Rural Life

Day 22 of lockdown - more plants

Before I get on to the nice flora related bits of this post, I need to get something off my chest.  Where do self-important Facebook know-it-alls get off and why don't they get slapped down? 

I was looking at the most recent advice from the British Embassy in France about travel documents, and while there were some interesting questions and clarifications, there was also a thread about how the current attestations aren't totally easy for the self-employed, and it can be useful to have a note from your client as well.  Some silly cow offered her opinion, finishing off the comment with "The self-employed should not be working at the moment anyway."  How wrong can you be in one simple statement?  GPs and district nurses here are self-employed in general for example, as are many farmers, lawyers, and all sorts of people who can work from home.  In addition, there are the quasi-emergency services such as electricians, plumbers, people who empty your septic tank, take you to hospital in their taxis - all of whom tend to be self-employed.  Sadly no one from the Embassy had managed to correct that statement in the hour since it was posted, but I hope they get round to it soon!

By the way, the French Government have given clarification as to what the self-employed put on their attestations - and it is perfectly OK.

And having vented and put that rant out there, I am now nicely zen again and would like to show some of the lovely and happy things in the natural world.  First off the quince is just coming out - in my opinion the most beautiful of the fruit blossom, my only worry is that it is about a month early.  But so pretty!

Close inspection of the broad beans shows that they are starting to set - four to six weeks and they will be delicious!

And a technical one.  A few years ago, I wrote this post about a nasty new invasive non-native species, a form of gall wasp that attacked the buds of new growth on sweet chestnuts, deforming leaves, destroying flowers and weakening the tree.  It was all through our One Acre Wood and a client had it on their young chestnut trees - many did not survive, but some did.  There was a quiet release of a targeted predator for the cynips chestnut gall wasp in the area, and it seems to be winning the battle.  On these twigs you can see some of last year's distorted buds which hosted wasp larvae, and you can see beautiful new buds with no galls at all.  There is hope!

Day 20 of lockdown - the battle with the Asian hornet

Before we get onto that - just a reminder of how on edge people are.  A banal but heated discussion between someone with a right to park in the shared courtyard, and someone else whose right is pretty well non-existent escalated into a heated exchange between four neighbours yesterday evening.  One person with nothing to do with the conversation got right in there and started hurling accusations around in a very heated manner.  Now while I admit that the person in question would beat herself up if put in a paper bag on her own, it is evidence of the short fuse people are on, and when given the opportunity to get stuck into something that is non-Covid-19 related, will do just that.  Walk away people!  It ruined a lovely evening.

But on to more interesting things - the fight against the Asian hornet.  Before anyone says anything about "nature", these are an invasive non-native species that can eat their way through a hive of honey bees in about a week.  There is no up side to them.  We were recruited in February to be part of an "observatoire", made up of 56 sites across our district, to try to trap queens in the period up to mid-May when they are laying and nurturing the queens that will create the big nests of the summer.  Stopping one queen now prevents between 10 and 20 nests of hornets later in the summer, each of which can overwinter a further 5 queens.  Think of all those social distancing tree diagrams you've seen recently.

Anyway, we are hosts to 3 traps, one at home, one where the cats are and one with a client who has had trouble with hornets in the past.  The traps are designed to entice the queens in, but not let them out again (although their efficacy in that is also part of the test). 

In the trap you put a pot of bait with a lot of pebbles or similar, so that good insects don't drown in the bait which is made up of a third dark, sweet beer, a third fruit syrup ideally blackcurrant or grenadine (in our case out of date Ribena), and a third dry white wine, to keep bees away from it.

Today, John checked the one with the cats, as they needed feeding, and we think we have caught one!  The photo below has been sent to the main man running the observatoire for his views, so I will confirm if we have been successful properly when he gets back to me.  We are ever so excited though.

 

Day 17 of lockdown - supermarket hell?

I've fought off the temptation for over two weeks now, but with 7 hungry mouths to feed and a husband without beer, I had to do it, I had to go to the supermarket today.  I tried to find out when the quiet time might be but all I could find on social media locally was a lot of complaints about the owner of our local store, so I just guessed that 3pm on a Thursday might be a good time.  I also put a small bottle of hand sanitizer in the door of the car.

I gather there was a pretty nasty article in The Times today about how French society is about to collapse and has sunk to the low of the Vichy regime.  As I don't have a subscription, I can't comment one way or another, other than to say that the friend who told me about it was steaming angry and showed me her response, which seemed to imply that there is open war in your average French supermarket.

Ours is a distinctly average French supermarket, and wasn't busy when I was there.  People behaved well.  Where were the gaps in the shelves?  Cat food, chicken food, rabbit food (really - rabbit food not salads), beer in the meths drinkers category, some of the cheaper types of rice, and chocolate.

On the way home, I was stopped by the Gendarmes and my attestation was checked, and I was told fine but go straight home, which I said I would.

It was a lot better than it might have been and very civilised.

There is nothing interesting to photograph in and around a supermarket, so another picture of cherry blossom to close.

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 15 of lockdown - working from home

Call it working from home, call it télétravail, it's what I've been doing for the past 15 years now.  As a freelancer, I am used to the loneliness of the long distance report writer, and the mad rush to meet a deadline, even on the best planned projects.  This one was well planned, and it wasn't that much of a panic, as lockdown and the Bise (the North East wind) had concentrated the mind nicely, so the draft report that I sent 10 minutes ago (and about half an hour early) was actually in much better shape than a normal first draft.  It even had a nice contents page.

We are promised the end of the Bise tonight, and it can't go soon enough for me, but more importantly for this summer's fruit crop.  The peach blossom is nearly over, and the tiny fruitlets can be seen, and they just don't need frost!  There were only about 15 flowers on the plum tree and I've not dared to look to see if any have set, while the pear is in full flower, and we need pears.

As well as the final blossoms, the peach is also starting to show its leaves, and so far they seem unaffected by the dreaded peach leaf curl, which is surprising given all the rain we have had.  I might not be saying that in a week's time.

Many things are too early this year, including the irises - my favourite flowers.  This is the first out in our garden, but they are already out in quantity in some very sheltered spots.  Later in the season we will have the spectacular red ones, but for now I revel in the purple ones.

 

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 12 of lockdown - market day

On Monday, our lovely and somewhat scary Prime Minister tightened the rules on lockdown, including open air markets - and I was devastated.  What he said was that in principle, all open air markets should be banned, but that Prefets could change that decree at the local level.  I believe that his reasoning was based on Paris and some of the other major cities, where there had been something of a scrum at the markets, and bizarrely it is easier to ban at national level and allow local exceptions than the other way round.  This is the case with bonfires for example.

So on Wednesday I was able to go to my principle market and get all sorts of good things, including raw milk and butter, as the Prefet of the Sarthe allowed la Flèche market to go ahead, strictly regulated of course (see day 9).  The Prefet of Maine et Loire was much less open to exceptions, and it was getting really rather nasty on social media.  The mayor of Baugé en Anjou, Philippe Chalopin, contacted the Prefet, told him about the measures that had already been put in place for a producers market to ensure security and access to local produce, and told him about the potential revolution, and was accorded the right to run the market today!  We found out yesterday.

The Saturday market is normally very vibrant, food only and vendors come in from around the department, but today it was restricted to local producers.  Nonetheless we had dry goods (pasta for example that is made down the road) and flour, eggs, vegetables and fruit, goat's cheeses, a butcher - 9 stands in all providing an excellent local service.  The stands were well spaced and those waiting were well disciplined and kept a good 2 to 3 metres between each other.  I was also able to pick up my order of loose Earl Grey tea (without which life becomes very harsh indeed) from a shop on the high street.

Thank you Mr Chalopin for perservering with the Prefet!

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 10 of lockdown - what day of the week is it?

Those who know me, know that I have been doing the working from home thing for 15 years now, so that shouldn't be phasing me.  They will also know that I have stints where I am working on a report, where I am at my computer every day for a long period of time and don't really go anywhere, so in theory I should be doing OK with this lockdown malarkey.

The thing about the above is that I have a deadline and when that comes, I'm free as a bird.  I can work or not work, I can go anywhere I want (often the pub I confess), John and I can go out walking and shopping and perhaps celebrate with a  meal in a restaurant, or go visit a vineyard and do a wine tasting.  I know when the work related lockdown period will be over.  This is not the same.  The report will be sent on Tuesday next week come hell or high water, but nothing much else will change.  For the first time ever this week, John and I seriously lost the plot on what day of the week it was.  Time has slowed down.

In other aspects, time has not slowed down at all.  Look at these broad beans in full flower!  Pity I couldn't spot any bees.

Similarly, you can hear lawns growing (actually at the moment I can hear our lawn being cut down again, as John tries out his new lawnmower), while the blossom is looking marvellous.  But human or economic life is now marching at a very slow pace for us, with little to differentiate each new day from the last.  Mind you, once this report is away, perhaps I will be able to enjoy that slower pace of life!  Here is a cherry tree in full blossom - not ours, but in the next garden over.  Pity the fruit from this tree are vile.