Rural Life

Could it get worse?

Well that was a mostly cool and damp week, but there were some compensations.  A novelty for the village is finally an alternative to the boulangerie that closed back in 2020 - a depot de pain, or bread drop-off, based around the village bar.  They have baguettes and bread, and if you want croissants or similar, you can order the day before.  First we tried the baguette on Monday and found it to be good.  Then we ordered croissants for Thursday morning, and were able to have a coffee and eat our croissants on the terrace in the sun, before it started to rain again.  This has added a whole new dynamic to our week we feel.

We have also had storms this week, including a humdinger on Wednesday, or rather two humdingers.  The first hit while I was in the Comité des Fêtes barn with a couple of chums working on the float for the Comice in August.  There were only three of us, not least as two were working hard on steaming off the last vestiges of last year's decorations from the corner posts, and you can't work with crèpe paper when there is steam in the air. 

I took the opportunity to design most of the missing panels.  Anyway, we were kind of stuck in the barn, as a storm started up at about 3:20pm and didn't leave us alone until about 4:45pm, at which point we scattered off to our different homes, ready for the next one.  That was a long and loud one too, and caused a lot of damage to crops and the roads not so very far away.

We had more rain on Thursday, Friday and early Saturday morning, but now it seems to have stopped for a day or two, to allow us to recover and take stock.  I did some of that yesterday - the shallots had basically collapsed, and I feared the worst - white rot.  Fortunately that doesn't seem to have been the case, just lack of sun and a decision on their part to give up on a bad job and try again next year (except I lift them and plant new stock each year).  I am hoping there are enough for two pots of pickled shallots for Christmas!

This week I was able to vote in a general election.  Not here in France sadly, as I am not a citizen - something I must try to sort out over the winter.  Instead I was able to take advantage of the change to the UK law that used to limit those living abroad to only having a vote for the first 15 years of absence.  Apparently after that we had no links to the UK - well apart from family, pensions, language, friends, potentially investments etc.  It was the one thing the last government changed that was a step in the right direction, so I have voted in the town where I was last registered to vote.  And it was good. 

There are elections due too here in France and the thing they have in common with the UK ones, is all the pundits asking "Why now?".  Of course if an election hadn't been called, they would have spent the summer saying "Why not now?".  In both instances, the rise of the Far (or Nasty) Right is a talking point at the very least.  The French elections seem to be based more on who can get through a day without making a total farce of their campaign.  The UK elections seem to be about whether the Conservatives get more seats than the Lib Dems, or if they can even beat the spoiled ballot papers in some areas.  How utterly depressing!  Much better to focus on nice things, like flowers.

In both elections, nature, the state of the planet and the environment seem to be at the bottom of the agenda.  Perhaps because the TV pundits are all urban types who are more concerned with where to find the best coffee, rather than whether it will be possible to grow coffee in future. 

We have left a few leeks to flower, more by accident that design, but they are very popular with the local insects, so clearly a good thing!

There is an even better photo with a bee in flight, which I am trying to load - one more try!

All of this blether means that intended subjects such as animal satisfaction and more details on the coypu will have to be tales for another day.  However I have loaded up new footage of a deer for you, having a go at a tree:

And another bit of film to show that the boar are still around:

And another with ducks, because ducks are happy fowl:

And there is so much more wildlife entertainment to come in the next few weeks! 

Have a good week!

 

Junevember - it's a thing apparently!

It's raining today, and cold.  It rained yesterday too, and during the week, and it hasn't been at all warm.  It is a totally new month apparently - Junevember - and it's got to be real as someone did a cartoon about it, which I have shamelessly nicked!

The weather has meant that gardening is limited to dashing out when at all possible to attack things that are growing too well and shouldn't be allowed to continue (grass, weeds, the grape vine), sighing over the things that should be pushing away with rare vigour currently and aren't (sweet peppers, courgettes, butternut squashes, chillies) and taking solace in flowers that are happy and having a longer season than we would expect (wild orchids are a good example).  Today I spotted a new one at the Orchard, hiding in plain sight among a bunch of pink clover that has now gone over.

One couple we know were delighted to see me as they had two gluts, white asparagus and alstromeria - I couldn't leave without an armful of each.  So very kind and the flowers, assuming a cat doesn't eat them or smash the vase, will last for ages!

The lack of heat, and more importantly the lack of sunshine, have an effect on the morale, but yesterday I rescued a trail camera that I had left in place for a couple of months as a way of doing something productive with the day.  My initial assessment, without wearing glasses, was that I had messed up and that there was going to be nothing on the memory card, so it was a pleasant surprise to find 599 files, when I looked at the card via the computer and wearing glasses.  Just a random sample of files showed that while I had yet again managed to turn off the video recordings, that wasn't until after about 6 weeks in situ, and there was a lot of activity including film of the blasted coypu.

Today I have been through all the files having a first look through - there is some juicy stuff in there for future blogs.  There is also a hunt chasing a deer and a boar two months after the season for "big game" closed - and from the noises off, I think they caught up with the boar.  As we have had other footage of a boar with a damaged leg, it would appear they didn't kill it, and the corpse by the main road is probably it - or was as it is now just a smelly black patch.  The audio didn't include a gun shot, but if it was a fox hunt, they wouldn't have had the right ammunition to deal with a boar with them.  It's all very complicated.  Anyway, I think this is who they were really after!

The little crossroads that the camera was by is very tight - the path across is mainly for ducks and coypu and the water rail to go from one pond to another, while the path up to the tree is fine for me, but peters out a little way further on, at least for me, because boar, deer and badgers use it.

The tree is popular with birds - there is more than one picture of a woodpecker on it, although this is my favourite.

It is a favourite with the boar, but that needs film and I haven't got the will to battle uploads to YouTube today.  The deer like it, not just the doe but also a rather nice stag.

Best of all, it is a fun place for the pine marten to climb up!  How I love these fellows!

I need to spend more time with the files - there is a whole article about boar to be written, and another about coypu, with lots of photos and video to accompany them.  So I will leave you this week with a slightly unhelpful photo of one of the common visitors to the crossroads - the Lady Mallard.

Have a good week!

 

Still not a hint of summer!

Meteorological summer starts on the 1st June - next Saturday in fact - but you wouldn't really know it yet.  The key summer crops of maize and sunflowers are either very short or not even sown yet, we still have sweatshirts ready to wear morning and evening, shorts rarely make an appearance and there is no cover on the gazebo yet.  With the long evenings, I am doing my walk to the top of the hill after closing up the chicken run, and on Tuesday, this was the inspiring sight that I was greeted with - standing water and maize just about 3 inches tall.  It's not right!

I did get the cover off the area of soil where I wanted to sow carrots, parsnips and salsify.  It had been providing shelter to a number of baby slowworms, one of which is pictured below, while keeping the worst of the weeds at bay.  I think the slowworms and toads are one of the reasons that we don't get too much slug and snail damage on that particular area, and they are supported by thrushes and other birds of that broad family.  The soil was very wet, very heavy and claggy, but somehow I got the seeds sown - how successful they will be, I am not sure.

While we are not hosting the Comice in Vieil Baugé this year, we have a relatively prestigious place in the parade of decorated floats, so we have to take it seriously.  Flowers have been made (possibly not enough green ones) and now we are starting to stick them onto the cardboard frames that get attached to the float.  That is something we can do in the rain as we have a nice dry barn to do it in, and it makes for a nice, convivial afternoon.  One thing I need to remember for the next session, is to sit down for part of the time - standing and leaning at a bad angle did nothing for either my feet or my back!

Today we went out for Sunday lunch, to Chinon.  Now this was a daring move as today is Mother's Day in France so there was a danger of too many people and not enough restaurant tables, but we know people, therefore it was not an issue for us at all.  We started out by visiting the amazing British craft brewer in Chinon, Simon at Brassefort.  He is a charming character, and has worked as a stone mason, as well as now being a brewer, so has lots of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, and the beer is jolly good too!  Lunch was taken at the Lion d'Or on the Place Jeanne d'Arc, where the food is always good (they also do an excellent café gourmand - a small coffee with half a dozen mini desserts), the wine in pichers is of a high standard and everyone is very friendly.

Now I must go to the kitchen and wrestle with the mangos we were given by our neighbour - someone had given him a case, and while he had eaten most of them, he was now fed up with mango, so would we like them?  Yes please!  Except they aren't the easiest to peel and eat - my godmother used to sit in the bath to eat them and then wash herself down afterwards.

Have a good week!

 

There's lots around if you know where to look!

We might have had a log fire going last night, resorted to a local discount warehouse yesterday afternoon due to the rain, and be working on our tax returns today, again because of the weather, but actually nature is out there doing what she does and getting on with Spring.  Beating the bounds today before giving up due to the rain (have I mentioned it is a wet weekend?), we spotted a new orchid plant and location.  Because they have tuber-like roots, for many orchids, once you have seen them flower in a location, you know to look in the same place the following year, particularly if that location isn't subject to local authority or local authority contractor "maintenance".  So spotting this new flower on the opposite side of the meadow to its usual haunts was really pleasing.  I imagine the seed was moved around by badger paw.

Thursday was a rare fine day, although not particularly warm.  I was able to take advantage and plant more of the well chitted seed potatoes, so now there is just a final row of 8 or 9 to go in during the week.  Each time I passed a particular tree where we had put up a nest box, I was aware of a lot of chattering noise, so I decided to pause, lean on my metaphorical spade and watch.  Sure enough, after a couple of minutes a Great Tit went to the nest box opening to be greeted by a lot of squeaking and then silence as goodies were shared out.  Once one parent had gone, there was a short pause, then the other parent turned up and the noises repeated themselves.  Today when I walked past the box, all was silent.  I hope the babies were tucked up warm and safe.

On Thursday, the Meadow was humming with insects: it was so loud, it was hard to distinguish the different birds that were also singing.  I'm sure it made finding food easier for the fraught parents from the birdbox!  At the entrance to the Meadow, I met a slow worm, basking in the sun and trying to warm itself up a bit.  We have quite a lot in the area, but it was nice to see one, although I then had to make sure my accompanying cats ignored it.

It must be nearly a year since I invested in a pond dipping kit, and early in the week, while the ground was still too wet to work, I decided to have a play.  You don't get instructions with a pond dipping kit - I guess they think it is obvious, or if you are getting a kit, you know what you are doing.  My first attempt was therefore marginally successful and with lots of learning points - take a chair and a kneeler and some spare white paper, and only source water from one pond at a time being top of the list.  I needed more time and more stable surfaces and a chair to let sediment settle properly, to focus properly and to have a chance of seeing whether the elongated fast thing had a hook on its tail or not.  A better field guide might be useful too.  I was cheered to see that there are a lot of water fleas around, as they are at the bottom of the food chain and if they are there, then other things can be too.  I don't have a clue as to what the elongated fast thing was, other than fast and about a centimetre long.

There is a parasitic plant that can be confused with a bird's nest orchid, but isn't one of those.  It grows off tree and shrub roots but at quite a distance and has no leaves.  We found a lot of them on the eastern side of the Meadow this weekend, just starting to come up, and about 2 to 3 metres away from the row of fruit trees.  I've not seen them there before, so am not sure if it is a weather related thing or a problem for the trees.  Anyway, here is a photo.

While not totally unusual, the past few Mays have been warm and sunny, so this year's wet and cold version is not going down well with humans or cats.  So far this month we have had over an inch of rain and a bit of thunder and hail, and more rain is forecast for the next couple of days before a 5 day window of warm and nice - or that is what we are promised.  I hope "they" are right, as while the rain is keeping the water level in the ponds at a useful level for wildlife, everything else is getting a bit miserable.

Have a good week!

 

This late April is weird

Each of the last 7 months in France have been the warmest ever recorded for that month.  It is highly likely that April will continue that dismal record, and yet it doesn't feel like it.  While the first half of April was warm, extremely warm at times, it continued the wet theme from March, but then it went cold.  There have been frosts, although we've not noticed much (up too late to catch the signs I guess), but very limited rain and temperatures rarely over 12 or 13ºC have halted or limited growth for some things, while others have carried on regardless.  In 3 day's time it will be May, yet the canopy at the One Acre Wood is quite sparse - chestnut is always a bit slow and one of the oaks in the picture is dead, but it doesn't feel right.

The lower growth is coming on nicely and we have a crazy oak lawn situation in places, so there is a nice green haze at ground level however.

We are into orchid season, and while it is too early for the lizard orchids, the lady orchid is looking better this year that it has for quite a few seasons.  There are also magnificent early purple orchids if you know where to look (mostly road side verges unless they have been mown).  One garden we know also has what are variously called spider orchids or fly orchids - not as pretty as bee orchids but similar to look at.  These seem to be out earlier than usual this year.

Over the next thee weeks I will no doubt drive myself mad trying to get the best possible photo of a bee orchid!

John likes the unexpected, so he was quite happy when I looked out of the bathroom window on Thursday morning and went downstairs to tell him that there was a ****ing great duck wandering around outside.  Too large and too stupid to be allowed on the public highway on its own, Quackers the Doose (too large for a duck, too small for a goose) was herded into next door's garden and a suitable notice put on the community Facebook page for the owner to come and remove their livestock.  Someone clearly took notice as by Friday morning, Quackers was gone, leaving just a few photos and an intriguing memory behind.

In unrelated poultry news, the Economic Migrant shuffled off her mortal coil this week - we think she was about 4 years old and hadn't laid an egg in about 12 months.  I feel guilty we don't have a photo of her!

So I have been through the videos from the trail camera that came in last weekend prior to being re-sited.  I messed up in that when checking things were working in mid-March, I managed to turn off the video function, so there weren't as many files as I would have expected, and about half of them were of me walking past in one direction or another.  There were a small number where something had clearly run past quickly so that while there was a photo, there was no accompanying interesting video to enjoy.  Then there is a rather dull video of a badger walking away - once you have seen one badger's bottom wiggling as it wanders off, you have seen all you need!  The main antics of interest were the deer, so here are two daytime videos of a couple of does and a nightime video of a stag being a bit boy-like.

 

 

 

During the coming week I hope to do a pond dip in the upper pond to see what might be living in there, so next week there are bound to be fuzzy photos of disgusting small water things.  I will also have finished and analysed the April bird recordings, and hopefully I will have planted more potatoes!

Have a good week!

 

A day out and lots of garden work

We've had a busy and a social week, meeting up with people over to see their second homes, as well as getting a bunch of stuff done ourselves.  We declared Tuesday a Holiday, and once we had done the very important job of choosing a new mattress and ordering its delivery (we've had the current one for 25 years, a change is allowed!), we set out on a jaunt of frivolity.

Our first job was to find somewhere for lunch, and clearly in the tourist areas, Tuesday lunch is not a popular meal.  It took us a while to find the Quatre Saisons opposite Langlois Chateau in St Hilaire/St Florent on the south bank of la Loire.  It was worth the search.  While the menu on the board looked delicious and may have had too many choices to make life easy, the menu du jour was cheaper and excellent.  Pan fried sander fillet with salad, chicken supreme with rice and beans and a nice wine jus and the most amazing vanilla pudding that I still fantasise about.  All served in a nice room overlooking the Thouet and served by the chap doing the cooking.  We were very pleased.

After a brief retail therapy stop at Decathlon, we drove on to Turquant.  This really is a tourist village, but again the out of season Tuesday effect meant that people were few and far between, although I can imagine it is the seventh circle of hell on a sunny Sunday in July or August.  It is an arts and crafts centre, and while the gallery was nice enough, the shop set of caves were a better display of the talents around.  Even so, the delicacy and chichi-ness of it all were not really to our taste, so while we could appreciate the talent, we were not tempted to put paws in pockets.  Not least as there were no ants for sale - they are big on ants in Turquant!

From there, our final stop was with a friend and wine producer in Restigné to buy red and rosé wines and hear about the challenges of selling a nice little vineyard as a going concern.

Now we are trying to catch up on all the gardening work we need to do but the weather has not been helping us with.  On Friday I topped out the broad beans, as there were enough small beans set to make me feel the time was right.  I guess there are something over 100 plants and only one had blackfly on already, so I feel my timing was impeccable.  I had some assistance with this slightly back breaking task, as Monsieur Clause supervised while squashing a number of sprouting onion sets.

Getting the potatoes in is slow work.  Through all of March and the first week of April the ground was too wet to work.  Then John got the cultivator out and cleared some space, but also pulled muscles nearly everywhere, so had to rest up for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday he felt up to giving it another go and I was able to plant another 18 chitted potatoes.  We now have half the available spuds planted, although I think we might not get them all in this year.

After some 6 weeks in place looking along a much frequented path, I brought in one of the trail cameras to see who is around.  After some quick copying and editing of the SD card, it is now back out again, in a different location, with the aim of admiring boar having mud baths.  Anyway, a trundle through the files reveals that we have just as many boar and deer in the zone as ever.  That the badgers are still knocking around, as is the fox and a hare and a probably pine martin.  It also revealed that images and videos of us walking away from the camera are beyond unflattering, and that goes for the boar and the deer too!  I have deleted all evidence for us, but the animals don't have those editorial controls.  Here are some of our neighbours.

The new cameras are less intrusive but still need to be checked out closely!

Have a good week!

 

Nature presses on regardless

The headline floods of last weekend are subsiding slowly, despite the continued rain through the week, but it hasn't been as intense or as much - just 18.5mm through the week. The rivers and streams are getting back to normal while the ponds remain well charged.  One evening I went to look at the sunset view, and heard the water oozing and sinking in a field nearby, which was rather unpleasant, but notable.

Nature is doing her thing now, and with every day, the veil of green and white spreads through the hedgerows and woods as new leaves are unfurled and cherry, plum, crab apple and quince blossom all open.  Some orchards are also full of blossom, but most commercial apple varieties will be a bit later.  it is the quince blossom I love the most - it is simple, but the flowers are large and generally tinged with pink.

At a distance, the wild cherry blossom is magnificent, but close to, the flowers are small and meagre, nothing to compare with the cultivated varieties, which have more and bigger flowers.  But when you get a run of wild cherry down a hedge line, it is magnificent.

Irrespective of how we might feel about working in this weather, the kitchen garden plots need to be sorted out and planted up or any crops will be too small or too late to be of much use.  I pulled up the matting that has been suppressing weeds  on this year's potato bed, so that John could get the rotavator on to it, and met a small helper.  They are very good at keeping slugs under control among other pests, so I am always pleased to see slow worms, and particularly baby ones.  This one can't have been more than five inches long or so.

Less welcome visitors are the Asian Hornets, and for a number of years, I have been part of a local observatory group, that catches and records the numbers of Asian hornet queens captured in Baugé en Anjou, with the aim of reducing the damage they do to local and native insect life.  It isn't only their predilection for eating the heads of honeybees like candy, they have also been found to reduce all insect life by 40% around their nests.  In addition, they have a really nasty sting.  Yesterday's warm weather had them out and looking for food, and my trap caught 3 of the brutes, and I am very happy about that.

Finally I managed to get the onion sets planted, while the shallots that went in a couple of weeks ago are now starting to show.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the wet weather though.  Back in Worcester, we couldn't really grow any alliums as onion white rot is endemic through the Vale of Evesham and into Worcester, and there is no real cure other than not growing any of the onion family for at least 5 years.  I get very twitchy and hope that we can stay free of it!

During the week I moved the trail camera that had been in the One Acre Wood back to the Orchard, and put it where I got film of the water rail.  The new and unsophisticated cameras don't use much battery power, so in theory I can now leave that one in place for the whole of the summer and will only run into problems if the memory card gets full.  During the time it was in the Wood, the camera got 54 files, and when I reviewed them, they were all of John and/or I moving about the wood, nothing else.  Given it was by a clearly used wildlife track, it was disappointing, as in 24 hours it captured 26 files of wildlife at the bottom of the Orchard. 

But that is the wonder of our land in the country - the mix of habitats means it provides a marvellous corridor for things to move along, as well as the food sources and shelter for a huge range of birds and animals.  My Merlin bird song app tells me that there is a skylark or two in the zone, and a nightingale has just arrived too.  Very few of the bird species convincingly identified are considered particularly endangered (mostly in the Least Concern category), but it is the wealth of species and the density of the birdsong that tells me it is a rich area in the best sense of that term.

So I finish with a photo of some tulips that I bought cheap at a discount supermarket, planted late as I had other concerns, and that have rewarded me with a magnificent show of flowers that I hope will be repeated in future years.

Have a good week!

 

Using the new trail cameras

Last week I brought home the trail camera that had been on the ridge separating two pond areas.  Lazily, I hadn't deleted the 600 odd files from the camera being placed in the cats' kitchen to see who might be stealing their food (a couple of visitors, but mainly they are greedy gut buckets), or the 300 or so files from 24 hours in the chicken run, checking for rodents (no rodents, but sparrows and a big, fat, cat that isn't one of ours).  But lucky me, there were a further 600 odd files showing who spent time on the narrow paths that crossed just by where I posed the camera.

There were a few visitors I had expected - the ducks.  They really are rather sweet!

I was a bit concerned to see that a boar had tried to go along the path, but it turned around and went back.  Still, the photo was pretty worrying!

It should be no surprise that there were rodents.  I got one short film of a rather cute mouse with huge ears, which is quite difficult to see.  I got a lot of footage of what rats do when there aren't sewers and garbage bins around to rummage in.  I actually find it rather good to see a wild rat a long way from human habitation, and I have no intention of doing anything to move them on.  This is their natural environment after all.  Here is a bit of rat activity for you.

The mouse was about a quarter of that size, so that is definitely rat.  While this is definitely coypu!  Fortunately it only passed the camera once during the two weeks the camera was in situ, so I'm hoping that means it doesn't live around there.  If I spot it on another camera and a lot, then I will have to intervene.  Coypu are an invasive, non-native species that cause habitat damage and have no natural predators.  They are also rather ugly to my eye.  You can see he is a lot bigger than the rat, but has a similar style tail, so cannot be confused with a beaver.

Deer passed through and a thrush looked for snails, but the real find at that location was a bird I had to get a chum to identify as my original thought was a partridge with a dodgy beak.  It doesn't make much noise, so my Merlin bird identification app hadn't picked it up either.  May I introduce my new best friend, the water rail?  Elusive and rather scarce but seemingly happy to pass through the plot from time to time.  It went backwards and forwards for three days, and was a privilege to see.  

 

Otherwise, we have been working hard on the gardening front - I've been planting shallots and eyeing up the flower buds on the broad beans, which should come out soon.  John has set up and planted the new asparagus bed, complete with commercial compost on the top to give it the best possible start.  A good asparagus bed will last at least 10 years, while the corms we planted just before we moved (so back in 2003 or so) are still productive, or at least those that still survive are anyway. 

Some of my favourite spring flowers - flag irises - are starting to come out.  These purple ones are the earliest, but will be followed by the reddish ones and the deep purple and white as the weeks go by.  As there is left over compost, I must also plant up the bag of freesias I bought a couple of weeks ago and then think about getting the onions in.  For ages we were saying that spring was still a way off, but now it is here, and it is action stations!!

So I'd better stop writing about it all and get back to doing useful stuff!  Have a good week!

 

Spring flowers

With the move into March, meteorological spring has now started and we can talk about flowers and buds with joy.  One of the least showy, but most successful spring bulbs round our way are grape hyacinths - you can't stop them it seems and they spread.  These window boxes must have been planted up with bulbs at least 7 years ago, and not by us.  We do nothing to them, and we certainly don't water them through the summer, yet each spring they produce a magnificent display to cheer us up on even the wettest and coldest of March days.

Daffodils can be a bit tetchy, coming up blind if they aren't treated with a bit of respect or if they are too crowded or if the weather isn't to their liking.  This year they are looking rather splendid.

One flower we never seem to have problems with are cowslips, with rosettes turning up everywhere and spreading across any green area they come across.  Later in the season, the mutants will start to flower, with orange and red flowers.  I believe that there are specific names for those, although I do wonder if they are the result of cross-pollination with the polyanthus that are in every garden.  For the moment we are just seeing the early yellow flowers of cowslips however, which are very lovely and a welcome sight.

The hedgerows are white with blackthorn and wild plum blossom, which is gorgeous but makes me worry for the cultivated plum blossom that will arrive soon.  So far only the peach is starting to flower, but that is quite well protected and always early.  Fortunately the Victoria Plum is not showing any sign of thinking that blossom is imminent, but the mirabelle style plum in the Meadow is a bit more optimistic.

Periwinkle can be a real thug, particularly in the wrong place, but in the Orchard it has to fight for its place.  I do love the blue flowers, and prefer the green leaves to the variegated versions.

There is another type of flower that needs my attention at the moment - the sort that is used to decorate the village float for the Comice.  It has taken a while to get a Comité des Fêtes reinvigorated, and a theme agreed for the float, but now that is all sorted, it is all hands on deck to make flowers, ready to be stuck on during May and June.  With 14 willing participants, the first session on Thursday afternoon went really well and was a very convivial event.  We have a way to go though.

There are two trail cameras placed around the ponds to see what wildlife is passing through and next week I will bring one home to check through.  While I have been without a camera, I have used a different technology to see what is going on, this time focussing on bird song.  The Merlin App by Cornell Labs (others are available) sits on my phone and when there isn't too much wind or noise of motors, I can get a view of who is making a racket around me. 

You do have to be a bit circumspect as I am pretty sure the bittern it thought it detected was actually a motorbike misfiring across the valley, but with so many small birds being hard to spot with all the vegetation, it is an eye opener.  The list of 47 species below are all those that have been picked up at least once by the app since the 1st January this year.  I have doubts about just two on this list - the green winged Teal and the European Turtle-dove, but the rest have made enough appearances for me to be confident they are, or have been, in the zone.

Brambling

Carrion crow

Cetti's Warbler

Common buzzard

Common chaffinch

Common chiffchaff

Common firecrest

Common Wood Pigeon

Crested tit

Dunnock

Eurasian Blackbird

Eurasian Blackcap

Eurasian Bluetit

Eurasian Green Woodpecker

Eurasian Jackdaw

Eurasian Jay

Eurasian Linnet

Eurasian Magpie

Eurasian Nuthatch

Eurasian Siskin

Eurasian Skylark

Eurasian Wren

European Goldfinch

European Greenfinch

European Robin

European Serin

European Starling

European Turtle-dove

Gray Wagtail

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great tit

Green Sandpiper

Green winged Teal

Hawfinch

House Sparrow

Long-tailed tit

Mallard

Marsh tit

Mistle Thrush

Redwing

Reed Bunting

Ring-necked pheasant

Rock Pigeon

Short toed Treecreeper

Song Thrush

White Wagtail

Wood Lark

Anyway, that is more than enough for you to think about for the moment, so I leave you with an image of a small mud slide on the road near the Orchard, because, yes, it has been raining this week!

 

And if you thought last week was wet....

It rained last Sunday as I wrote last week's blog, it rained again on the Monday too.  On Tuesday, when I went over to Chinon for a visit, the fields by the autoroute were under water in many places, la Loire was full, but not dramatically so, but the Vienne was well over its banks and had closed quite a few roads.  When I was there, it was perhaps 4.3 metres over its usual level and hadn't reached its peak.  Fortunately for those in the area, it didn't reach the high end of the estimated flood levels and started to recede later on the Wednesday.

We were therefore interested to see what awaited us at la Flèche on Wednesday morning, when we were there for the market.  Parking was surprisingly easy, but I'm guessing that was an access issue.  Le Loir was seriously over its banks, with many riverside gardens flooded, the overspill carpark by the bus station underwater, and a number of roads flooded.  It was even more astounding that parking was easy, when one of the carparks right by the market was also underwater - I've never seen it that high there.  Perhaps half term made things easier.

With the rivers so high, it is only logical that our various ponds are also filling up.  The two main ponds at the bottom of The Orchard are doing wonderfully well - the level in the upper one is just at the limit of the overflow pipe (so it may well have been higher) while the lower one is at what I would call a sensible level.  With the winds on Thursday, we lost a chunk of one of the surrounding trees, which is now in the pond, and will need to be dealt with in due course.

Finally, yesterday we made it to the One Acre Wood and as expected, found the two small, ephemeral ponds there were full of water too.  They form in the pits dug to find clay for making tiles, and there are vague ditches that lead into them, but not the main ditches that mark the boundaries of our piece of land.  When these ponds form, they are a magnet for newts and salamanders.  Yesterday the upper pond was totally still, today both pond surfaces shivered with the antics of either marsh gas or hidden amphibians doing their thing.  You can also see a wild animal trail going to the right of the pond, and there is now a discrete trail camera keeping an eye to see who visits.  I'm not totally hopeful - the last time we had a trail camera there, it caught a chaffinch and that was it.

The pack of three new cameras has arrived, and one is now installed by the ponds at the bottom of The Orchard, a place that has always put on a good show.  Another is at the One Acre Wood, while the third did a sterling job showing us who was eating all the cat food we put out for the Barn Cats.  It was pleasing to see that in the main, it was the three boys eating it, but there are two others who are popping in of an evening for a good feed.  One we know as Minnie the Moocher, the other is a big fluffy thing we do not know.  Anyway, mystery solved and the spare camera is here, waiting for my next inspiration.

Today is sunny and not raining.  It is really too wet to do anything too useful in most places, although the portion of the wildflower Meadow that John has decided will be an asparagus bed was actually fine to rotavate today.  I'm not planting shallots or onions until we have had a couple of mainly dry weeks (which looks possible after Wednesday), but I could lift the last carrots and parsnips, along with a couple of leeks, so I can spend tomorrow making soup for the freezer.  There are also signs of rhubarb from one of the crowns we have, so that also inspires us.

Today we allowed Rebus the Psychokitten out into the garden for a bit of a run - he is so full of energy and just needs to run, perhaps he is in fact half whippet?  The chickens aren't totally happy with us, while Bridie the Freeloading Bantam has taken to a high perch in disgust.  Such is life!