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.

 

The Days are drawing in!

We are blessed with a late spurt of good weather and so far October has mostly been lovely - cool overnight, but no frosts just yet, and the days dry and sunny, and not too hot.  The sun is good as it bakes the stones of the house, which acts like a storage heater, and means that we aren't using the point heaters much and aren't too worried that we haven't seen the chimney sweep yet (he comes on Wednesday).  We daren't light the fire until he has done his thing in case.  We did have a small chimney fire many years ago and it scared us witless!!  The conditions mean that we do get some very good sunsets, like this one.

Fruitfulness continues, with some late figs, more walnuts and lots more chestnuts.  I also cut the 7 butternuts and put them on a chair to do their final ripening, before bringing them home on Tuesday, after which the weather is due to get wet.  I made up a nice chestnut crumble recipe during the week and will try it out again tonight to refine it a smidge before writing it into my big Black Book of My Recipes.  The base is red peppers and leek, to which I'm going to add a bit of garlic, and the crumble is chestnuts, butter and cheese.

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Once the butternuts come home, there aren't many crops left at the Garden.  We do have a number of Mooli radishes, and tried one today.  One makes a nice side salad for two as part of a light lunch - it is very crunchy and has a little bit of a kick.  Still no major mushroom discoveries although there was a dodgy bolete in the Garden - a birch bolete probably as it was by the birch tree.  The cracks on the cap are testimony to the dry conditions.  Once the rain starts next week, they could be popping up all over the place!

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As the days get shorter, I return to my indoor orchid obsession.  But I have a problem.  One of the DIY stores in town buys large quantities of ornamental orchids and sells them for a certain price (a bit too elevated for me).  They probably over buy and they don't necessarily look after them too well, so after a while the orchids lose their flowers and look sad, at which point they get sold off half price and without their cachepot.  Then I go in looking for chicken feed, have to go past the orchid pen, and if I have an excess of cash, generally can't help myself as they are a bargain, aren't they?  So while last winter I mithered over my two tiny orchids, now I have three tiny orchids, and five strapping ones (one is a refugee from Chinon).  And I don't have that much space suitable for orchids.

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You've not had a cat photo for a while I'm thinking and actually what better picture for autumn than a totally relaxed cat?  Nibbles is pretty well stone deaf now, so I can get nice and close to take candid photos of her, like this!

Until next week!

 

Mellow fruitfulness, sort of

Last week I was in mid-pudding steaming when I wrote, so I won't leave you in suspense any longer - here are the puddings, cooled after 10 hours of steaming and ready to be wrapped up and left for 2/14 months depending which gets eaten first.  The smaller one is pretty good looking all round, the larger one I clearly didn't wodge down enough, so is a bit crumbly.

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There are still quite a lot of flowers around.  The rudbeckia on the flower border are still going, while the cosmos is just starting to flower - they are always so late for me, other people have dug theirs up already but mine is covered in buds!  In the One Acre Wood, there are small white cyclamen that we transplanted from another woodland about 10 years ago, and they are really coming into their own now.  The ones in the garden around the birch tree have been going since July and show no signs of stopping yet.  They always lift the spirits.

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In terms of fruitfulness, well we have a couple of walnut trees that have produced good looking nuts and we now have two big drying racks well stocked with drying nuts.  Sweet chestnuts are just starting to fall now - the ones that are worth eating, others have been dropping for a while - so we enjoy the guilty pleasure of roasted chestnuts with our aperos.  I also have some interesting savoury crumble ideas tucked away, including leek and red peppers with a savoury chestnut crumble topping... 

The last fruit of the year are always the medlars - still not ripe, but getting there.  They aren't edible raw unless they have been bletted, or left to rot for a bit, but in their unbletted state, I believe you can make a jelly from them.  There is a tree that we know that is coated in them.  Some people also have olive trees in their garden and they are also a very late fruit, and I gather making them edible is quite a process.  I regard them as a pretty curiosity this far north.

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Wildlife is getting more scarce and preparing for winter.  I met this young toad in the Garden, and encouraged it to steer clear of the cats, who miss all the mice in the now harvested and empty maize fields.  The badger preparations for winter continue and as the meadow has been mown now, ready for winter, the entrance to Badger Delvings is pretty obvious.

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It wouldn't be autumn without a few leaves turning colour - this is a Wild Service tree in the One Acre Wood, one of the earliest to turn there and also the species that is likely to produce the best colours for us.

Until next week!

 

Time to reflect

Autumn brings certain pressures, like doing everything in daylight that needs to be done in daylight (it is getting horribly close to the equinox), making all the jam, jelly and juice before things turn, getting stuff into the freezer, fire wood and getting the chimney swept, lifting produce and enjoying heritage open days (next weekend in France).  It does also mean that there is a bit less pressure on preparing things, while grass and some weeds at least are slowing down.  So our Sunday morning marathon gardening stints are getting shorter, and once the midday curfew for loud engines sounds, we can actually take time to reflect and enjoy the hammocks and see what is/has been working.

We are currently enjoying our sweetcorn harvest, although by this time in a fortnight, it should all be eaten or in the freezer.  The little bits get fed to the chickens.

We are coming to the end of our third season working the Garden at The Shack.  About 30 months ago, it was all like this - impenetrable scrub.

We now have three large potager beds, which can now be rotated reasonably well, so back to potatoes in the bed that has corn this year, corn and beans into the middle plot and aubergines, brassicas and peppers, plus broad beans in the top plot, which I have just emptied (haha - there will be more hidden I'm sure) of potatoes.

Then we have a number of leisure zones - the hammock zone, the sitting and being drooled on by cats zone, the place where the picnic bench will go if I ever spot a cheap one in the sales, and the shaded area under the walnuts for high summer.

At the top, by the redundant spotlights, we have the developing flower border with the Fergus Memorial Rose and all sorts of rescue plants, plus a load of annuals that I hope will self seed, but if they don't I will add more seed next year.

Of course scrub will continue to do what it does and grow and encroach into the tamed areas.  That first picture of dense scrub has engulfed a storage bunker we put in down there and haven't seen for about 9 months now!  It's all a work in progress, but today we felt rather good about what we have achieved, not least as we listened to many different types of bird chirping and very little else by way of sound.

Now I must go and make jam, as there are three and a half pounds of stoned and peeled peaches festering in a bowl that need my attention.  Until next week!

 

Culture and critters

It was 31 years and 5 days ago that John and I had a bit of a party at Tynemouth Sailing Club.  We try to do something nice each year to remember the day - this year we chose to visit the newly opened Museum of Modern Art at Fontevraud l'Abbaye.  After I visited the market at la Flèche for urgent milk and butter supplies, plus the where with all for a picnic, we headed down to la Loire, and stopped at Cunault to eat and admire the river.  In a normal year, it should be very sparse at this time, and it was pretty empty, but even a couple of weeks ago, it would have been higher than this, due to the torrential rains down in the Massif Centrale.

I think Museum of Modern Art is a bit of a misnomer - it is actually a museum to house the donated collection of a couple of magpie art collectors, including items from 3,000 BC to 1960s.  It was eclectic and interestingly mixed up.  Of the sculptures, most of the modern pieces were awful apart from some rather whacky chess pieces.  There were some nice 19th and 20th century paintings, some good drawings and an awful lot of rubbish.  Photography without flash was allowed, so here are two pieces I liked.

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We hadn't been to Fontevraud since about 2005 or 2006, and it was clear that restoration and renovation have continued since our last visit.  The Abbey Church itself is always gorgeous and impactful.  It shouldn't be white inside really, it was designed to be bright and painted and with vivid stained glass, but after the Revolution it was used as part of a prison, so the decoration was removed.  I think it is more awesome in its whiteness, but who am I to judge?

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Chaumont sur Loire has an annual garden festival and keeps the best bits and sculptures in the park.  It would appear that Fontevraud wants to do the same.  The art installation in a disused stairwell was rather disturbing, and moved with the breeze.  The wooden fort in the gardens was totally bizarre - I mean, it looks like a really good fort for kids to play in, but you aren't allowed within 3 meters of it as it is delicate.  Pointless more like!

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As Autumn is theoretically now here, we have to be ready for the major harvests (still digging up spuds but should be only one more week of that I hope).  In the orchard, those major harvests are walnuts and (surprisingly) apples.  They aren't particularly nice to eat and they don't look particularly appetising either, but they do make really nice, single variety apple juice.  I need to get a slot at the press and then we can get picking!

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As I admired the relatively clear areas under the trees, I spotted movement in the grass by my feet.  Sure enough, it was an example of my favourite bug of the Autumn, so here are a couple of close ups to admire (probably) him.

I hope no one is squeamish!

 

A whole week of Summer!

Yes, It's true, a whole week that could be considered summery - assuming we gloss over the early morning fog that blotted out the church spire on Wednesday!  It hasn't always been particularly hot, that has only built up over the past four days or so, but the plants are certainly showing their appreciation with set fruits on the chilli plants, female flowers on the butternuts and flowers and tassels on all the sweetcorn now.  Whisper it softly, but we might actually eat some sweetcorn on Thursday if this keeps up!

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We worry about the lack of insects, other than flies, but have been entertained this week by the rather undignified arrival of a baby grasshopper and the antics of a drunken butterfly, gorging on semi-rotten pear. 

There is a particular type of fly round here, smaller than a bluebottle, not as dangerous as a horsefly and not buzzy, but unpleasant for all that.  It sits on you, then if you don't knock it off quickly, it starts to chew on you.  Evil wee so and so's!

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The cats have different ways of coping with summer.  Donald the Love Bug thinks that sharing our hammock with us is the best thing ever, until he gets it to himself and that is just paradise!  I can take it down gently and start rolling it up and only get rid of him by prodding him with the rolled chunk.  Even then he is reluctant to move.  Poirot may be older (we aren't sure), but her thing is sprawling on steps, either indoors to keep cool, or in full sun for the sheer joy of it.

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Anyway, that is enough sitting with a computer on a lovely sunny, summer afternoon/evening.  I'm off to enjoy sitting out under the gazebo with a glass of something chilled.

Next weekend is the Comice, so things might be delayed a day.

 

Apologies for the delay

Yesterday was a birthday - not mine - and meant a bit of celebrating, a bit of exercise, and by the time we were done with that, I could not face being near the computer (actually I was tied to the juice pot, as we had 4 pounds of elderberries doing their thing).

The weather has not been inspiring once again, which has resulted in two cats finding their inner kitten/getting stir crazy and needing to run around like crazy.  Normally the lizard population provides summer entertainment, but this year we have needed the help of the mouse on a long string, a piece of rolled up newspaper and the Red Dot.  "They say" that summer will restart this week, but first it was today, then tomorrow, now Wednesday seems to be Summer - we'll see!

There have been two flower events this week worthy of note.  During the week the final bud opened on the large red orchid I bought from Aldi - this is much bigger than my other orchids, so is having to live on the kitchen window sill for the moment.  I have bought another like this one, but it was half price as the flowers had finished and the shop (not Aldi) didn't want the ugly thing sitting around.  We'll see what happens with that one too.  The other flower event is the first flower on one of the many chilli plants we have knocking around the garden out of the range of chicken beaks.  What these plants really need is heat and sun, so fingers crossed from Wednesday (bit of a theme developing here).

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The potato harvest is in full swing at the plot, and as I moved the weed suppressant matting that makes potato crops possible, I found another of my little garden helpers - a rather fine baby slow worm (less scary than the sloughed snake skin I found last week).  The first sweetcorn - the six or so that came from the first sowing of 51 seeds - are starting to look promising.  I think they may be ready before the end of the month.  The second sowing are starting to show their male flowers and there are hints of the female flowers (the tassels and the cobs).  They won't be ready until September, unless the weather really bucks its ideas up.

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We have been joined by yet another chicken this week.  Following our purchase of Mac and Jak in the Spring, and being invaded by the Economic Migrant in July, we have been prevailed upon to provide shelter to an old girl who was left on her own when her chums died off (after a suitable quarantine period).  She needs company, we were told, she is pining for the company of other chickens we were told.  Meet Auntie Mo, the chicken that walks by herself.

The Birthday Weekend started with a tasting at a craft brewery in Chinon on Friday night, on Saturday we went shoe shopping and won (well, found two pairs that were considered acceptable), and Sunday was lunch at Buffalo Grill.  They are formulaic, but the meat is good quality, the chips are very nice, they have a full range of steak sauces, and the puddings are magnificent.  Of course after that lot, you then need exercise, so we walked round the wildlife sanctuary lake at la Monnerai, which was new to us.  Using the free telescopes, we could admire egrets and cormorants on an island in the middle of the lake.  The wildlife lake is also less visited, and there were mobs of people around the leisure lake, as you would expect on a Sunday afternoon in August!

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So apologies for the delay, and until next Sunday, which should be Summer!

 

 

A beano and evidence of a visitor

Now I don't mean the comic, quality as that is, I use beano in the sense of a day's outing, such as used to be taken by workers from the East End of London, because I took a rare day off - needless to say the weather was not propitious but as a couple of things had been booked, Tuesday it was. 

I went with a chum, and first of all we stopped at the lac de Rillé, an artificial lake (supposedly the largest in Touraine) which is normally about two thirds empty at this time of year.  Not in 2021!  The trees around had been damaged by the storms with strong winds in June and July and there was still some tidying up going on.  It looks a lovely place for walks later in the year and over winter, with a bird hide.  We then went to Langais for lunch and a mooch around, admiring the outside of the Chateau, the inside of the Church and a very lovely bronze sculpture on the outside of the Church.  I couldn't photograph it, but the Church had the dodgiest ever crucifix above the altar, made by a local art group.  The pose on the Cross was actually more #paintmelikethosefrenchgirls, while the back was decorated with Nespresso capsules.

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Last week I was worrying about blight.  The potatoes escaped it seems as they were second earlies and therefore pretty well over before it hit.  I've resorted to the French trick of removing leaves, growing tips and anything that displeases me, and at the moment we are under control.  Evidence that the potatoes are looking good below, as well as a view of ripening tomatoes as proof!

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The Garden and the Meadow are good for wildlife and we find lots of evidence and see lots of things.  This week's interesting finds were a large and beautiful red admiral sunning himself on a log pile, a comma butterfly (I think) gorging itself on the buddleia, and the sloughed skin of a reasonably sized grass snake under the matting that we cover the potato plot with.

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Some know of my challenges with chilli plants - the fact that chickens eat them is a particular annoyance.  The fact that my brother has a couple in a pot on his terrace and despite being planted in the same soil at the same time as mine, his always do better, is even more irritating.  So it is with great pride that I announce the first flower bud on my chilli plants this year.  Of course they need sun and heat, which is lacking this year, but it is a start!

Incidentally, if you are reading this on a computer rather than a phone, if you click/double click on the photos you get a bigger, better view of them.

Until next week!

 

 

Struggling against the elements

Last Saturday the weather changed, and summer arrived very quickly and very firmly.  No rain and temperatures up to 30ºC by Sunday and through the week, so much so in fact, that I had to mow a lawn in the morning, as while there was still some dew, it would be too hot to mow in the afternoon, when shade temperatures reached 34ºC, and you aren't always in the shade when mowing.  The farmers also took advantage of the window of hot, sunny weather to get the wheat, barley, oat and colza crops in and the straw baled.  As Benoit, purveyor of fine milk, butter and cream pointed out, once bailed, the straw was safe.  Our weird garden cactus decided it was time to flower and the Poundshop Lily finally bloomed - all very beautiful (and smelly in the case of the lily).  The blue hibiscus at Chinon was also looking very glamorous.

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The hot weather coincided with Mac going broody - I've never had a black chicken do that before!  Bridie does it at least twice a year, but she is a freeloading bantam, Mac is one of my good chickens, or so I thought.  Actually she is nicer than Dummer used to be, so while I wear gauntlets to lift her out of the coop, she isn't so savage in her attacks.  She wanders around the garden looking for bugs, and aggressively preening her wing feathers at us, while making the chuntering sounds you hear from velociraptors in Jurassic Park films.  Her eye might look odd in the photo, but it is totally fine, she was just caught badly and I didn't get another picture as good.

Anyway, one chicken broody means one less egg each day, and having to fight for those there are, so it is a pain.  Sudden heat means the weather isn't totally stable, and of course on Friday evening it broke.  The gusts of wind knocked over the lily, breaking off one of the flower stems - that is now in a beer bottle on the outside kitchen window ledge (we couldn't have it indoors as it smelt so strong, and lily pollen can be fatal to cats).  Since Saturday morning we have had another 9mm of rain, and that is before counting how much fell this afternoon during the monsoon between 3pm and 5pm.  All that makes the following comments and photo inevitable - blight!  The tomato plants are laden with fruit, but how much will ripen before the plants succumb completely remains to be seen.  I've picked two near ripe tomatoes and more are colouring up, but these two are nearly ripe, and yet riddled with blight and inedible and can't even be added to the compost or they will spread the disease.  I could be making an awful lot of chutney, except that you need other ingredients and I am not going to waste my shallots on jars of chutney that won't get eaten.

Once I had removed most of the affected leaves and fruit, I took a few more photos of the vegetable plots to try to inspire myself again.  Here is the sweetcorn looking impressive and with climbing beans planted among them as recommended by the Radio 2 gardeners, the butternut squashes that survived the snails starting to look business-like and the big square with newly planted brassicas, the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines (the latter two hidden in the main by tomatoes).

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The tomato news, a pretty vile weather forecast for the next week and a wet weekend drove us to drink.  Tant pis!

 

The camera isn't always there to hand

Well what's that about?  Only that the Patrouille de France - the French answer to the Red Arrows - have been based at our local airport for the past few days.  They arrive, they do a practice of their air show, they go off and do their air show at Saumur, they come back, they get a delivery of air force kerosene, they do another practice, then they go and buzz the Tour de France finish before heading home.  I've heard them three times and seen them twice - in formation - and not had a camera of any sort to hand to capture the moment.  Rather splendid though.  It was easier to capture us both relaxing in different forms of hammock at midday today, after working hard.

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We are getting different flowers out now.  My favourite cultivated flowers, agapanthus, are coming out by the front door.  The first cyclamen have started to show in the lawn, making mowing so much more challenging.  The gladioli are coming out but are a disappointing yellow - perhaps the red ones are the ones that got munched by snails.  Last year in the UK, when I could still get there and visit a Poundshop, and could bring back bulbs, I bought a couple of mystery lily bulbs.  They didn't do much last year but will be magnificent soon.

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I worry a bit about our older cats and that they can be a bit lazy, so last weekend, I invested in a couple of things to arouse their interest.  While Poirot has made it clear that all this is beneath her, Nibbles has taken a very keen interest in finding and catching the Red Spot, public enemy number one for all cats.  She has also taken to worshipping the planter that the giant catnip plant is wedged in at the moment - I don't think she can climb into the planter, or it could get very ugly.  She is not a pretty spaced out person.

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We lifted the shallot harvest on Wednesday - magnificent though I say so myself - and they are now drying on a nice bulb drying tray I got from a chum locally - thanks Brigitte!  I am concerned about the spuds.  They have flowered and there is a lot of die back.  I foolishly didn't read the packet properly and these are second earlies, so I am hoping they are doing what comes naturally, as the other explanation is Blight, which is Bad.

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Have a good week!

 

A promise of things to come

Before we get onto that, a word on chickens.  Muck left us for the chicken run in the sky - brown chickens never seem as robust as other types, so we watch Brass with a certain concern.  Currently we are home to 7 fowl - Delenn the Doyenne shown below, demonstrating that you don't have to be young and agile to get to roost on the high perch, old, creaky and fat can do it too.  Then there is Brass, and Mac and Jak the newbies for this year, Bridie the freeloading bantam, and The Asylum Seeker from next door.  I was a bit concerned to find another of next door's marching around the garden just now when I popped out for some bay leaves - we are not going to be a sanctuary for discontented chickens!

British visitors are starting to turn up in the Pays de la Loire, as restrictions ease and a pent up need to visit their properties becomes overwhelming.  It is lovely to see them, although we panic about getting gardens just so in the days before they arrive.  I was doing one garden, and had time to stop to admire a bank of some sort of pea flower along the side of a lake, and a yellow wagtail marching up and down the landing stage (believe me, that is what it is, the photo is just fuzzy).  Monday night the President will make announcements and that may stop the tide again - and not exactly a tide, just a few more faces in the area!

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We've found evidence of very welcome visitors to The Garden in the past week.  I do not see them when I visit, well I make a noise and am generally accompanied by cats, so have to find other ways to know they are there.  In the photos below are two different thrush anvils and the shells of the snails they have beaten out of them.  It is so great to see that, as I've not seen a real live thrush for ages, and they are such beautiful and useful birds.

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The promise of good things to come includes something else I've never seen before.  The sweet chestnuts are in flower and normally the flowers are high up so you see the long tails of essentially male flowers with their fluffy petals, and if you are a hayfever sufferer with a problem with tree pollen, you tend to suffer too.  But get up close and personal, and you can also see the female flowers, miniature spiny cocoons where the nuts will form during the next three months.  The first sweetcorn are also starting to produce male flowers (round here castrating maize is a thing, but I'm not going to bother), and signs of where the cobs will start forming very soon - that makes me hungry and yearn for them to get on with it!!  Finally the sweet peppers (or bell peppers) are in flower and I've spotted some tiny fruits too, so that will be something else yummy soon.  Ideally a bit of sun and the tomatoes will start to ripen too!

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We've been working on a flower border in the garden, filling it mainly with things we have rescued from compost heaps or have been sitting in pots for ages or packets of seeds that seemed like a good idea at the time, with the honourable exception of the Fergus Memorial Rose.  On the left is an early shot, on the right, how it is looking today - full of flowers for bees and insects and full and blousy.

Finally a gratuitous photo of one man and his favourite machine making a noise this morning during the window of opportunity for using loud machines.  Useless scrub has been pushed back for a day or two.