Rural Life

Quiet days of August

Last week was the flurry of excitement that is the annual Comice here in Baugé en Anjou, and since then, things have generally been much quieter.  Local people are either on holiday or preparing for the Rentré next week - the start of September that brings a new school year, a new year for the sports and arts clubs, people going back to work and taking things a bit more seriously, being able to get an artisan to answer the phone, the tax assessment results, getting the chimney swept and starting to think about winter heating.  It's a big thing here, probably bigger than New Year, and taken most seriously.

For us, it should mean that the holiday makers disperse, making it easier to park at the local markets, less frantic calls from people who can see weeds in their lawn or furry pears on their trees (actually known as quince, but there we go), and a slightly less fraught diary.  In fact, in previous years, September has been a month where I have had something on every weekend, and sometimes more than one thing too.  This year seems more sane - only a pig roast in a couple of weeks' time and perhaps being able to visit things for European Heritage Weekend.

The gardens are relatively quiet - chillies are ripening, as are the meagre corn cobs, borlotti beans are flowering and setting and the potatoes need to be lifted.  With August, some of the loveliest flowers arrive - cyclamen.  They are mainly pink but some are white, and over the years, the clumps get larger.  The ones in our lawn started as the odd flower here and there and now have spread.  It's the same in the One Acre Wood.  These ones are at The Studio and seemed to come up overnight.

Although the weather remains frustratingly dry, there are more clouds in the evening now, which make for colourful sunsets.  I'm never great at taking photographs of these, but I am getting better, and this one was a pleasing one.

I've not taken many photographs this week, and the trail camera was pointing at an area that looked like it was a badger playground.  Well if it was, they weren't playing last week.  The camera has moved and there are no photos to share from it, so I will have to round off with a photo of young Monsieur Clause, who is looking very sleek and pleased with himself at the moment.  I think he is having a good mousing season.

I'll take more and better photos this week - I promise.

 

Half full or half empty?

While last week I showed a photo of a sunny day and a cat in a hammock, I had hoped for much more sunshine this week.  Indeed every day the forecast was for sunshine "tomorrow" or "the day after tomorrow" and today even "this afternoon".  But it hasn't happened - the high pressure and sodden ground has kept fog and low cloud in place all week with no respite at all.  The ground hasn't dried out at all, making lifting potatoes unnecessarily hard work, while the lack of light saps the spirit.  I think the constant broken promise of sun tomorrow has made it all the harder to bear and I am sick of it.

There are odd chinks of colour to look out for.  I have always been a fan of nerines, and sometimes they flower for me, but mostly they don't.  This year I have been lucky and one has flowered and I have been able to admire the circle of bright pink flowers each day for a couple of weeks as I go to feed the chickens.

The trees haven't done much by way of autumn colour - we haven't had much of a cold snap, just constant, bone aching dank.  It is possible there will be a late flush of colour but I'm not holding my breath.  However there is another plant that provides a pretty reliable splash of colour in the autumn, and because I grow it in hanging baskets, I get to admire it rather than having it covered in dead tree leaves.  The strawberry leaves are quite spectacular this year, with odd fruits hidden away.  The fruit isn't interesting as it needs sunlight to produce a bit of sweetness and flavour, and we haven't had any of that for a while (see above), but you can't have everything.

I had to visit a house and garden during the week and was stunned by the display of dramatic flower heads on the yucca plants there.  Mine have done nothing this year, and of course indoor ones don't get the conditions to do this.  For me there is no rhyme or reason to when yuccas flower, but I am grateful to see them doing their thing this year.

As the leaves fall, it becomes obvious where Asian hornets have been building nests.  While I've not spotted any in our area, not least due to the successful trapping and destroying campaigns in Baugé en Anjou, I did see this one when visiting the house and garden with the yuccas.  The nest had been breached as I saw a bird or two flying in and out - perhaps the amazing tit family have decided they like to eat them, much as they do with pine processionary grubs?

It's not all gloom I guess.  The lack of frost and the moist conditions mean that the cristophine vine goes from strength to strength, with leaves the size of dinner plates and hidden fruits.  In the gloom it looks a bit like a hut or shelter, and actually it does do a good job when it rains.  Assuming no prolonged period of intense frost this winter (unlikely given global warming, although it would be good), this brute will be back next year!

Most of the garlic we planted last year was not worth lifting, so I didn't.  But I noticed today that those bulbs are pushing back up and will provide tasty scallion style garlic "spring onions" through the winter.  It might be worth planning next year's potager plots after all!

With that in mind, I am now off to cook chicken Béarnaise, otherwise known as garlic chicken. 

I am minded to bring in a trail camera during the week, as there is one that has been in place for a couple of months now and probably needs to be checked over.  All things being equal, there could be much more exciting things to write about next week than autumnal murk!

Have a good week!

 

Autumn taking its time

It's been a relatively quiet week, as Autumn slowly does its thing.  In the garden, the cyclamen flowers are disappearing and great tufts of leaves are taking over, to feed the corms for next year - it has been a riot this year.  In the One Acre Wood, the white cyclamen are slower to come through, and the light is very different of course.  Still we have some 14 flowering zones (one of which isn't strictly in our bit of wood), and there will be a lot more clumps of leaves than that, when they really start to show.  It would appear that a cyclamen needs at least three years from germinating to getting to the flowering stage.  It is worth thinking about that, when you buy disposable pots of cyclamen as presents for people I think.  The most magnificent flowering has been quite hidden from us until a bit of judicious strimming cleared access to part of the orchard where they seem to have gone totally crazy!

The weather has wavered between nice sunny days, warm enough to lie out on the hammock (modelled here by Monsieur Clause), and dull, dreary, grey and wet days, when the only useful thing to do has been to sit in my office area, do filing and throw out 30 year old insurance documents.

Some of the filing has been positively pleasurable though - 2018 files from a trail camera need a lot of pruning down to the bits that are worth hanging on to.  There is no point in trying to make a paradise for wildlife if one also clogs up a datacentre with unnecessary and rather poor quality photos and videos!  There was a rather nice image of the hare making a very rare appearance this year.

But badgers do not make good photo subjects in general, as they are out and about at night and tend to move quite quickly - this is a better example than most, but it isn't really worth keeping!

The video shorts of badgers were much more amusing though, and I was able to take time to load quite a few onto YouTube to share here.

This is much more amusing!

This one has two badgers going about their legal and lawful.

As does this one.

The quality of this video is dire I admit, but it did prove that once again we had a faun in the Meadow this year.  The weather wasn't great over the summer, with cool mornings so the misted up camera was a fairly regular thing.

We had to wait another 12 days to get better visual confirmation that the pair were in the zone, and by that time the faun had grown a lot!  Also, they weren't that close to the camera.

The clocks have now gone back - fallen for the Anglophones (Fall - fall back - go back).  The French mnemonic is that in Octobre the clocks reculent.  For a couple of weeks we will be getting up in daylight again, but not for long.  By December it will still be dark at 8:30am and the temptation to stay in bed on grey days will be almost too much!  

Have a good week!

 

Quiet (!) Autumn pursuits

Autumn should be the time of foraging and harvesting, plus spending lots of time in the kitchen doing stuff with the results of said harvesting and foraging.  This week I got into the swing of that a bit more, and we peeled loads of chestnuts so I could get creative with the results.  A savoury fish crumble with a chestnut and cheese crumble was very good indeed.  The sweeter apple and quince crumble was a bit too sweet and sat in the tummy and on the hips in a rather alarming manner - less sugar, and more flour could be the answer.  But that means peeling more chestnuts...

In addition I had another go at the fig tree, which seems aware that it is going to be massacred soon, so is putting out more figs than the local starlings (the top ones), the chickens (the bottom ones) and we (those in the sweet spot in the middle) can comfortably get through.  I am now up to a dozen pots of fig jam made, and as we  haven't finished last year's, I'm making no more!

I should also be digging up potatoes, but the ground is currently still sodden thanks to Kirk and then another few depressions that have been passing through during the week.  I'm waiting for the promised dry patch next week to do more of that.  There are no frosts predicted, so the cristophines continue to produce a huge crop - this lot are on a new plant John planted to protect the asparagus bed.  I like to think that the row of diminishing fruit are reminiscent of the pottery flying ducks so beloved of sitting room walls in the 1970s!

The foraging is going less well, and the view locally is that it is not a year for cèpes, as no one has seen one.  I did find what looked like one, but it was under a birch tree, which is wrong, so I discarded it.  There are strange bits of fungi around, like these yellow threads we found in the One Acre Wood - inedible and also not clear from our array of mushroom identification books what they actually are!  Quite attractive though.

Less peaceful autumn pursuits include trying to get the dense thickets of bramble and old man's beard under control.  While I don't mind odd pockets of it, when you get banks that are taller than me and cover a third of a field, it is not good and it doesn't create valuable habitat.  The density is so great that most plants can't grow, the cover defends some animals (hares and pheasants mostly) from hunters, but doesn't provide a dry or comfortable holt for winter, the plant quality is poor, as they all strive for sunlight, so there is little if any fruit, and not much by way of insects as there are no flowers.  And it grows and grows upwards and then outwards, taking over flower meadow and pond edges to the detriment of a wide range of flora and fauna. 

So we are punching paths through the big bank with strimmers and hedge trimmers and then using the big yellow Beast to mulch through the cut stems to create walkways that may be easier to maintain next year, while providing some shelter and routes for our non-human visitors to move around more easily.  It's all very much a work in progress, but I am pleased with how it is going.

With bad weather forecast for much of the week, I brought in Trail Camera 1 to see what had been going on in its line of vision.  It was as well I did, as it had over 2,000 files on it, and the batteries were pretty well dead.  It had been out since late July and the batteries, which weren't the best quality in the first place, had been used for a few months before then too, so weren't fresh.  It took a while to prune down the 2,018 files to just 252 that had some interest, and they will require further triage and editing and videos put onto YouTube, but as a taster of what there is, here is our fox in the open.

I did also load just one video onto YouTube today, as I wanted to show how robust the cameras need to be - turn the sound up for the full effect and yes, those are tusks!

 

I did also promise a bit of coypu action - I am ambivalent about them.  They are an invasive, non-native species with no natural predators and cause a lot of damage, and I don't like their tails, but their whiskers are magnificent!

 

 

 

 

That's enough coypu for the moment!  Have a good week!

 

Welcome to Autumn

Meteorological autumn started on the 1st September and autumness is being embraced by fauna, flora and weather with unseemly eagerness.  Temperatures are dropping, and the weather lurches from dismal to awful, with quick hints of sun in between.  Yesterday we were due storms in the afternoon, but needed to spend a few money off vouchers, so didn't get to the place in the country until the rain had started, while thunder rumbled around.  We were lucky, actually, to be there and not at home, where there were strong wind squalls, nearly three times the amount of rain, and hail.  While the barn cats munched their way through their feed, oblivious to the weather, I watched the rain and then checked the lightning strike web page.

There's not much by way of mellow fruitfulness about either.  The berries are rotting on the canes almost before they ripen and the pears are over - not enough for a burping barrel either!  There are apples - the Reine de Reinettes are falling and are quite tasty.  I need to burrow into the Bel de Boskoop to find any there, while the Granny Smiths will hold for ages.  The Canada juicing apples are rotting, then falling, so I fear for the trees if the marauding boar decide they like cider.  We had hoped for a single variety juice pressing this year, but if we do one at all, I think it will be mixed.  The quince are also a disappointment, as they have missed out on the heat and sunshine they need to develop to their full size and become fragrant.  They are falling!  I will have to try to make jelly, but I don't think they will be up to tagine or slow cooked quince standard sadly.  

Also in stark contrast to last year, we can only spot 5 fruits on the cristophine vine, despite it being even bigger than last year!  It also misses the heat and sunshine though it does enjoy a good deluge.

The cyclamen in the lawn have been later to flower than normal - about 3 weeks later if I recall correctly.  I had hoped that the delay might at least mean a full carpet of them around the birch tree.  I may be jaded and depressed with this year, but it seems to me that they too are less bountiful, although new corms have started to produce flowers in far flung areas of the garden.

We are hoping for a decent year for mushrooms, with all the water that there is around.  A walk around the One Acre Wood today showed that there are things popping up, but not interesting edible things so far.

We have found a first bolete, but not where it should be.  There was one growing in the lettuce bed, which I picked, but as there is no oak or chestnut in the Garden area, just a rather large birch tree, I did not risk cooking it.  It could well have been fine, but when picking wild mushrooms, any doubt at all and it goes on the compost heap.

The Marx Sisters have settled in well, and at least two of them have started to lay rather cute small eggs.  Groucho is a greedy so and so and likes to climb into trees and onto tables.  This can be disconcerting.  Harpo bumbles on in her own happy way, and seems to have been the one to come into lay first.  Chico is a bit more of a loner and likes to fly.  Specifically, she likes to fly at my back when I am walking away from her, which is a bit worrying.  Perhaps in a former life, she was an eagle.

I have had another major session with my new strimmer, using the brushcutter head this time, and have a number of projects with that.  More to follow in the coming weeks.  I also probably ought to shuffle the trail cameras around, so again something for another week.

Until next time!

 

Summer ends with a splash!

Friday evening's pub session was grey, cool (I was wearing a sweatshirt, for goodness sake), and distinctly humid.  Saturday morning we woke to a thunderstorm and heavy rain - some 20mm before 11am.  But as so often with summer storms, but midday, the sun was out and temperatures rocketed and we were able to sit out for aperos in the garden and say how lovely it all was.  So at 3:30am, we were unimpressed to be woken with a shock by loud thunder nearly overhead and positively biblical rain, which carried on for a good hour.

I am always surprised after such a violent sounding night, how in the morning, you have to look really hard to find the evidence of the cataclysm that seemed to be going on during the hours of darkness.  Yes, the rain gauge was pretty full, and the one at The Garden was nearly overflowing, and driving to The Garden, there were odd banks of sand by some of the fields, but nothing particularly broken, just a lot more water in the ponds.

It is sad that summer ends so abruptly, not least as we are still in Comice season, and Genneteil were doing the honours this year for the Noyant Villages area.  Still by the time they got to the procession of villages (no fancy floats this year from the Noyant area), the sun was doing its best to shine on them.  I do feel that this year's procession was a demonstration of cruelty to Renault 4s and as I used to drive one, I felt a lot of sympathy for this poor car, pulling a trailer that was too well loaded for the weight of the car.

For an event where the theme was Rock and Retro, I also felt that the non-marching band weren't quite in the swing of the theme by playing Lady Gaga's Poker Face.  But perhaps it is the highlight of their repertoire.

Autumn jobs are coming to the forefront of our thinking.  The Meadow needs to be fully mown and the side paths need to be cleared so that I can get into the little woodland at the end and finally see what is down there.  The Orchard is too overgrown and needs to be sorted out before the walnuts start to fall - not least as walnuts are our rent to the landlady.  So, lots to do, and possibly too much for one man. 

So I rummaged in my moth filled wallet and invested in a strimmer/brushcutter that I can use.  My elbow has ceased to support frequent use of a pullcord for starting a petrol engine, so I have gone for a battery model and used it for the first time yesterday.  The battery lasted longer than I did, which bodes well for later in the autumn.  Me in safety gear, harness and carrying said strimmer is not a good look, but better safe than sorry!

Last Sunday, in a last hurrah to summer, we attended a jazz manouche concert at our local pub - Les Epines de Mymi Rose.  I've wanted to catch one of her concerts for a while, so was delighted to spend a warm summer evening, sitting with a glass of wine. listening to an excellent performance.

One of the delights of autumn here are vivid sunsets, so this from Wednesday night may well be the first of many.  There is much that is autumnal around at the moment, with the giant orange jelly slugs, ripe fruit falling and a certain feel to the air.  I am very fond of early autumn, but not so much this year, as we never seem to have had much of a summer.  Perhaps a week or so in August.

I did mention giant orange jelly slugs - they are numerous and finding life just too, too wonderful at the moment.  Wandering around the One Acre Wood I nearly stopped slug sex but standing on two, but managed to sidestep them just in time.  Fascinating and disgusting at the same time!

Have a good week!

 

Summer miscellany

Yes, summer is firmly installed now, and finally the verges are taking on their straw colour that I normally associate with July.  It arrived in a rush, with last Saturday starting to look promising, and last Sunday was as perfect a summer day as you could ask for.  But it didn't know when to stop, and Monday was hotter, which made visiting a chum in hospital more appealing as they had air conditioning.  Tuesday was deeply unpleasant - up to 39ºC measured in the shade in the garden, but with humidity, feeling a lot worse, and since then things have slowly calmed down to normal high summer.

On Monday, to finally welcome in summer, we got most of the cover on the gazebo in the garden.  First I had to check all the fixings and resew a number of the tapes, as they had been buffeted rather in the winds last autumn.  It is easiest to use my sewing machine outdoors, where the light is good and the table doesn't have a slippery surface.  Poirot, the elderly cat, decided I needed help and supervision - fortunately it didn't make life too difficult!

We have started on the annual mow of the wildflower meadow (royal we).  There is never an ideal time to do it, and currently it is a sea of white umbellifers, mostly wild carrot I think, but there are few butterflies, and the crickets seem to get out of the way OK, and if we leave it too long, the brambles and old man's beard and tiny saplings get more difficult to pulverise.  Seeds of things like orchids and broomrape are now ripe so will be spread around in the mowing process.

A favourite flower is gaura, and this year, after it had been well and truly strimmed down to ground level, it has come back with a glorious display for us.  I guess this could be the answer for how to keep it lovely!

I have been through the files on the trail camera that was overlooking one of the ponds.  It wasn't the best placement, and it overlooked a path going across so you get lots of photos and videos of animal bottoms disappearing out of shot.  This short video of a meandering doe is a rarity, and she doesn't stay around that long either!

Perhaps a day after the camera was set up, a stag took an interest in it, and had a good go and dismantling it, but failed.

The main purpose of the camera placement was to catch the boar having mud baths.  They leave an imprint in the mud that is impressive, so I hoped to capture something interesting.  One night I thought I might be in luck.  A boar arrives.

It gets itself into position, after a bit of preparation.

But is then too far away from the trail camera to set it off again, until bath time is over anyway, at which point I get an image of a muddy boar!  There is evidence of the boar bath place in the mud of the pond of course.

I would show you that, and the boar after its bath, but the internet is so slow and intermittent, I need perhaps 20 goes to get a photo loaded up, so I am calling it a day.  Enjoy your week!

 

 

The day after the night before!

Yes, I'm feeling a bit muzzy today, after quite a day or two.  In part it is because the heat ramped up again very quickly, which seems to knock my system a bit.  Jumping up 5 degrees in a day, then dropping back down again a couple of days later means I don't get to acclimatise to the heat.  But in the main, it is because after a few years' gap, the Vieil Baugé Journée Champêtre is back and was yesterday. 

To be honest, I wasn't too involved this year, but John had to be up and away early yesterday morning for setting up the site, so I wasn't able to sleep in.  Then I was on the food line for about 3 and a half hours, not arduous but standing up all the time, which doesn't help my feet or knees.  Then there was getting to eat my meal, drink my drink, see the fireworks and drift home to sort out chickens and cats and wind down from a very French experience (it still mangles my brain, particularly if I am mixing French and English during an event).  So late to bed, and in a house that had got too hot during the day.  Muzzy really does cover it!

Still, it was a success and people enjoyed it and it is good to get village traditions back.  Here are a few photos, but Maryline Margas has posted a slide show of much better ones on Facebook. 

We were threatened with thunderstorms for yesterday - which fortunately for us didn't materialise.  The threat did galvanise me into lifting the yellow onions before they got too wet.  I was pleased with the size of them, but a strange phenomenon was that quite a few sets produced two onions.  I only planted single sets at each point, but about six did this, which I have never seen before.

In my muzzy state this morning, I was in the right frame of mind to sit and watch butterflies on the buddleia.  To be honest I would have liked to have seen more, but it might not have been the best conditions for them, although there were a lot of bees getting nectar for the hives, which has to be good.  There was this rather nice Comma butterfly - you can't see the comma, as that is on the underside of its wings, and he clearly wanted to soak up the sun.

Some of the high summer flowers are now coming into their own.  The crocosmia is rather swamped by surrounding weeds but the flowers are magnificent.  The statement white lily type thing in the garden tubs is starting to look particularly fine.  And then there are the canna lilies - these are all from three bulbs or sets John bought about 15 years ago, and have since gone mad, been removed from places and chucked on heaps or left on top of the soil to be eaten, only to colonise, and get very big indeed.  I love them when they are like this, big, brash and blousy.

So that is it, for this week.  Next week I hope to have sorted out some wildlife photos and video.  For those who watched the snake videos, I think I know where one of them lives, and I found that quite disturbing...

 

A lot going on

As I did my last blog early, this is the first one since both election results are known.  While there seems to be a wind of change in the UK, and likely for the better, or as much as can be done for the better with no funding, here in France we face stagnation and insecurity until people grow up and learn to play nicely together.  With the sane elements refusing to work with far right or far left, both of whom are chucking teddies out of prams and saying it is all unfair, we could have a long wait - in any case until September, when they might remember what the tax payers pay them for.  Of course I gather Belgium runs rather well when there is no one in charge and that could be the same here!

At the local level, things are challenging but for different reasons.  So far in July we have had 61mm rain - which is more than we usually get in the whole month.  This is actually quite good for some of the flowers, which are lasting longer in the cooler, wetter conditions.  While there aren't as many flowers as usual on my agapanthus, I have been enjoying them now for a week and they look like they will last longer too.

My "black" day lilies are looking rather magnificent too, while the star gazer in the background is lasting well as well, so it's not all bad.

The garlic crop is something of a disaster.  I planted the first lot of cloves not long after the shortest day (the traditional garlic planting day) and harvested them yesterday, so well after the shortest day, but the best are the size of marbles and others are smaller.  We did have one as part of yesterday's dinner, and it was very tasty, but it took ages to peel all 12 cloves, each the size of a grain of rice.  The shallots will be fine for pickling, but not much else sadly.

The onions are a different story.  I lifted the red ones yesterday, as the tops had mostly collapsed and the ground is very wet, so best not to let them sit and fester.  Normally the best I get is about the size of a pingpong ball, but this year there are several that are much more meaty.  The white onions will need to be lifted in a week or so, and they are looking even better.

I've also been lifting the first row of potatoes I planted - they are second earlies so ready to start eating now, and with the damp conditions I am getting a smidge paranoid about blight setting in.  I was particularly pleased with today's haul from one plant, which will provide three meals for us this week I think.

While I was away, Jack the Ripper shuffled off this mortal coil and went to the chicken run in the sky.  That is the second one this year, but not surprising as they have a limited life span and we haven't restocked for a while.  As we were down to one laying hen, (Mac the Knife), (the freeloading bantam and Auntie Mo the retired sponger not doing anything useful other than eating slugs and annoying the cats) I was given permission to acquire three new hens.  We were a bit late to the market, so I didn't have much choice, but I got the last speckled hen and two brown ones, one of which is darker than the other so I might tell them apart.  There was a white one, but I only spotted her when my three were removed as she was happy to be sat on by all the others.  I don't think that is a good sign, certainly not when they have to co-exist with cats.  So anyway, I carried home a cardboard box filled with the Marx sisters - Groucho the speckled, Chico the dark and Harpo the pale.

They should start laying in about three weeks or so, and for the moment seem to be behaving themselves.  Rebus the kitten has taken it upon himself to keep a very good eye on them, and make sure they don't to anything too stupid.  The other residents of the chicken run regard them with horror most of the time.

Today is the Fête Nationale (never Bastille Day), and to honour that, the Tour de France is making the cyclists go up a very steep mountain to finish today's stage in the Pyrenees.  It seems only fair that I go and watch them suffer for my entertainment and celebrate all things French.

Have a good week!
 

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!

 

Spring into Summer

The first of June brought meteorological summer - it's just an arbitrary date, but it works for me and my filing for photos.  It is true that it also stopped raining on the 1st June and hasn't started again since for us, but that won't last much longer I think.  But the evening of 1st June was very cool - I know this as we walked the 3km from our front door to the Centre René d'Anjou in Baugé for the final hurrah of the Comice 2023.  This was the party to say thank you to the volunteers who put in so many hours of hard work all through 2023 (although for those on the Drinks Committee, initially it didn't look like hard work!).  We were warned to be there for 7:30pm, as speeches needed to start at 7:45pm - well both of those had the Anjou 15 minutes added to them!

What a night!  Aperos, a four course dinner with relevant different wines, two cabaret singers and three dancers, speeches (but not too many) and dancing until dawn for those who could manage it.  Light weights that we are, we left after pudding at 00:45am for the 3km walk home in the dark.  My chum Brigitte ran away at 4:00am as she knew she had tidying up to do the following morning.  Our President locked up at about 6:00am but didn't go to bed, as he had to be back to let in the cleaning party at 9:00am!

And that is why I had pre-prepared last week's blog!!

Once the rain stopped, we did start getting sunny weather, so that by Tuesday, my legs were timidly being shown the open air from time to time and I am now sitting in shorts, doing my typing.  I wouldn't say that summer has settled in by any means, but we are now having to water things, so we are sort of in the ball park.

Last summer, the highlight of our growing season was the mighty cristophine vine, which John nurtured and which fed us well during autumn.  My chum Stéphane the Estate Agent said we should watch out as they are actually perennials, and it would come back.  "What does he know? Pfff!" were some of our comments to that.  But we didn't have much by way of frost over winter, and John strimming the area to prepare to plant his new cristophine plants just seemed to annoy it, and it is Back and it is Angry!  The weather isn't really warm enough yet for it to get truly rampant, but the phrase "Feed me Seymour" is back!

No Mow May is a real thing nowadays, and some people get very tetchy if you don't buy into it wholeheartedly.  I think you have to be careful, and you need to look at your land to see where you can do this, and where you can't.  Some bits of our plots have had a No Mow May more due to the weather and machines falling apart trying to deal with overly luxurious growth.  My nice clear path down the side of the fruit trees to the plantation area and the mud pools has only been kept open by the passage of deer and boar, which now makes it Tic Alley!

It will take us a long time to get this passable again not least as this sort of luxurious growth takes its toll on machines.  Our first trusty ride on lawnmower, who has gone miles round various different gardens, has had to be given a retirement plan of being a small towing tractor, as the mowing pan has rotted away in too many places, and can't be patched any more.  It is fair to say that Maurice has worked hard over the 18 years we have had him, so we can't really complain too much.  The 6 month wait for a new cutting deck is too long to wait however, so we are looking at Plan B.

I will leave you with a display of lovely flowers - where things are happy with the weather conditions, they are thriving, and the climbing rose on the front of the house, the small fragrant rose I bought at Aldi (other cheap supermarkets are available) and was disappointed with last year, bee orchids and lizard orchids are all very happy with life.  And that makes me happy.

I'm planning on bringing in one of the trail cameras during the week, so there could be wildlife pictures and videos next week, you never know!

Have a good week!