Rural Life

Orchids, roses and vegetables

The first half of the week passed in a blur of reading reports, analysing numbers and trying to get it all down in a logical way and make some sense of it all.  By Wednesday evening, when the first draft of the report was sent, my mind was mush.  Thursday I must have done something useful - but it is hard to remember what.  Ah yes, new cylinder for the sodastream, visiting a couple of clients, feeding cats and sewing labels into summer shirts - clearly I did quite a bit that was useful!!

After the usual Friday visits, the new normal allowed us to go to the pub, sit out on the terrace and enjoy being around people, while taking on a glass or two of something cold.  It is so good to start the old normal experiences.  Tomorrow should have seen a bit of yoga too, but local elections mean the large village hall wasn't available, while the room offered as a substitute, as well as having a huge framed photo of the President, was not really conducive to socially distanced yoga for seniors.  So we are cancelled until September, which is a shame.

Today we were out and about before the temperatures got too hot to do anything other than wilt.  As well as productive things (more later), I spotted three different types of orchid out - two in the Orchard, and one in the One Acre Wood.  Here are a bee, a lizard and a birds nest!

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The roses are also coming on nicely at The Shack.  There is a splendid white climbing rose with a delicate scent by one of the outbuildings, which is putting on a great display - next week will be all about dead heading I guess.  The Fergus Memorial Rose, or Orange King as the label more officially calls it, has also put out its first flower.  I photographed it both yesterday and today, but today's photo was after there had been a lot of strimming, so there were bits of shredded weed in the flower.  I've not included that one!

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The vegetables are coming on.  Today I picked all remaining broad beans, and also lifted one of the main crop garlic to see what was going on, as the leaves and stems looked like they had been ravaged by rust, but there was a nice bulb and later on we will eat it to check on flavour!  The sweetcorn I sowed last Saturday ALL came up, so I had to spend time thinning out the excess plants, which really, really hurt.  I also planted out three more butternut squashes and four Bright Lights chard, the latter hidden among the shallots to get a bit of shelter while they establish themselves.  The shallots will be lifted in about a month at which point the chard can do what it likes.  Getting rid of the broad bean plants will give the peppers, aubergines and tomatoes more light, which will be good.

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There is also a lot of wildlife around.  Yesterday we visited a friend so John could do his Lawnmower Repair Man act (not totally successfully, but there is a deeper seated problem than he can get at).  She has swallows nesting in her stables and while the parents were out gathering beakfuls of insects for the offspring, I was able to look in and catch a photo.  Today, after I had toiled and done hammock time as a reward, I did my nature walk around the Orchard and the Wildlife Meadow.  The wild scabious is coming out which means an explosion of marbled white butterflies, which are just lovely to watch and occasionally take a photo of too!

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Next week's episode may be a bit late, but should have more exciting things to discuss, assuming the weather is a bit kind.

 

 

It's starting to get seriously nice finally

The weather has mostly perked up nicely, but we did have a blip between Wednesday and Friday, first with storms and lots of rain (26mm over three days here, a bit more at The Shack as it was in the path of a big storm) and then a really nasty, cold, wet Friday, before picking up again yesterday.  If Meteo France are to be believed, we now have a clear run of fine and hot weather (over 25ºC apparently is the definition they use for hot) for the next 15 days.  We'll see!

Friday was a day for a bit of private contemplation and a vigil on the way to Chinon and Azay - the weather was "ideal", or at least reflected my mood.  At la Chapelle sur Loire you can get down the river, where there are benches, picnic tables and bike racks, as well as a slipway into the river.  It was peaceful, despite the traffic on the levee road, and I was on my own, but entertained by swallows and sand martins skimming the river for bugs, egrets doing what egrets do, and things that looked like plovers, but probably weren't, out on the sandbanks.  The river took a reed down to the sea with my blessing.

Cats have been relatively disgraceful during the warmer weather (during the cold wet weather, they got wet and smelly).  Zola and Nibbles demonstrate their personal preferences for drink, while if Donald spots anyone in the hammock, he launches himself on them and has a wiggly love-in!  All very cute.

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The vegetable plots are looking more lush, or overgrown, which ever you prefer.  The tomatoes are climbing up their supports, while the shallots are starting to sag as the bulbs start to swell.  I had to resow sweetcorn yesterday, as 7/51 is a pretty poor germination rate.  Checking the seed packets, they recommend sowing 4 or 5 seeds per station and then thinning out any stragglers - well I resowed at 3 per station as I cannot abide the thought that I might be throwing out so many plants.  Although I might have got the maths wrong...  Anyway, once they were all in and the bed tamped down, Clause launched himself onto it, rolled across the whole area and dug two test pits before finding the one that deserved his poo.  The seedbed is now covered in cut branches of leylandii.  Meanwhile I picked more broad beans and dug up another feral garlic for supper.

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While I tended to the plants that will feed us, John struggled with strimmer and mower to cut paths through overly lush grass and brambles to enable us to walk around the Orchard and wildflower meadow and admire wildlife and flowers.  Particularly in the orchard, this makes a lovely walk and provides enticing views that might make you think this was a serious bit of garden design (and of course, you would be right).  Following the paths cleared for me, I admired many bee orchids (but only so many photos of those today), and spotted that the badgers had been doing a bit of spring cleaning.

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At home, we have slightly less tasteful flowers to admire, but the bumble bee I spotted seemed very happy to work her way over the red hot pokers.

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So, have a lovely week, enjoy the weather, and look out for happy bumble bees and discrete bee orchids.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - jaunting!

Because I can't work Fridays, as they are devoted to the needs of the Azay One, Saturdays are the new Sundays, and I toil in the vegetable patches on a Sunday morning and in front of a computer on a Sunday afternoon - it sort of makes sense.  Anyway, with the patchy weather we have at the moment, plus we used up the last bottle of tender winning celebration fizz, we decided it was time to go south of the river (la Loire) and stock up again.  We haven't been down there since before Christmas 2019!.  I put the laundry out, just to draw in clouds and rain (it worked - 2.5mm while we were out), and then we jaunted down to Ackermans at St Hilaire-St Florent, just by Saumur.  The buildings are rather magnificent and they are the front for miles of tunnels into the rock where millions of bottles of rather good fizz are stashed.

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We invested in 6 bottles each of Cuvée Privé Blanc and Rosé - hopefully they will last the year, but hopefully not all of them assuming we have things to celebrate!  We also got a worryingly cheap 10 litre wine box of red.  We may survive.

On the way home, we stopped in on the cats at The Shack and fed them and admired the growth on the potatoes above ground.

In the garden at home, we have the next colour irises coming out - a nice pale lilac colour.  We don't have many and they get frightfully abused, but they are pretty.

And a final note of "isn't nature wonderful?" if you like that sort of thing.  I was wandering back down the garden last night having locked up the chickens, and spotted the unmistakable yellow blob that is a spider nest erupting with lots of little spiders.  By this morning they were gone, dispersed naturally or eaten by the wildlife that lives in the garden.  For the squeamish, the photo is deliberately out of focus!! 

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - bits and bobs

As I've been being a good girl today and working hard, and not getting distracted by "stuff", I've had to resort in the main to photos taken a while ago but not shared yet, but it's a good way of making sure I've not missed anything too important!  Curfew is at 7pm, but sunset isn't until gone 9pm so it is very difficult to get good evening photos due to the monstrous blob built in between us and our views to the west, however this evening sky was good in any direction (this one is due South), and worked well on my phone.

A few years ago, Aldi did a nice line in flower pots that are fixed to down pipes.  I've grown all sorts in them, from bulbs to lobelia (which worked really well), but following an impulse purchase at a car boot sale of a number of house leeks, they have been home to semper vivums for about 4 years now.  I took a whole load of sets off them last year, but clearly will need to do the same again this year.  But they look pretty good I think!

After yesterday's single asparagus as part of lunch (chopped up fine in baked eggs), today I went for a more classic approach as Mac and Jak are laying just the right sort of eggs at the moment.  So today's lunch was poached eggs with asparagus and mayonnaise (just a little) and jolly good it was too.  There is a mix of our home grown asparagus (fat) and the last bits from the market last week (small and weedy or in technical terms, sprue).

Finally, I was reminded yesterday by Mr S Clause that he hasn't been seen on a blog post for a while and really he is totally gorgeous and people will miss him!  So here he is.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - weekend jobs

Having stood in a queue for 20 minutes this week to get fruit and vegetables, it really does bring home the value of growing your own sometimes!  We are in what is called the hungry gap between finishing what we grew last year - I had to buy spuds for the first time in 8 months yesterday - and being able to eat what we are growing now - I am hoping for a few broad beans next weekend.  I am relieved that the butternut seeds are starting to come up and there are signs that the chilli seeds are also sprouting, but without a decent greenhouse, things get leggy very quickly, so I will need to be on top of potting on or I will get nowhere.

As Father Mark was at the market selling tomato plants, I indulged in a few - he grows old varieties and things you won't always find elsewhere.  I got three cherry tomatoes which should have dark or black fruit and a couple of general culinary use tomatoes.  On Wednesday I hope to buy the bulk of my tomato, pepper and aubergine needs at the market, where the prices are about half what I paid on Saturday, but the varieties are a lot less interesting.  As we are due storms for about a week (according to Meteo France anyway), I planted the tomatoes out under paraffin bidon cloches.  We don't use paraffin as a heat source, but neighbours do and we recover the plastic containers for just this purpose.  The vegetable areas are almost looking serious now!

John can be seen preparing seed beds - he has carrots, beetroot and two types of radish sown, and carrots are coming up already.  The seeds are about 6 years old in general, so it is a bit of an experiment.  Less of a trial are the potatoes, and they are coming up now too - today I counted 24 out of the first 32 as showing some growth above ground, which is good to see.

Today's light lunch was very pleasing - eggs from Mac and Jak, baked in ramekins with asparagus from the garden at home.  OK so the splash of cream wasn't us, the butter was from Benoit (see yesterday) and the tarragon mustard was from Super U, but the main ingredients were down to us!

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - raw milk and brooding

Sounds like a vaguely iffy 1980s lounge music combo, doesn't it? Raw Milk and Brooding.  Fortunately those days are over.  Anyway I said there had been debate on raw and farm milk with chums on the internet, so on Wednesday when I was at la Flèche market, I asked the lovely Benoit if I might photograph him, to share the glory with my blog readers.  He was surprised, but happy to oblige - of course sadly you are deprived the benefit of his face as we all have to keep wearing face masks, but here is Benoit, purveyor of milk, butter, cream and cheeses.

Despite my bags being in the way, there is not actually a lot to see in his van apart from a few bottles of milk and a couple of cheeses.  That's because for his regulars, their requirements are stashed under the counter.  It was a great day for me when I became one of those, and a block of salted butter appeared when I arrived at his van!  The milk is a more recent thing - I used to buy the odd bottle, but mainly bought from another farmer, but then I became inducted into the circle of those who provide their own bottles and again each week as well as my block of butter, I swap an empty Waitrose Orange juice bottle for one full of full fat raw milk.  Bliss!

Will you note the colour of the butter and the depth of cream on that?!

In other news, while we only seem to have red currants, black currants, strawberries, raspberries and Granny Smith apples this year in the garden, that is not the case in Chinon.  There the warmth and protection afforded by the tuffeau wall has meant that the black peach tree there has lots of fruit set!  There will be jam of one sort this year!

And finally, I thought it was a bit quiet yesterday evening when I released the chickens for their daily vandalism spree - no Bridie to be seen.  I wondered if she had been chased off by the naughty ginger boy next door.  I checked the shed when I put the girls away last night, but she wasn't there so I was a bit worried.  This morning she was not waiting by the run to peck me mercilessly while I put out food and water for her (she has a very sharp beak!), so I was even more worried.  I went for a good check in the shed, and finally spotted her, well camouflaged by chainsaw chains.  See if you can spot the freeloading wotsit, trying to hatch another batch of infertile eggs!

 

Lockdown III, Day 22 - I'm not planting any more potatoes!

It being Sunday and a day of "rest", we were back at The Shack carrying on the labour of love (or greed) that is getting the crops in for this year.  The final third of the potato bed was so much harder than the previous two - I'm not sure why!  There were more roots, more bits of branch, more stones, more cat poo, less wind, less cool air and therefore more breaks for rest and water, but it is done - 16 more spuds planted, and that's it.  I have 12 good quality, chitted, seed potatoes left if anyone in the area wants them - certified stock and purchased at Jaques Briant.  I'm not saying their stuff is any better than anywhere else, just that is where we got them.  Let me know.

In one of my many moments of resting before the next bout of root extraction, I took the time to look up and found (yet) another spectacular view across the fields of Anjou, but one that will soon be gone.  The walnuts are about the last of the trees to get their leaves (along with a number of one variety of oak, possibly sisal), but I reckon that this view will be blocked by leaves in a couple of weeks time.

While I was getting the potatoes in, John was tidying, mowing, rotavating and making a nice seed bed for sowing a few carrots and beetroot.  If you don't look too closely, it all looks rather ordered and like we know what we are doing.  I can guarantee that in another 4 weeks it will be knee high in weeds again, but for the moment, we are feeling a bit smug.

Once everything was put away in an orderly fashion, we popped into the orchard to try to enthuse ourselves about getting that tidied up (fail), and on the way back to the car I noticed this little fellow sunning him/herself.  It is really good to know that we have such creatures around the place, and who will help with the inevitable plague of critters that will try to eat our fruit and vegetables before we do!  It's a slow worm by the way, for those who've not seen one before - probably about 10 inches long in total.

We treated ourselves to a trip to the One Acre Wood on the way home, partly to retrieve the ropes for the hammocks which have been tied round a few oak trees for about 10 years.  We have identified a spot in The Garden by The Shack where a hammock will fit most nicely, sadly only the one hammock, so there will clearly be a few "discussions" about who gets to loll around in it, but that is something to look forward to for May.  Anyway, the lily of the valley are finally out, which is a joy - so I leave you with flowers for today.

 

Lockdown III, Day 21 - a very busy day

Yesterday was my day for visiting the Azay One - I guess I am lucky we are allowed in to see her actually, given the hammering nursing homes have taken in this whole Covid thing.  We are only allowed in for an hour, we have to sit around a sanitised table, wearing masks (well, apart from the Azay One), and have to complete and sign two attestations on arrival.  Visits in rooms are not allowed.  Still, all went well, but it is always a tiring day, so no blog yesterday, but I did take this photo late yesterday evening after I had locked up the chickens.  Simple flowers and blossom attract many insects and it was heartening to see the variety last night on the Granny Smith apple blossom.

This morning, while John laboured, I went to the market at Baugé for a supply of good things - although the queue for fruit and vegetables did make me question my devotion to buying from small providers and local produce for preference, as it took me three quarters of an hour to get to the top of the queue!  At least the weather was good but social distancing had gone out of the window!

The afternoon was devoted to outdoors things, including mowing for a client, watering our produce and cosseting the boys in the country.  Now we are home and I need a gin and tonic so I will add the photos and call it a day.  I may be more voluble tomorrow.

Lockdown III, Day 14 - food and fertility

Apologies for yesterday, but I did warn you that there mightn't been an update - visits to Azay-le-Rideau take time, emotional energy and a bit of recovering from.  But this morning I was up and about and ready to seize the day, so relatively promptly to the market in Baugé.  If there is one thing that would convince me to grow our own vegetables, if I didn't already, it was standing in a queue for 25 minutes this morning for the fruit and veg stand!!  Unfortunately we are in that gap in the year when we don't have much variety, other than leeks and sorrel, so have to buy in things like citrus, carrots and (joy of joys) mangetout peas.  The queue for fish was much shorter and the options almost overwhelming - in the end I got a couple of pollock tail filets, which will take a sorrel sauce very nicely.

This afternoon was spent at The Shack (we will catch up on the funeral that we recorded shortly), and while John spent a happy couple of hours tinkering with ride on lawn mowers, I finally got round to sowing a couple of patches of bee friendly flowers in the Fergus memorial shrub bed - none of the shrubs are big enough this year to take up the whole plot, so it is better to fill the gaps with flowers than leave the couch grass to take over again.

I like to start planting my spuds on Good Friday and then make sure they are all in by the third week after Easter - well Easter was a bit of a blow out this year.  I had to work Good Friday, then the Azay project had to take precedence, so it is only today that I finally started on planting the potatoes, with the first 16 in.  It is jolly hard work, not least as the plot hasn't been used before, just rotavated and left, so it is all to do.  I'm hoping to get another 16 in tomorrow morning, but first I get to see if I can still move!!

During one of my rest moments, I watched various insects working their way along the row of flowering broad beans - this one is a dark blue carpenter bee (I think - masonry bees are smaller and make nests in inset screw holes in our woodwork, while the carpenter bees seem to like living in our back wall).  I applauded her industry!

Once the planting and sowing was done, and I had tidied away my stuff, I beat the bounds and admired the apple tree in blossom - either Canada or Russet I believe - the apples don't look particularly nice, but if the tree and the other one like it do their thing again this year, we can do a single variety juice pressing in the autumn, and this variety of apple makes a really tasty apple juice.

More tomorrow!

 

Lockdown III, Day 11 - a bit about food

Yesterday was a special day, as there were enough eggs from Mac and Jak (2 - one each for us) to see whether they were getting it right.  We also had a couple of shop bought free range eggs to test them against and to make a normal meal out of it.  "Our" eggs are on the right - smaller, as the girls are still very young, but with nice bright yolks and whites that were very upright.  They also tasted better than the shop bought, perhaps as they were that bit fresher, perhaps because we are biased!

Today I was daring and went outside the permitted 10km, so had to have an attestation, in order to make essential purchases - well I really can't miss la Flèche market two Wednesdays in a row!  It was heaving as clearly everyone else had the same idea, but all were wearing masks, and in 95% of cases, wearing them correctly too.  I staggered back to my car laden with cheese, milk, butter, croissants, bread, paté, vegetables, kippers and fresh crèpes.  What a wonderful feeling!  The town was looking very pretty, so while I was too busy shopping to photograph the market, I did take a picture of the river and the pressure-fed fountain.

The cold winter weather was good for the fruit trees, and they have responded in most cases with lots of blossom.  Of course now the harsh late frosts are savaging the blossom and affecting any set fruitlets.  I am hoping that I will have saved some fruit on the Victoria plum in the garden as the blossom has never been so good as it was this year.  My tactic was horticultural fleece, held in place with clothes pegs.  We think of it as a small tree, but it needed about 20 metres of fleece just to look like this - clearly not as small as we thought.  Time will tell for the fruit.

Now to go and sit in the late afternoon sun with a cat or two and 6 chickens who are not quite as in disgrace as they were this time last week.