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 19 of lockdown - good reasons to stay "in"

For anyone worried about the visit to the vet with a cat yesterday, she is OK, the wounds were self-inflicted and have been cleaned.  She has had cortisone and anti-biotic injections and gets soothing cream rubbed in the wounds twice a day.  She has been enjoying the sun today.

Apart from a quick trip to the local market for fish (yes!), olives and tea, we have been very much in lockdown mode today, but in the garden in the main as it is warmer out than in!  John has been playing with his pressure washers to make sure they still work (they do), and then blasting the 20 year old garden bench and the garden chairs to get them ready for the new season.  Here's a thing.  Virginia creeper suckers do not come off plastic with a pressure washer or a scouring pad - you heard it here first, folks!

I've been happily sowing seeds in cheap and improvised propagators - sweet corn in the Blue Peter style propagator as I don't have root trainers.

While in the proper propagators (well Lidl, 4 for 4 euros anyway), I've got sunflowers, lettuce, coriander, chillies, cherry tomatoes and butternut squash - many butternut squash.

Finally, what do you do with goose eggs?  Well, I will probably make a quiche tomorrow with a couple, but I thought I would see if my ducks would like to try to hatch one.  They don't seem too convinced!

And on that slightly bizarre note, I'm off for drinkie-poos in the garden.  Know where you left your sanity for when this is all over!

 

Day 18 of lockdown - and all the reasons I've been out

Not every day in lockdown is extravagantly exciting, although I do try to spread out the fun through the week.  However I have four things to leave the house for today (which makes it sound not so much like lockdown actually).  In the morning, there is of course the stroll to the bakers for (today) croissants, baguette and a pizza for supper.  I was also able to properly admire the new door at the bakers!

After lunch I combined two of my trips out, in that I had to do a bit of work for John, and on the way back from that, I stopped at the local pig farm to pick up my order of pork products and an organic chicken (the lady who does those uses the pig farm as an outlet).  Jean-Yves had worked hard to get a safe and orderly process for paying for and picking up purchases in the farm yard.  There was a perspex screen to keep us separate, we all had to bring our chequebooks and own pens, only one person picking up their parcel at a time.  It worked well.  Strangely I spotted the bloke from the post office, who I had seen the morning before at the bakers, and in the afternoon at the supermarket.  We agreed we had to stop meeting like that!

My final trip out shortly is to take a cat to the vet - it looks like she has managed to slice her face and neck with her own claws, stupid creature.  I've warned her that she will probably have to wear a Cone of Shame overnight in future!

No pictures of the wounds (nasty), but instead a catch up on photos from earlier this week.  This is what was left of the banana bread yesterday.

This is a close up of the forsythia, which will probably be over by next week.

And here is a cat in a tree - not the one going to the vet I hasten to add.

Day 15 of lockdown - working from home

Call it working from home, call it télétravail, it's what I've been doing for the past 15 years now.  As a freelancer, I am used to the loneliness of the long distance report writer, and the mad rush to meet a deadline, even on the best planned projects.  This one was well planned, and it wasn't that much of a panic, as lockdown and the Bise (the North East wind) had concentrated the mind nicely, so the draft report that I sent 10 minutes ago (and about half an hour early) was actually in much better shape than a normal first draft.  It even had a nice contents page.

We are promised the end of the Bise tonight, and it can't go soon enough for me, but more importantly for this summer's fruit crop.  The peach blossom is nearly over, and the tiny fruitlets can be seen, and they just don't need frost!  There were only about 15 flowers on the plum tree and I've not dared to look to see if any have set, while the pear is in full flower, and we need pears.

As well as the final blossoms, the peach is also starting to show its leaves, and so far they seem unaffected by the dreaded peach leaf curl, which is surprising given all the rain we have had.  I might not be saying that in a week's time.

Many things are too early this year, including the irises - my favourite flowers.  This is the first out in our garden, but they are already out in quantity in some very sheltered spots.  Later in the season we will have the spectacular red ones, but for now I revel in the purple ones.

 

Day 13 of lockdown - clocks sprung forward, weather fallen back

For once the dreaded hour change and less sleep didn't actually make any difference.  We put the clocks forward but didn't set an alarm, and left it to the cats to tell us when they wanted breakfast.  Fortunately that was at about 9am, which convinces me they can't tell the time (we have wondered in the past), as normally they want breakfast at 8am.

Yesterday the weather was lovely - sunny, balmy, a very light breeze, but what a difference a day makes!  Today we still have sunny moments, but there is a cruel, cold wind from the North East, which makes shutters bang and rips the covers off tender plants.  While we went out for our permitted exercise this afternoon, it was too cold to stop and photograph anything.

Instead I will reflect on photos I took yesterday while sitting in the sun and enjoying the slow time.  Looking at cowslips for instance, where we have some mutants.  While most are yellow, we have a number of orange ones and one or two striking red ones.  I assume they have cross bred with the coloured primulas dotted around, but it is a very pretty effect.

Also from yesterday, I am always astounded and amused by the inability of cats to resist boxes.  Mr Clause is no exception to this rule and has taken over possession of this particular and rather large box.  I hope the wind hasn't taken the waterproof cover off and away into the surrounding fields!

Finally I sat and watched a blue tit attacking fat balls in the evening sun.  The photos are a bit grainy as I've had to tinker with them to remove all the extra sky and stuff, but it was lovely to have the time to sit and wait for him to get up the courage to stuff his beak while I sat and watched, with a cat at my side.

Day 11 of lockdown - nature notes

I am lucky in that occasionally I am allowed to go out to work for my husband, doing bits of gardening at people's maisons secondaires.  Now is the start of the rapid growing season for grass, and if we don't stay on top of it now, we will damage our mowers and kill ourselves dealing with 3 foot high hay when lockdown is over.  So we go out, armed with our attestations, including where possible attestations from the property owner as well, and work where people are not around.  Or if we were to be faced with someone on the property, we would be on the phone to the Boys in Blue asking for help with trespassers.

Yesterday I was at a site where there is a lovely wildflower meadow, and I was checking how it was doing, and if it had gone to far for its early season cut.  In about another 2 weeks, the orchid rosettes will be too advanced, but if we leave it too long, the brambles and other undesirable scrub will take over.  That meadow has a badger's set right in the middle.  You can see their footprints in the fresh soil (and evidence of the deer and birds that pass through too), as they clear out any rubbish and head off for their "bathroom" zone.

Today I was back mowing at the house with a lake.  I'd been keeping an eye out for frogspawn but hadn't spotted it this year so far, so I was astounded to notice lots of recently hatched tadpoles in the water - there is a great mass of them to the left of the submerged rock, a sort of dark mass, but you can see others too.  

The final nature note was that as I was mowing around a birch tree, I noticed a lot of wood chip.  The woodpeckers are back and making a mess again!

Day 10 of lockdown - what day of the week is it?

Those who know me, know that I have been doing the working from home thing for 15 years now, so that shouldn't be phasing me.  They will also know that I have stints where I am working on a report, where I am at my computer every day for a long period of time and don't really go anywhere, so in theory I should be doing OK with this lockdown malarkey.

The thing about the above is that I have a deadline and when that comes, I'm free as a bird.  I can work or not work, I can go anywhere I want (often the pub I confess), John and I can go out walking and shopping and perhaps celebrate with a  meal in a restaurant, or go visit a vineyard and do a wine tasting.  I know when the work related lockdown period will be over.  This is not the same.  The report will be sent on Tuesday next week come hell or high water, but nothing much else will change.  For the first time ever this week, John and I seriously lost the plot on what day of the week it was.  Time has slowed down.

In other aspects, time has not slowed down at all.  Look at these broad beans in full flower!  Pity I couldn't spot any bees.

Similarly, you can hear lawns growing (actually at the moment I can hear our lawn being cut down again, as John tries out his new lawnmower), while the blossom is looking marvellous.  But human or economic life is now marching at a very slow pace for us, with little to differentiate each new day from the last.  Mind you, once this report is away, perhaps I will be able to enjoy that slower pace of life!  Here is a cherry tree in full blossom - not ours, but in the next garden over.  Pity the fruit from this tree are vile.

Day 7 of Lockdown - a bit tasteless?

And No!  That is not a reference to losing my sense of taste, which is thought to be a good symptom of going down with the dreaded lurgy!

After posting the Day 6 blog, we had a second go at doing FaceTime aperos with the Chinon Two, and it worked very well again.  This afternoon I had an inspiring virtual meeting by Skype with two work colleagues - there are some brilliant tools out there for connecting without endangering yourself or others.

There is however no good substitute really for going up to the village bakery in the morning for croissants and baguette, and it provides a bit of exercise as I have to go uphill.  Today the route was empty, although I met a couple of others up at the bakers, all keeping a good 2 metres apart.  What a difference a day makes, as this morning there was sunshine, so although eerily quiet, it was very beautiful.

While I slaved over a churning computer, John did sterling work in the garden, repotting things, finding new pots for things, sorting out sacks of compost and horse muck, enjoying the sunshine and tiring out the cats.  He found lots of lovely things for chickens - perhaps these will make the little blighters more inclined to lay eggs?  They are the stuff of nightmares of course, these giant grubs.  Who else remembers the classic Dr Who adventure The Green Death, which included a sickness (which turned you green) spread by 4 foot long giant maggots?

He also got round to potting up the strawberry plants we bought, when we were panic-buying cat food at Lidl 10 days ago.  We put them in hanging baskets to keep them away from slugs, snails, mice and chickens - in this way we might get a few during the season.  What variety are they I hear you ask?  No kidding - Korona!

In the potager

March and April are always funny months for the garden, but I think 2018 is the most challenging yet.  In a normal season, I've already started to sow early salads - way too early in general, and have to re-sow as the first lot fail.

This year was always going to be different with the works in the house taking priority, and the fact that we ripped up the old raised beds last year, rotavated, smothered and killed perennial weeds, and then planted potatoes through weed suppressant matting.  Added to that, the various cold blasts from the East, and you get a very slow start to the season.

I found some 1 meter square raised beds - not very high - at the local supermarket and started just buying 4, but once I saw how well they worked, got another four.  We got a trailer load of well rotted horse manure - extremely well rotted actually - and over an exhausting weekend, sieved the lot and put a good wheelbarrow full in the first three raised beds and the rest in a one tonne bag, covered for when the rest of the beds are ready.  And then things stopped again with the weather.

Yesterday I stopped work early and topped up a bed with basic compost from a store and sowed the first seeds of the year - radish and carrot.  I know you aren't supposed to sow roots where you have manured, but actually the manure is covered with a good layer of less interesting material, and our soil is light and not hugely well nourished other than where chickens have been.

Then there was the effort to protect the bed and the seeds and the nice fresh soil from the garden vandals - five chickens and four cats can wreck havoc on a vegetable garden.  Metal frames and horticultural fleece were what I decided on, and I will report back on how well that works in a month or so.  Cats plant themselves.

Good things in the garden

There are all sorts of good things in the garden at the moment.  Looking among the foliage I found this pumpkin starting up.

 
While in among another bunch of leaves I found this cucumber that will be a nice addition to salads next week.

 
The fruit is doing well again this year (although we won't talk about the disaster that was the apricot crop) and the pear tree will need to be supported soon for this weight of good things.

 
But this fig has my name on it for this weekend - it looks wonderful!

 
Peach leaf curl can be a real problem, but an old "astuce" over here is to hang egg shells in your peach and nectarine trees to reduce its worst effects.  There has been so little rain this year, I can't really comment, but anything is worth a try as chemical remedies are withdrawn and not really advisable if you have roaming chickens.

 
And finally - compare these two pots with chilli plants in.  All plants come from the same batch bought for me last week by John when Pepper the chicken went on a destructive rampage in the well protected pepper and chilli bed (now even better protected).  The ones on the left were potted on to the big pot on Thursday last week, the ones on the right were potted on today and are the colour the whole batch were on purchase.  It goes to show that some good quality compost can turn round a weedy looking performer!

 

The Black Iris

I guess I sort of promised to get the picture of this up when I worked out how to get round the Explorer 9/Typepad problem, so here it is in all its glory.

 

All the irises are long over now though, and the cherries are ripe and falling (when they aren't been eaten in obscene quantities), and the lawn looks like a desert waste as we haven't had a drop of rain since the 2nd May.