons secondaires.  Now is the start of the rapid growing season for grass, and if we don't stay on top of it now, we will damage our mowers and kill ourselves dealing with 3 foot high hay when lockdown is over.  So we go out, armed with our attestations, including where possible attestations from the property owner as well, and work where people are not around.  Or if we were to be faced with someone on the property, we would be on the phone to the Boys in Blue asking for help with trespassers.

Yesterday I was at a site where there is a lovely wildflower meadow, and I was checking how it was doing, and if it had gone to far for its early season cut.  In about another 2 weeks, the orchid rosettes will be too advanced, but if we leave it too long, the brambles and other undesirable scrub will take over.  That meadow has a badger's set right in the middle.  You can see their footprints in the fresh soil (and evidence of the deer and birds that pass through too), as they clear out any rubbish and head off for their "bathroom" zone.

Today I was back mowing at the house with a lake.  I'd been keeping an eye out for frogspawn but hadn't spotted it this year so far, so I was astounded to notice lots of recently hatched tadpoles in the water - there is a great mass of them to the left of the submerged rock, a sort of dark mass, but you can see others too.  

The final nature note was that as I was mowing around a birch tree, I noticed a lot of wood chip.  The woodpeckers are back and making a mess again!

Day 7 of Lockdown - a bit tasteless?

And No!  That is not a reference to losing my sense of taste, which is thought to be a good symptom of going down with the dreaded lurgy!

After posting the Day 6 blog, we had a second go at doing FaceTime aperos with the Chinon Two, and it worked very well again.  This afternoon I had an inspiring virtual meeting by Skype with two work colleagues - there are some brilliant tools out there for connecting without endangering yourself or others.

There is however no good substitute really for going up to the village bakery in the morning for croissants and baguette, and it provides a bit of exercise as I have to go uphill.  Today the route was empty, although I met a couple of others up at the bakers, all keeping a good 2 metres apart.  What a difference a day makes, as this morning there was sunshine, so although eerily quiet, it was very beautiful.

While I slaved over a churning computer, John did sterling work in the garden, repotting things, finding new pots for things, sorting out sacks of compost and horse muck, enjoying the sunshine and tiring out the cats.  He found lots of lovely things for chickens - perhaps these will make the little blighters more inclined to lay eggs?  They are the stuff of nightmares of course, these giant grubs.  Who else remembers the classic Dr Who adventure The Green Death, which included a sickness (which turned you green) spread by 4 foot long giant maggots?

He also got round to potting up the strawberry plants we bought, when we were panic-buying cat food at Lidl 10 days ago.  We put them in hanging baskets to keep them away from slugs, snails, mice and chickens - in this way we might get a few during the season.  What variety are they I hear you ask?  No kidding - Korona!

Day 6 of Lockdown - a very quiet Sunday (with a cat picture)

Once I had done this blog yesterday, I was overcome by a fit of domestic goddessness (and needing a good excuse to have The Cat Empire DVD on loud), so I made cake.  It is basically a Quatre-quarts using brown sugar, and with some of the flour replaced by ginger and cinnamon - it's very nice with cream and jam!

Today has been even quieter than normal, as people respect the lockdown and also the noise curfew that is always in place here on a Sunday.  Perhaps the highlight of my day so far was when I pottered down the garden to let the chickens out for their daily vandalism spree.

Zola decided to show me what a voracious hunter she is, by leaping into and climbing up the pear tree to catch a collar dove that was sitting in it and taunting her.  Zola is not aerodynamic or subtle, so before she was even half way up the tree, the dove had flown off to the next perch.  Leaving Zola in the tree...  I carried on my garden inspection, released chickens, talked to them (well berated them for poor egg production actually) and turned back to the pear tree.  Someone was stuck.  Someone was very stuck.  Someone was crying and asking for help.  So, once I had taken a few photos, I grabbed a branch she could walk down, then she walked down me, and ran away to find another tree to climb.  Later on she brought John a lizard's tail to say thank you (but I'm not sure for what).

We are lucky to have a garden and cats and chickens to entertain us.  We also have a vast reserve of DVDs we haven't watched in ages.  Yesterday was The Cat Empire, perhaps today will be The Who or Gerald de Palmas - not decided yet.

 

Day 5 of Lockdown - not so easy!

Once I'd written and published this blog yesterday, it was beer o'clock, but as we are in lockdown, it had to be done differently.  We booked FaceTime with my Mum and Brother, found some crunchy nibbles and then went to pour a couple of drinks.  Well John's beer wasn't a problem (for the moment), but my gin and tonic was - it was the last of the gin... Of... Any …. Sort!  Panic!!

Well the FaceTime aperos experiment worked very well by the way, and will be repeated later this weekend and a few times next week and probably for the foreseeable future, with different chums - let me know if you want to play!!

John had the responsibility of doing the shopping this morning as he also had a doctor's appointment.  He picked up the care package of Earl Grey tea that had been left for us, checked out the market and came back with lots of yoghurt and rice pudding as that particular supplier is going to self-isolate from today (eek), fish, apples, salad, ham and most importantly - Gin!

Not the strongest perhaps, but one of the best named, and with a smashing label!

The weather today isn't particularly nice - dull and cold (where did the sun go?), so I have carried on with working from home and the report that I am doing for the Broads Authority, while listening to my new CD by Claudio Capéo - if you are feeling bored, look up his brilliant songs Un Homme Debout and Dis-le Moi.  I defy you not to want to pogo around the room towards the end of the second one!!

The lack of sun has affected the cats of course.  Zola is in and out and can't settle to anything as she needs to keep warm (despite having a thick fluffy coat).  Poirot is trying to recover from me spending the morning with Patrick Bruel (on Facebook) and singing along loudly and tunelessly.  Nibbles is trying to sleep through it all.

Spotting pine processionary nests

In a previous blog (see here), I wrote about the dangers of pine processionary caterpillars.  Late winter and early spring is an ideal time to spot nests.  The one in the photograph below is about 40 foot up in an old Scots pine in the One Acre Wood, and now we have spotted it, we have time to paint the trunk of the tree with gloop in order to stop the blasted things reaching the forest floor, setting up camp and then pupating and flying away.

That is really all you can do with the nests that are very high up.  If you have low level nests, you can very carefully cut them off the tree, put them in a metal bucket, pour in some petrol and very very carefully set them alight.  It has to be a very hot fire in order to destroy the spines, which are the things that are so dangerous to animals and humans.

In case you feel inclined to let nature take its course, know that the spines are exceptionally irritating.  On humans they cause a rash that itches worse than anything else I have experienced and that itching will last for over a week.  On dogs and cats, the effects are even worse, causing blindness, necessitating tongues to be amputated, and can kill.  Tree owners are legally obliged to deal with nests if they are in gardens.

Nature can be a bit yukky at times!

Bee action

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the One Acre Wood helping to sort out firewood.  At the far end of the main clearing, by the King of the Forest oak tree, I heard a certain amount of buzzing.  We are used to flies if something has been indiscrete in the wood, and of course mosquitoes in the summer if the clay pits have water in them, but it wasn't that sort of buzzing.

I looked around and followed the noise and found a small number of bees working over the catkins on a hazel stem.  I'm not sure there is much by way of nectar, but I could see they had loads of pollen collected on their legs.  It was the first time I have observed this, so was very taken with it.  The bee keeping forum I participate in have also mentioned it over the last couple of weeks.

Of course the bees don't go to the female flowers, so it won't have helped any hazelnuts to set, but wonderful to see that at least some bees are making it through this mild and wet winter.  You can just about see the pollen sacs on the bee in the picture below.

 

Another new critter in the zone - cynips!

Today's Courrier de l'Ouest had as its main story dire warnings about a new critter, not native to Europe that is decimating sweet chestnut plantations in France.  Big news guys - the wee varmint has been here for a year or two, and specifically in the One Acre Wood.

Last spring we spotted galls on some of the low branches of some of the young sweet chestnut stems, and wondered what it was about.  Now we know - Cynips de Chataignier - or Dryocosmus Kuriphilus - or Chestnut Gall Wasp.

Self-fertile (nasty) wasps lay eggs in next year's leaf buds in the summer.  The following spring, the eggs hatch in the bud and create a gall in which they live and feed and grow.  They hatch out in late spring/early summer and fly around laying more eggs.  The effect on sweet chestnut trees is to reduce fruiting drastically - by up to 70% some claim - as well as sapping the strength of the branch their gall is on, and in the long term, reducing the strength of the tree.

It is a notifiable pest, so that is today's job, finding and reporting it to the relevant authority and waiting to hear what happens next. 

If you spot galls on sweet chestnut trees, check them against this website/document and then contact your local authority with responsibility for control of foreign pests.