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.

 

Day 55 of lockdown - not long to go!

From 00:01, the strict lockdown is over, from tomorrow I can go this far if I want to!

And I won't have to fill in an attestation either!  Joy unconfined!  Except it isn't that easy, is it?  The virus is still out there, we still have to social-distance, we need to have a facemask around in case we need it and we need to be very careful.  I'm not sure that we need to be alert (your country needs lerts…), but we mustn't forget and we must be vigilant.  For me, the pleasure will not be having to worry each time I leave the house as to whether my journey is necessary or should be justified.  The number of imaginary conversations I have had in my head in case of being stopped by the gendarmes!  But normal things can happen, like visits to the vet, the hairdresser, even to family within the magic circle!

Today has been a tad annoying.  I wanted to carry on planting potatoes as the first lot are up and taunting me, but as soon as I got to where they need to be planted, the heavens opened and it rained solidly for 30 minutes.  It eased off for long enough for me to pop out and pick a couple of kilos of broad beans and then started up again, until I got home.  This afternoon has been hot and sticky, so I happily potted on a bunch of seedlings and prepared a raised bed for something (not decided what) while we wait for the next batch of storms.  There are red alerts for rain and flooding further south.

I thought I would use up a few pictures that I have taken for the lockdown blog but haven't used, even if they are rather nice.  So here is my mass of red hot pokers - a rather rampant variety that we brought over from Worcester, and have moved around a bit.  This is probably still not the best place for them.

Did you know that lobelia overwinter if it doesn't get too frosty and you don't chuck them out as soon as they start to fade?  I think this lot are from last year, but could be from 2 years ago, and still going strong!  They also self-seed.

Despite the hedgehog, the proliferation of snails, slugs and chickens in our garden means that growing strawberries in the ground is never very successful, so we have them in hanging baskets.  We have a few Mariguettes (best tasting ever, but hard to get hold of the plants), the infamous Korona variety that we bought just before lockdown and this unknown variety that we got from Aldi last year, that has unusual pink flowers.  Can't remember what the fruit are like, but they are pretty!

Anyway, this is the last episode of Lockdown Blog, but as reactions on Facebook seemed to be that I should continue with this entertainment, a new series will start tomorrow.  All I've got to do is think up a snappy name for it...

Release diaries?  Waiting for the 2nd Wave?  Freedom blog?  Wait and see!

Day 53 of lockdown - a sad and worrying day

Actually the day started well - John put in a sterling morning's work on the extra space needed for the potato bed, while I mowed the lawn, so we used the fine part of the day well.  I also had a bit of a go through one of the raised beds, removing self-seeded tomato plants - one of the dangers of home made compost, as nothing kills tomato seeds.  Something else that doesn't disappear in the compost bin is the outer layer of teabags - you can see what gets left behind here.  We are not pretentious with using loose leaf tea, we are helping our soil!

This afternoon was less interesting weather-wise, so I decided that the 7½ pounds of (mostly) stoned cherries I had been hoarding for a year or two finally ought to be turned into jam, lots of jam.  Cherry jam is a bit of a pain, and I refuse to pay the extra for jam sugar (inner tight-fisted peasant coming out there), so I add a handful of frozen blackcurrants to the mix to provide pectin.  It is still not the hardest set jam but it is lovely in tarts and on brioche!  Here it is cooking away.

None of that is sad or worrying I hear you say, and you'd be right.  While I was fighting the good fight with the cherry jam, there was a murder in the road outside our house.  Our neighbour's cat, who gave birth a couple of days ago, was outside, as were her owner and another neighbour.  She was sniffing around on the road, when a brown car came round the bend at the bottom of the road on two wheels, drove at speed (despite the 50km speed limit and approaching junction at the road, swerved and deliberately hit and killed the cat before speeding off through a stop junction, presumably to see how many more the b@st@rd could kill as he sped through the centre of the village.  Neither of us saw it, but John got a blow by blow description from our neighbours, who are naturally very upset and shocked.  John ended up cleaning the road.  Our girls are going to get the road safety lecture this evening, although they will likely ignore us.

Sometimes people are awful shits.

Day 50 of lockdown - being a good peasant

As we move into the eighth and possibly last week of serious lockdown, I thought I would review how our attempts at being good peasants were coming on.  We sowed loads of seeds at the being of April, but with lockdown, we have been much better at looking after them as they developed.  Some are now getting a bit urgent to be put into the ground, and once we get to next Monday, it should be easier to get that sorted.  In the meantime, I have 20 sweet corn pulling away and needing their final home as soon as I can - not a brilliant success rate you may say, but none of the packets of seed were acquired less than 3 years ago, so I think it is pretty good actually!

The sweetcorn are actually a lot bigger than that, but I can't find the photo, or perhaps I didn't photograph them recently.  We will also have lots of chillies, tomatoes, butternut squash and a few courgettes.

I was also able to trade seedlings for gossip, but couldn't possibly repeat any of it here for once!  The strawberries all have tiny fruits while the raspberries and tayberries are loaded.  There are early season figs developing nicely, black currants, red currants and lots of Granny Smith apples set.  There are also pears and two plums but it is still too early to say what sort of a quince year it is going to be.  We are hoping for a good one!

Day 49 of lockdown - I met a frog

But before I get on to the frog, I should point out that the weather cheered up yesterday afternoon and aperos were taken in the garden, surrounded by chickens and guarded by Nibbles.  It was good to be out in the fresh air, although by 8:50pm, when we were trying to get Zola in for the night, somewhere within earshot there was a most tremendous row going on.  Zola was fascinated, which made scooping her up and getting her in a bit easier.

We were promised a hot and sunny day today, but I think "day" was over-egging it a bit.  We have had a lovely afternoon, warm and rather sticky and are forecast storms over night.  Anyway a dry day meant both of us were out dealing with lawns that had enjoyed last week's rain, indeed enjoyed last week's rain a bit too much in my opinion! 

One thing that loves hot and wet weather is bamboo - people plant it as they think it will make a nice and quick growing screen.  Yes, it does, but it is also a highly invasive, non-native species that turns into a right thug.  The stems in the picture below are about 3 to 4cm in diameter, they can go up about 4 to 5 metres, they spread by sending suckers underground that then pop up as far as 3 metres away from the parent visible stem and grow at a frightening speed.  The low one in the centre of this photo is only 2 weeks old and already 1 metre high.

And so to the frog that I met after I had finished mowing and was inspecting my work.  When I observed him, he was still and quiet, but as soon as I moved away, he started hurling abuse at me.  It put me in mind of my favourite joke about the Wide Mouthed Frog, but as it needs appropriate visuals, I will leave it there.

Day 46 of lockdown - a strange bank holiday

Yes, it's May 1st - celebrating workers.  Normally in France on May 1st, it is difficult to avoid people selling sprigs of lily of the valley, and if you are in a big city, the unions, the Communists and the Front Nationale (or Rassemblement Nationale as they now like to be called) are all out demonstrating at the wonder of the common man and the evilness of all governments of whatever complexion.  But this year it is all different.  I was strangely moved to receive a sprig of lily of the valley from the boulangerie to thank me for my fidelity through the current crisis - of course I would be faithful to them, they are the cornerstone of my morning!

The unions decided that standing on your balcony banging a cooking pan was a good way to demonstrate this year (and sod any health workers who live nearby who might be trying to sleep, or indeed any babies and their frazzled parents).  The Communists were more into sending electronic bunches of lilies of the valley to sympathisers - I've received a few today!  Marine le Pen gave her usual press conference rant to the massed media this morning and for once I kind of smiled.  She was wearing a mask so you couldn't read her lips, and her voice was very muffled behind the high quality mask she was wearing so it was hard to understand what she was saying (a bonus on any day).  One reporter asked her why she was against all the government strategy, and if she had been in power, surely she would have closed things down as well?  As far as I could tell her response was yes, they closed things down, which she would have done too, but a) they did it a month too late and b) they aren't her.  The wonders of hindsight...

The Day of the Workers is the day that NOTHING at all happens in France, no papers, nothing.  So apart from odd farming noises as animals still need to be fed, it is extraordinarily quiet out there, more than a normal lockdown day.  And quite cold.  Clearly birds are starving as I put 4 fat balls out in the feeder this morning and by mid afternoon half the volume had gone.  I went out just now to release the chickens and there was perhaps half a fat ball left.  Those sparrows are greedy so and sos sometimes!

Finally, a photo from earlier in the week of my favourite irises that come up at the edge of the wildflower meadow.  I keep thinking I really must lift a corm or 3 once they have flowered to bring home - I'm sure they are getting too congested where they are!

Day 42 of lockdown - a change in the weather

Lockdown has been reasonably tolerable because of the lovely weather this spring (although I guess we will pay for it later in the year).  There have been few days with rain or mist, and while we had the cold east wind (the Bises), it was tempered by the strong sunshine.  The lovely light and the warmth have meant that sitting in the garden or strolling around the garden admiring new growth have been good ways to shake off itchy feet and feelings of doom.  But all good things come to an end and a depression (meteorological) is coming through bringing storms.  Just after lunch we could see them lining up further south in this screen grab from the lightningmaps.org website.

Then they got closer and I could look at the map and see where the lightning struck as I heard the thunder outside (that really is quite fun to do, if you are a sad Herbert like me!).

We've had 5mm of rain during the afternoon and the air is now humid and rather cooler.  Being outside is less of a distraction, which is a shame as I have now finished my report, and don't know where the next work is coming from!

I have had another welcome distraction this afternoon, as I was approached by an academic researcher who is looking at British Art and the Spanish Civil War as to whether we had anything in my Dad's archives that might add interest to his thesis.  While I found nothing of interest to him, I did enjoy going back through the stuff I have written up to date, and thought I perhaps ought to go through my "To Do When There Is Nothing That Will Pay Bills" box of stuff and move that project on a bit.  Surely lockdown is the time to get that sort of thing done, and I should be grateful for the chance to crack on with it?

Looking back over little projects in this run of blogs, I think I posted photos earlier this month of a tray of modules sown with butternut squash seeds.  Half of the seeds had been stored in the fridge and half in a paper bag in the seed box that lives in the living room.  I think it is now time to reveal the result of the experiment - 6/12 of the fridge stored seeds sprouted, compared to 12/12 of those in the bad in the living room.  Now I have to decide what to do with 18 butternut squash seedlings.

 

Day 40 of lockdown - baking failure

Day 40 - this is closely related to quarantine, which indeed can be related to the French word for 40 (quarante) so wouldn't it be nice if this was nearly the end?  But no, we have another 15 days of this to go as a minimum, and it isn't really clear what "normal" life will be like on the 11th May here in France.  I guess we just keep smiling?

I was at the supermarket yesterday - first time in about 3 and a half weeks I think (John did the previous visit).  Some things were still a bit scarce on the shelves - pasta and rice were limited, as was flour and certain cat foods (notably those for older cats), and wine boxes.  There had clearly been a run on red wine boxes!  I got the last of the own brand cabernet sauvignon red - victory was mine!  This is a bit bizarre as the warm and sunny weather usually means a run on white and rosé.

Anyway, knowing that flour is scarce due to lots of home baking, naturally I too had to jump on the bandwagon, plus we have a lot of eggs at the moment.  I thought I ought to reprise my quatre-quarts chocolate cake, but with a few tweaks.  I swapped out some white sugar for light muscovado, some ordinary (well, local, organic) flour for chocolate powder and chestnut flour, and swirled in chunks of dark cooking chocolate at the end.  I used a relatively low oven, a cake tin with a protected base and a double layer of paper liners.  I checked at 35 minutes of cooking and it had risen nicely but needed to cook more.  I checked again 25 minutes later, and it was cooked, but o dear - really badly slumped in the middle.  Let's hope tastes better than it looks!

And if it tastes as bad as it looks, well, we do have a very good bakers in the village!  They are also one of a very few allowed outlets for my friend who grows and sells flowers (cut flowers) to get her product out there.  Up until now, I have benefitted from free flowers in exchange for services rendered, but this week I supported another of my local businesses and bought my own bouquet - isn't it lovely?

After taunting me for nearly a week with huge and pregnant buds, the orchid has relented and opened up; one bud yesterday, and another today.  Was it worth the wait?  Well judge for yourselves with this close up of the flower that opened up yesterday.

 

Day 39 of lockdown - cats and gardening

It is a widely accepted truth that cats love boxes - there are lovely films of panthers and cheetahs and tigers all unable to resist the lure of the delicate rectangular shape, with or without an obvious entrance.  Look what we managed to trap yesterday in a cardboard box!  Our own little panther.

This morning was cloudy and cool so I took advantage to go and see the boys in the country and also plant the first of the potatoes (yes, I know, we are late, but that's just the way it is).  Cats also like well raked soil, freshly turned soil and weed suppressant mat.  It took a while to remove the roots and stones from this newly cultivated piece of land.  A similar amount of time to remove all the cat poo that accumulated in the 3 days since it was rotavated, and mere seconds for cats to appear on the weed suppressing mat once it was on the ground.  There are 20 seed potatoes under that lot somewhere!

I think the broad beans may be not so far off a first picking!

Finally, I am always amazed at the resilience of well established plants, and this one is my particular favourite.  Perhaps 12 years ago we had a small bed here, where now there is just pavement.  We also had the wall repointed which is I think when the little bed started to disappear, before being totally covered when the new pavement was put in place.  Somehow this lovely campanula manages to survive and each spring produces this wonderful ball of mauve flowers which last a couple of weeks.  Some years it is the only splash of colour in April, this year we have early roses and geraniums that survived the winter in flower, but this is still pretty special in my book.

 

Day 38 of lockdown - further orchid torture

They are out to get me!  Those orchids keep doing this - massive, pregnant buds that don't open for days, they just get larger and larger.  Every time I look at them (so several times a day as they are by the loo) I imagine them shouting "feed me Seymour!" like in the Little Shop of Horrors.

I spend the morning Skyping with a client in Birmingham - she is not having an easy time of it, living in a nice maisonette, but without any real outside space.  She is juggling work and writing up her PhD thesis.  I really am quite lucky, not least as I spent the afternoon playing on TWO ride on mowers, making a property look very beautiful.  A slight frustration is that only the ducks will admire what I have done, but hopefully they like it!

Reasons for mowing when people won't see what you've done?  Well, left to itself, nature has some lovely flowers and insects and it has thugs with few natural predators.   Those thugs will take over, and while after 50 years you might have an interesting ecosystem, in the meantime you develop a thatch of bramble, thistle, nettle, rush, horsetail and old man's beard which strangle the orchids, lords and ladies, milkmaids, stitchwort and other charming flowers of spring.  

We sat out yesterday after work, enjoying the warmth, the bird song, and I would say the quiet, but there was all that bird song.  The first swifts are turning up, but not enough yet to start the big screaming aerobatic displays.  The swallows are frantically nest building.  The starlings are very proud of the chicks they are raising in our eaves and makes a lot of noise about it - I think someone plays a lot of old school computer games around here, as that is what our starling sounds like!  The cuckoo was also giving it some yesterday, while today where I was mowing, two were shouting at each other across the valley.  The starling likes to perch on the apex of the roof to "sing" to the world - I think he has ambitions to be the god on top of a Thai palace!

 

Day 37 of lockdown - is it getting to me?

The mystery of the plants was solved once John got home - it was his payment for helping someone to fix their ride on lawnmower.  Excellent!  This afternoon I planted 9 of the tomato plants and six of the lettuces where the boy cats live.  They may or may not survive - we know that deer can't get into that bit of the land, but I've seen some monstrously huge snails there, and they will need regular watering if the dry weather continues.  Fergus worried that I was overdoing it this afternoon, so pinned me down for a while.

It was very good of him to notice that I needed a bit of TLC.  I don't know what it was that caused it, but I woke this morning with a thumper of a headache, and none of the usual things would shift it - not tea, not rinsing my hair under the shower, not even ibuprofen worked its usual magic.  So I missed out on going to the market this morning - I just could not face it.  I'm OK now but it took a while.  But then, it is day 37 of lockdown...

In other news, we had a visitor to the garden yesterday - we all kept a couple of metres apart, but for those living on their own, and who don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time, and who aren't much into reading, it's getting tough.  So we sat outside at a good distance apart and caught up after not having seen each other for about 40 days.  It certainly seemed to perk her up and it was nice to have a change of conversation too, and all in French!!

The first of the "red" irises is out - this one is at the front of the house in the courtyard and tends to get munched by snails so it is good to have a relatively perfect flower.  The ones in the back garden aren't flowering yet, and are generally a bit more lush.

The wind from the east has dropped again, and the rain has stopped, so Nibbles has returned to her fine weather perch, ensuring that nothing and no one could get in the bath window if it was open.  I'm sure we all feel safer for that.