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.

 

Lockdown III, Day 10 - a trip to The Shack

We are having rather nice weather at the moment here - very cold overnight, which isn't so good, but lovely sunny days.  If you can find a place out of the wind to sit and contemplate, it is very nice indeed.  I sat under the birch tree at The Shack and while cuddling a cat, admired a humming bird moth sipping nectar and hopefully pollinating our broad beans.  As with humming birds themselves, it is very difficult to take a good photograph as they move so quickly, and certainly so with a phone!

This delightful reverie was broken when cat wars broke out on the shallot bed - thank goodness I planted so many, as four got well trashed with two large, fat cats rolling around on them!  Quite a good action shot though, if I say so myself!

Two of my favourite flowers are out at the moment.  Firstly we have a lovely big patch of honesty by The Shack, in the shade between another birch tree and the yukkas.  The purple flowers are a lovely colour and very simple, while the seed pods, later in the year, are pretty and dramatic oval disks.  You can peel them apart to make a nice dried flower/seed head display.

The other is periwinkle - a lovely deep blue flower.  In the garden at home we have a variegated version - the leaves are yellow and green - but I prefer the plain green version, which grows in profusion at the top of the orchard.

Lockdown III, Day 9 - that orchid rant

It's been a long day and I had to be out and about rather earlier than normal so got the full benefit of the hard frost and scraping the car, but when you are faced with a view like this when you arrive where you need to be, really it's not so bad!

Back in March, I introduced Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper - our two new chickens.  I think one was hatched a bit earlier than the other, but anyway, yesterday, finally, when I let them all out for their daily vandalism session and checked the coop, I found our first new Black Chicken egg!  Isn't it sweet?  As there was another today, I know what we are having for lunch tomorrow!!

Back in November, when we were all enjoying Confinement Lite or Lockdown II, I noticed that one of my miniature orchids was doing something interesting.  I posted a few photos of it before the end of the year - you can see a nice "branch" with lumps on it which might turn into flowers or more "branches".

Well, now we are in April, and my mother's rather larger orchid has had a whole new flower branch and two large flowers, which have been out for a number of weeks in the interim.  Yesterday, we finally have an open flower!  Talk about taking your time!  I've bought more orchid "compost" or a bag of dodgy looking bits of bark, but don't like to disturb things while they are doing their best to bloom.  On this basis, I will be repotting in October!!

O so pretty and o so tantalising!

 

Lockdown III, Day 8 - down at The Shack

Sunday morning is generally our big time for doing work at The Shack - there is a period of 2 hours between 10am and midday when we can use petrol motors, so John can play with chainsaw, rotavator, strimmer, brush-cutter and other noisy things, while I supervise cats and do "stuff".  Yesterday and overnight we had the first proper rain for ages, so the machines didn't come out to play but we did have a good check round and cuddled cats.

I sorted out my box of seeds about a month ago, throwing out most opened packets and anything over 7 years old (!).  Those between 5 and 7 years old and interesting (10 packets of seeds for kale and while it may be a super food, I'm still not going to grow it) I took to The Shack along with a stack of 6 - 8 inch pots.  A couple of weeks ago, I filled 7 pots with my miracle horse poo and leaf mould mix from the bin, and sowed the whole packet of each of cat mint, dill, coriander, basil, lettuce Webbs Wonder, chard Bright Lights and Autumn King carrots.  It felt rather good to be quite so profligate!  Anyway, despite pretty awful germinating conditions - first unseasonably hot, then unseasonably cold - today's inspection showed that so far at least the chard and the carrots are coming up!  Yes, I have spotted there is an interloper among the carrots - it has been removed.

Inspection of the bed planted with garlic, shallots and Hispi cabbage showed really good growth on the shallots, well apart from a Donald shaped gap!  I'm sure the delayed ones will catch up in due course and no one was rolling around on the wet soil today!

Things aren't so good on the fruit front.  While I have a small Victoria plum tree in the garden at home that is wrapped round with fleece at the moment to protect the fruitlets, the big tree at the end of the wildflower meadow does not have that luxury.  You can see the fruitlets are nearly black and when I picked one off and dissected it with my thumb nail, it was clearly unviable and frosted.

The cherry blossom has also been affected - I'm hoping that it is just that the petals have been fried by the frost and that the fruit will somehow survive, but with more nights of frost over the next week, I fear my ability to stand and scoff a kilo of cherries while allegedly doing something useful in the meadow will be severely curtailed this year.

Tomorrow I am likely to have a rant about orchids.  Just to warn you.

 

Lockdown III, Day 3 - running around doing stuff

There are things going on that can't be written about here in an open forum, but suffice it to say that trying to get work done while also trying to sort out "stuff" for the other thing has meant a dull and really rather stressful day, but progress has been made on both fronts.

Instead I will see what photos I haven't posted that people might like and comment on them.

18 months ago, we bought a selection of cheap bulbs and planted them at The Shack to add a bit of colour to the bottom of the main plot.  We are completely convinced that we bought a selection of bulbs that would produce white flowers.  Perhaps they came up white last year, I really can't remember, but this year, the only ones to flower so far are these rather fun frilly, yellow tulips.

Again my memory isn't brilliant, but we transplanted our rhubarb to The Shack either 18 months or two years ago.  It is at the bottom of the plot and near a hedge, so in theory the wettest place and the coolest, which we hope will work in our favour.  At home, the garden is too dry and sunny for it to do really well.  Last year we left it alone, but this year, looking at the growth, I am hopeful of a bit of a crop!

This is a view I never get tired of, it changes with the seasons and with the weather and makes my heart lighter.  This is the view from by the entrance to the One Acre Wood, and I love it.

Day 4 may not have a blog - if that is the case, apologies in advance!

 

It's back! Confinement Blog! Day 1

From yesterday evening at 7pm, France entered its third Covid lockdown.  Many call this Lockdown Lite, as there are fewer restrictions in some ways, although reading through the rules in detail this morning I found a big difference to last time.  We don't need attestations for travel up to 10km from home between 6am and 7pm this time, so we can get to The One Acre Wood (off limits last spring) and The Shack without paperwork.  We just need to carry our residency permits with us.

So what is different?  I cannot get to la Flèche market, I will be deprived of my raw butter, my croissants and my suppliers of chorizo, serrano ham and rotisserie chicken legs.  This is because while I can travel up to 30km for purchases of premier necessité (i.e. food, plants), I can't go over departmental boundaries, and thus la Sarthe is closed to me.  Not happy about that at all.

Still today we could go to the Shack and prepare the beds for tomatoes, squashes and courgettes, and sweetcorn.  The sweetcorn bed had been manured and rotavated, so just needed to be levelled and covered until we sow later this month once the cold snap is over.  The tomato and squash beds had been rotavated and covered, but then needed manure adding and recovered.  All ready now!

From the Shack, we went to the One Acre Wood to pay homage to the King of the Forest who is just starting to get his new leaves on.

Further down the hill in the Wood, we spotted the first spikes and buds of lily of the valley coming through - in total I think there were about 7 showing but there will be many more coming up in the next couple of weeks.

At home, there is a lot of blossom.  While the plum is now over (and we will have to protect the tree overnight for the next three nights of sharp frost to protect any tiny set fruit), the pear is in full swing and the first of the apple trees is starting to have open blossom.  The cherry next door is coated and has a strong perfume (see - no sign of Covid for me!).

Although this week might be a bit erratic (major changes in the offing in some aspects of our lives), I will try to do my daily confinement blog, although I know many of my readers are now starting to enjoy ever more freedom!  We felt for you in your extended lockdown, feel for us in ours!

Spring 2021 - still not locked down again, but for how long?

Except I'm not going to bother to write about that, because as and when our new lockdown happens, I will need something to write about!  Instead I will point out the joys of spring and rural life.  One of the key "joys" of rural life are fresh eggs - well our 3 feckless girls and the freeloading bantam seem to have given up laying eggs, so just over a week ago, it was my job to get new stock - meet Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper!  So called as in general the black and yellow chickens we have had have been evil so and sos.  We shall see!

Spring brings blossom and each year it is a race between the peach and the plum blossom to see which comes out first.  In the past, it was actually always the apricot first but we don't have an apricot tree any more, so here is plum blossom.

The cowslips are also out and will be for a while yet.  I'm not sure why some become more exotically coloured than the usual yellow - I assume cross fertilisation with primulas - but it does make for some very lovely combinations.  I am particularly fond of the deep red ones.

We are now down to 6 cats - three girls at home with us, and three boys in the country.  Fergus Sunshine Superman succumbed to an aggressive tumour on his hip three weeks ago.  It is interesting watching how the three remaining boys are coping with his absence.  We hadn't realised he was pack leader, so there is some posturing going on about who is now Top Cat.  S Clause spent a lot of time looking for Fergus in the garden, which was rather sad.  Donald has gone just that little bit more loopy.

Earlier this week was the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Vieil Baugé.  It should have been marked by an academic symposium, but Covid scuppered that - it should happen in September instead.  Floral tributes were laid however, to mark the turning point of the Hundred Years War.

If we are locked down again, I will restart the daily blog.  If we aren't, I'm afraid this is going to be a bit hit and miss as there is a lot going on chez nous at the moment, but not much that makes interesting reading on a daily basis!!  As they say nowadays - Stay Safe!

 

So here it is! Christmas!

And a very Happy Christmas to you all!

For many it won't be a normal Christmas, or what they had planned, and for anyone in that situation, my heart goes out to you!  For us it will be pretty normal, as it is generally just us two with cats and chickens, and phone calls/computer time with friends and family around the place.  Boxing Day sees us being social and that is where we will see the difference, as we will have to be home by 8pm for curfew.

We would normally broach Christmas cake on Christmas Eve - something to look forward to!

(This is actually the one we are giving as a present, but it is prettier than our one!)

Tomorrow we will be out and about picking the sprouts I've been growing for John - they are a bit bigger than this now, amazing what a difference a week has made!

We will also be having major cat cuddles with the Boys in the Country.

And we will go to the One Acre Wood to make offerings to the Wood Gods and enjoy the fresh air and views.

However you spend your day, enjoy the moment and don't regret what might have been.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 45 - make do and mend

Another dreary day here in Anjou - not cold but dull, damp and dreary.  No reason to go outside other than to feed the chickens, and realistically it would have been a good day to stay in bed with a box set of DVDs, except we have lost the remote control for the DVD player.  There are about 5 more places to look for it, all of which involve major efforts moving furniture and having a jolly good hoover, which isn't appealing on a Sunday.

I did spend the morning doing a bit of filing and also looking at paperwork for my French business - I am further on with that, but ground to a halt when I hit the brick wall that is the vicious circle of:

• log in to your user area
• Don't recognise your username or password
• Opt to change password as "forgotten"
• Change password
• Password changed successfully - log in using your username and password
• log in using username and new password
• Don't recognise your username or password
• repeat ad nauseam
• Aaaargh!

Clearly I am going to have to brave the URSSAF helpline!

After lunch, it was down to make do and mend - FIVE pairs of trousers patched and sewn up, plus a jacket.  We can now go about in public without being in danger of flashing flesh or losing keys and coins.  It would be nice to buy a new pair of jeans, but a combination of guilt at the production process of denim, horror at the price of many varieties, horror at the bad fit of most other varieties available to us and not being able to get near a Marks and Spencer are ranged against me.  Even if I could get to an M&S (other clothes stores are available), the likelihood of them having the right cut and size has generally proven to be 1 in 3.  John has a better choice open to him as Espace Emeraud utility trousers (other shops are available) are pretty standard and suit him down to the ground - it is more a matter of hating buying new clothes and being mean (where clothes are concerned).

He is also mending a dining chair (not ours), so it is more than just keeping our money away from purveyors of clothes.

Clearly I'm not going to grace this post with pictures of mended jeans or work trousers, but as a Sunday treat, here is a photo of orchids and bromeliads as they should be seen in all their tropical glory.  Happy Sunday!

Autumn Lockdown - Day 40 - intellectually that should be it

Quarante - Quarantine - 40 days of lockdown, and in theory that should be it, although the French government never said that it would be over today, but next Tuesday it should be, except...  Those pesky daily new cases figures are not getting down to the 5,000 a day that would mean they feel they have this under control.  I suspect a slight alleviation of restrictions on Tuesday next week, and then another lockdown about the 5th January.  I'm not putting money on it though.

Today has been a day of little jobs, but that make things progress.  This morning we cut more bits off the cherry tree.  The next thing will be to get the main trunk down and then we will have to decide what to do with that bit of the garden, which has always been very sheltered due to the size of the tree.

I also designed the Christmas card, ready to take to the printers tomorrow, and wrote the Christmas round robin - yes, I know everyone sneers at them, but actually I like to know what is going on in people's lives, beyond the fact that they ARE alive, and do as you would be done by and all that!  After lunch we visited the Boys in the Country for much needed cat cuddles and then to the One Acre Wood to secure some firewood.  One of the delights of the wood, is that it is on a ridge of hills overlooking the Loir valley, and we have a splendid view for miles.  It was looking particularly pleasing today.

It's about time to reassess how the orchid is coming on, and you can see that there are some interesting developments.  The first three buds on the new flower stem would appear to be branches that will have flowers on, while the next couple are starting to look a lot like flower buds and slowly swelling.  It is very odd, for days nothing seems to change, and then all of a sudden I notice something different.

If you want to compare, the first photo was on November 9th (Day 11) and the second on November 23rd (Day 25).

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 38 - Sunday ramblings

Another cold, miserable, dank, late autumn/early winter day, and again so hard to get motivated to do anything!!  However after lunch, duty called.  John went off in one direction to see a client, but failed to extract money.  I went off in another to feed the Boys in the Country.  All four turned up quickly and the tin of beef and carrot chunks in gravy disappeared with a lot of slurping noises.  I've tried recording it, but it is the stuff of nightmares.  I'll spare you for the moment (or until I work out how to transfer the sound file in).  Once all the bowls were broadly clean, I put on my wellies and went out to beat the bounds - it was not a day to sit down for a love in.  I found a few raspberries clinging on and the couple I ate were very tasty!

Further down on my wandering, I found I had missed a last courgette.  The local slugs and snails hadn't, so I decided to leave it, as slugs and snails are food for my trusty toads that also live down that way.  Just one small one wouldn't make a meal for us anyway!

I then went round the other two plots, escorted as ever by at least one cat, to make sure all was safe and secure.  The badgers hadn't been out since the last rain (which would have been this morning), so there were no traces of them.

While we have perhaps between two thirds and three quarters of the wild flower meadow under control, there is still a chunk that needs to be got back from bad scrub.  If you leave rewilding to itself, essentially you end up with invasive scrub, which is great for brambles, mice, rats and other stuff, but doesn't favour wild orchids, the plants for butterflies and doesn't seem to be popular with the badgers either.  Next year we will try to claim back another 10 to 20 meter deep stretch of the meadow.

Finally, with a nod to the Festive Season, I share the progress on growing the brussels sprouts for John's Christmas dinner - they are small, but they are there!

Like that they even look faintly appealing to me!!