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.

 

Heatwave and drought

It's broadly official now, with 40 days at over the seasonal average temperature, and pretty well no rainfall since early April - it's a heatwave and it's a drought.  There are water restrictions and even the farmers are mostly complying with them.  Lawns look parched unless overhung by willow trees, in which case they are lush and green and long.  Anywhere else and they are turning yellow or brown, apart from the weed flowers which happily rise above it all.  I think the drought conditions have really done for the bee orchids this year - there were so many rosettes in the winter and early spring, but not enough moisture to let them push up flower spikes.  Those that there are, seem a bit stunted to me too.

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Temperatures have gone over 30ºC a fair number of times in the last two weeks, and while we can strip down to shorts and skimpy t-shirts, the cats can't.  They are doing a good effort of shedding fur whenever we touch them, and actually as desert animals probably cope a bit better than us in the heat, but they are seeking comfy places to sleep this out.

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The plants are doing their best, with late evening watering for things in pots.  The butternut seedlings are ready to go out I think/hope.  They seem big enough to cope with being nibbled by any snails mad enough to break hibernation seals and come out and about.  The chilli seeds are coming up - given the weather, they might seem a bit late, but we are only 3 weeks into May and are actually on the early side.  The cheap rose I bought at Aldi shrugged off the greenfly, after judicious application of soapy water, and is now in flower, while the single red hot poker that I have nurtured in a pot, ready to plant elsewhere, is now out.  Another bit of colour, this time by the front door, comes from the pinks we got at Jacques Briant, and I finally potted on into something sensible a couple of weeks ago.

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The trail camera has moved - after getting 500 photos and 500 short videos of moving grass seed heads, it was clearly time for a change.  Currently I am trying it at a sort of crossroads between the Orchard and the Meadow, and as there are no handy trees or fencing poles there, I have it on a piece of willow log, rescued from a work site.  I only managed to check it once before today, and have evidence that it has been investigated by the badger family!

This week's blog is early.  The weather today is hot, so we aren't going to feed the cats and put water around until a bit later.  Tomorrow (Sunday) we are spending from midday or so, helping out on the beer and sandwich stand at the village trout fishing day.  Next week I hope there will be lots of jolly photos from the event, but I know I won't be in a fit condition to sit in front of a computer and write about it tomorrow evening.  I expect my ankles to be the size of footballs!

 

Garden critters and lovely blooms

It is so very hot and dry at the moment - lawns now look as one would expect in late July, and I am watering stuff every evening in the hope that I can encourage vegetable seedlings and get a few strawberries too.  The roses are loving it however.  The ones by the house but on the road, with full southern exposure had to be cut back pretty seriously before the chimney was worked on, but seem to have loved the brutality, and have come back strongly.  We bought the bicolour rose, but can't remember the name, it is strongly perfumed, while the yellow blush rose was here before us, so again not a clue!

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The red hot pokers are at about their best now - these are some that we brought with us from Worcester, and originally had in front of the house by the yellow rose, but had to remove about 16 years ago, when we had works done on the walls, so we put them round the back.  I love them, but opinion can be divided!

In the evening, after watering things, I walk up the path opposite the house to look across the valley of the Couasnon.  There is maize planted at the top, so in about 3 weeks or so, I won't have a view, but while it is still short, it is good to see big skies.

In terms of garden critters, I rarely see the useful ones - apart from this spider, defending a water butt - as the slow worms, toads, grass snakes, thrushes and hedgehogs are very shy.  The less helpful ones are frequently seen.  We speculate as to why the haricot beans haven't germinated, but I do wonder how much of that is down to them being rolled on by large cats!  The butterfly is neither helpful nor unhelpful, it is merely beautiful.  You will probably need to click on the photo to spot it though!

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The trail camera came home for TLC, in part as the grass and foliage has grown up around it, and yesterday was windy so there were 500 photos and films of waving grass and other plants.  In among all that dross were a photo of a deer in a place I didn't expect to see one, and a couple of daylight photos of badgers, along with an early morning film of a badger heading for bed - they have a turn of speed when they want!

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Have a good week!

 

Blooming May

This week it's all about flowers - we've had no rain since the 24th April and while there is still a fair amount of moisture around, the forecast is for a hot 10 days, which will fry things out rather.  There are water restrictions here already, which should stop any watering between 10am and 8pm, but you still see the vast water jets on farms, which doesn't sit well when gardeners are being told that only vegetable plots can be watered and then only "reasonably".  I think if you have planted new trees during the winter, there is also generally a derogation for that, but no watering established shrubs or borders, no watering lawns, and no filling swimming pools (yeah, right, like people are going to obey that one!).

On the cultivated flower front, we are in my favourite season - irises!  The selection below are red from our garden, mauve from the Chinon garden, black and white (well, very dark purple and white) from the edge of the wildflower meadow, and Dutch irises from by The Shack.

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Then there are the things that are cultivated, or sort of cultivated, such as the campanula, the semper vivum baskets that are starting to overflow (although not strictly flowers, they are quite magnificent I think), the mix of self-seeded forget-me-knots and purple flowers which might be phacelia, and the deep red poppies that also spread themselves around from last year's display of bee-friendly flowers.

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The wildflower meadow is really getting into its stride and you can see the masses of white oxeye daisies, while around the area there are great fountains of false acacia flowers, humming with bees.  If you sit near a group of these, you can even smell the honey - acacia honey is very popular, very pale and not strongly flavoured, assuming you can find single variety honeys.  L'Or de la Ruche in St Martin d'Arcé makes a particular feature of the different types of honey based on what was flowering near the hives, be it colza, sunflowers, chestnut, acacia, meadow flowers or summer flowers.

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The first couple of bee orchids are out, and I am particularly pleased with this photo of one.

Sunny weather, flowering meadows, a feeling that summer is really on its way all add up to one thing - a need for ice cream.  This year one of the local farms has opened a creamery to sell milk, cream, cheeses, yoghurts as well as its headline product - ice cream.  It isn't cheap, but it is very good!  We are working our way through the flavours.  The vanilla is long gone, but we are currently on Rum Raisin, Pistachio, and eeking out the most amazing chocolate one.  What will I buy this week???

Have a good one!

 

Sunshine and badgers

Happy May Day - and apologies to those in the UK as I gather the weather isn't too great - here it is lovely and has been for a while.  Sunshine, gentle cooling breezes and blue skies, which of course also means hosepipe bans and water restrictions.  It is the earliest I remember there being a ban on watering non-essentials using well or tap water.  Fortunately we have stocks of rainwater, and vainly hope that it will rain sometime soon - the earliest forecast is for around the 13th May!!

The sunshine does mean that there are some lovely things to photograph at the moment - distant chateau before they disappear behind foliage, but are nicely framed by green, orchids (although the bee orchid season will start soon and I'm sure that will get boring), lizards, butterflies, tadpoles and a vide grenier (literally empty your attic - the French version of a car boot, and all day affairs).

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The wildflower meadow is really coming into its own, with oxeye daisies, linseed, and bright pink clover - the bee orchids will join in shortly as they seem to go well alongside the clovers.  We mowed a trail round, so that you can walk round without worrying about treading on something precious or getting too many ticks on your clothes, as the hares and deer also like the meadow.  You can't take a decent photo of a wildflower meadow really, as the camera can't work as well as the eye for taking it all in.  By contrast, I show an area by the fruit trees where we haven't mown, and nature is springing back with all the "best" things in life - nettles, mares tail and bramble.

We now have aubergines planted out under individual mini-cloches and some lettuce under protection from cat bums - I am hoping the resident thrushes will do the needful with slugs and snails as I found this year's well used anvil.

Anyway, I also said something about badgers.  We moved the trail camera to near the set in the hope of getting a sight of cubs at dawn or dusk.  For the first few days there was no action at all.  Then a couple of days ago I checked and there were lots of files, although on my phone they didn't look like much - but I downloaded a few photographs and a couple of videos anyway.  Away from sunlight and with a pair of glasses, I could see there was actually quite a bit of action, so today I downloaded a further random selection and there is quite a lot of activity.  The following five short films show the hunt for food as young cubs need sustenance, all done at night.

 

 

 

And finally...

Have a good week!

 

 

Getting serious about food production

I had intended a week of intense sowing and planting and weeding activity - well best laid plans and all that, something else came up, but having said that, we aren't doing too badly.  The first 27 potatoes I planted at the end of March are now all showing above the weed suppressant mat, while some of the second batch of 18 are also showing signs.  The final dollop planted last week won't show for a while yet - or so I assume.  The rows of garlic, shallots and onions are doing OK despite being rolled on from time to time by itchy cats - the shallots look very vigorous while the onions are slowly starting to show growing shoots.  They went in rather later than the shallots and have suffered more from cat attentions and being picked out by birds. 

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The broad beans all now have pods set, and as they have stopped flowering and are starting to show signs of blackfly, I have taken out the tops and they can concentrate on filling out those pods.  The speedy cabbages aren't really proving to be that speedy, despite a month with a cover on them, but are starting to look more convincing now, while the radishes sown among them will be ready this week, particularly if we have a bit more rain.

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Today was really devoted to sowing.  I carried on cleaning up the rotavated potato bed, although we aren't planting any more spuds.  Instead, while investigating my seed stash, I found an old packet of purple mangetout seeds, so I bashed in three poles, surrounded them with three former tree guards, and sowed a circle of peas around each.  I finished off that bit with a dense row of very cheap parsley seed - either they will grow, or they won't, we wait and see. 

John rotavated a bit of the potato bed from two years ago, cleaned it up a bit and spent a happy while sowing half of a cheap packet of dwarf french beans and half a packet of radish (18 jour variety) seeds.  If even half the seeds we sowed today come up, we will eat well in between 3 and 10 weeks time!

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The wildflower meadow is getting ready to burst into flower, so John took the opportunity to mow a path around the edge and along the line of fruit trees.  At the edge, under a cherry tree there are two early orchids flowering beautifully, but the main show of bee orchids won't start for two to three weeks yet.  The lizard orchids are starting to send up spikes, but they will be in full splendour in three to four weeks.  In the meantime, the ox eye daisies and clovers will put on a magnificent show, while the field scabious prepares to take over from them.  The better soil of the garden has a wonderful undercurrent of deep blue speedwell in it, while the bathroom orchid has finally bloomed again.

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Not much activity on the trail camera front this week - well lots of activity but too speedy for anything interesting.  The badger passing through was the best shot.  The camera has moved on - we are hoping for film of young badgers putting their noses out of the set, but realise it is a long shot (in every sense).  There was an Easter Sunday Excalirock festival at our local pub, so we went along - great to see people out and about again, and to enjoy the punkabilly of D-Track - a local group of people old enough to know better, but who are really energetic and fun.  My camera just about managed a photo of that, but wilted at trying to get a video!

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Have a good week!

 

Time for a little sunshine

Storm Diego is now mostly a distant memory although he left odd pressies for us to find, like this willow that snapped off about 8 feet above ground.  What is on the ground has now been chopped into useful (40cm) lengths ready to move when a bit of sap has gone from the wood, while the top (not shown) is still in the lake, waiting for a more powerful tractor than my mower to pull it out.

The top bit also provides a bit of shelter and sustenance for the tadpoles, which are now around in profusion.  It may also stop them getting headaches from the sun, you never know!

There is a lot of colour at the moment, although the tulips are starting to go over.  The tree peony is out again - at this stage last year, it then got shredded by hail stones, so I hope to enjoy it a bit longer this year.  The cowslips are nearly over but the various orchids are starting to send up flower spikes, or in the case of the lady orchid, just flowering where it slumps - very lazy.

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Remember, you can get a better close up view of the photos if you click on them - assuming you want to, of course!

As well as riots of colour, there is also the small question of procreation.  Shrubs are full of rutting sparrows, while those who got it together rather earlier are building nests and collecting food.  The cuckoos are out and about - we hear them call but don't ever see them, and, whisper it softly, I've seen a swallow or two!  And it's not just birds, frogs and toads that are getting it on, the masonry bees are at it too.  These are large, dark electric blue, solitary bees; well apart from a short period when it takes two to tango.  And they can do it in flight or while sitting on pear blossom - that one can fly on its own is sort of against the laws of physics, but that two can fly together is pretty amazing!

Yup - the photo metadata is wrong.

So what has been happening with the trail camera this week?  Well, lots of short films of the same bit of scrub at night, sometimes with heavy mist, sometimes nicely crisp, and no real clue as to what set off the camera.  Perhaps there is a ghost that haunts the green lane nearby.  But today's video, because yes, there is a video link, is a rather lovely short bit of film of a passing deer.

I do think it should have eaten rather more bramble than it did, but there you go.

Happy Easter - shame the camera didn't spot the Easter Bunny!

 

Four seasons in a week!

Last week I complained of frost and we had more of it too.  Now people get very upset by sharp frosts and imagine the worst and want to remove anything that might have been affected as soon as possible.  I find it is worth waiting a bit.  While we know that there will be no early season figs - the hint is that the tiny fruits and the leaf buds are black, brittle and horrid - I'm not giving up yet on plums, peaches, pears or apples.  Some still have blossom and the flowers are more hardy than the tiny fruits, while until the tiny fruits fall off, well, you never know!  Apple and quince are just coming into their own - quince has to be the prettiest blossom!

Last week I was upset as the honesty seemed to have been affected by the frost and I expected it to collapse and go black.  Not a bit of it!  Today I was admiring it and I can not remember ever seeing better!

So we have had winter frosts, spring showers, summer sunshine and autumn gales this week.  Storm Diego rattled through on Friday, bringing heavy rain, strong winds even inland and bringing down power cables.  He blattered our broad beans which are looking a bit sorry for themselves, but I hope will pick up tomorrow in the sun.  This afternoon we had a picnic tea in the Garden in lovely sunshine.  In Canada, April is considered the cruellest month due to extremes of weather (and the Canadians really do extremes of weather), but that may become the new normal for us here in Western Europe too I guess.  Last night we had a dramatic sunset to add to the mix.

It's been a quiet week on the trail camera front - just one fuzzy bottom of what I think is a boar passing through.  I will move the camera somewhere more interesting soon.

The orchids in the Orchard and Meadow are starting to rev up to flowering, well one has a well developed flower head, while the lizard orchids are looking more and more like they are preparing for world domination.  It is actually the time when the bee orchids go discrete prior to putting on their delightful show in May.

However one of the domestic orchids is putting on a fine show of three flowers.  For some reason I find it very difficult to take a good photo of them all, but here is one bloom.

Today the French are voting in the first round of the presidential elections, and we can only watch in envy, not being citizens and not having a UK vote either.  The news services keep giving an update on the turnout so far - last time I looked it was close to 70%, some 4% down on the same time five years ago.  It is a worry as there are some real nutty candidates, some with truly offensive policies.  In many ways the real campaign will start tonight at about 10pm when they are 95% confident they know who the top two candidates will be, having seen off (possibly) the nutters.  Fingers crossed!

 

Frost!

Last weekend, the weather was amazing, and we knew it couldn't last, that it wasn't right for the time of year.  Although looking back through my diaries, it's not the first March that has been warm and sunny towards the end.  We were promised rain during the week and a cold snap, perhaps snow.  Well earlier in March they had been promising an end to relentless grey and sunshine, which didn't happen when promised, so you could forgive us for thinking the same about a cold snap and snow.  We did rather yearn for rain.

Up until the end of Tuesday, it was very nice indeed.  Warm and sunny and humming with bird and insect activity.  I even had to water some bits of the vegetable patches.  It was supposed to rain on Wednesday - a couple of millimetres at most doesn't help.  But the cold and then the snow flurries did arrive, and really weren't nice, although nothing settled.  Last night there was a sharp frost, and there will be another tonight.  It has done bad things to flowers - the honesty, which I thought would be fine, is sagging as are the yellow tulips.  The feral potatoes also caught the frost but I'm not too worried about them!

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Not everything has been badly affected - yet.  The cherry blossom is still pretty, without brown frost burns, although that may still come, and whether there will be any fruit is also a moot point.  The Bright Lights Chard I sowed last year is also doing fine, although preparing to go to seed - there is enough for a good quiche later in the week and the chickens will enjoy it too.  The plants will need to be sacrificed as we don't want them setting seed and that part of the plot will need a go with the rotavator in order to prepare it for other planting in May.

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It was too cold and promised to be too cold again tonight to do much useful gardening today, so after a fairly short visit to supervise cats at The Shack, we went to the open weekend at l'Or de la Ruche nearby, a honey business.  They got subsidies to put up a larger building to house stocks, the equipment to maintain 300 hives and also the equipment to manage the harvest from 300 hives.  The roof is covered in solar panels which should produce 100kW of electricity - a good boost to local capacity.  They are also home to the local campaign against Asian hornets.

There may be Saharan sand around, or it could just have been the clouds, but the sky to the east turned pink yesterday evening at sunset.  It was most odd.  This photo has not been tinkered with other than cropping out things I don't want you to see!

Finally, trail camera news and was there anything last week?  Just one visitor this time - I think the cows in the back field and their electric fence have limited who is doing the rounds at the moment, so I have moved the camera again to see if I can track down the badger activity.  Anyway, this fine fellow came visiting.

So first we have some footage of him nibbling a branch and looking around.

Then he seemed to think that the camera was edible!

We'll see what next week brings.

 

Spuds we like!

Happy Spring!  And we have had a full week of sunny and warm weather which has brought out a lot of fruit blossom, pretty well done for the narcissi, and sent the cowslips into overdrive.  We'd thought it wasn't going to be a good year for them, but they have gone over the top.  There are more than ever of the red and orange ones and some odd variations which make us think that they may well hybridise with polyanthus.  This would explain the red and orange variants and also the rather odd one with primrose flowers on cowslip style stems!

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The honesty is also putting on a great display this year.  It is a biannual so these are the ones that germinated last year and it must have been a good year for that.  Wandering through the Orchard and Wildflower Meadow, I can seen hundreds, if not thousands, of orchid rosettes preparing for May.  They are spreading further and further as we get rid of the scrub, and the choking nettles and old man's beard, and will now curtail our ability to mow anything more than a path around the Meadow and Orchard for the next few months.  However I did spot one with a hairy caterpillar on it.  If there is a specific orchid butterfly or moth, then it has found the right place, if not, it will be bird food!!

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It was a major fail with the trail camera this week, which was a bit of a surprise after last week's excitement.  I only moved it about 20 feet, so should have seen the same level of action, but all I caught were two pigeons.  When I looked into the field behind where the camera was, I had an interesting, if one-sided, conversation with 5 young heifers, which might explain the lack of deer and boar.  The camera has moved on now.

Which brings us on to the potatoes.  We started to develop the allotment patches in the Garden in 2019, and now we are back to the first patch for potatoes, after growing them in two other plots in 2020 and 2021.  The soil was industrial clay with builder's rubble when we started (perhaps harsh, but that's what it felt like), but we have added a lot of organic material since.  I am told that rotavating was hard work, but not as bad as it has been, and certainly cleaning up what had been turned wasn't as bad as it has been.  I also added 5 sacks of real leaf mould before covering up the ground with weed suppressant matting and planting the seed potatoes through it.  We've gone with second earlies again this year - it worked in our favour last year, as the tops were dying off as blight started to hit, so we weren't affected.  The resulting tubers aren't as huge as main crop can be, but the variety we choose is versatile and also stores well.  We are still eating last year's crop!  So half done, the other half to do over the next couple of weeks, depending on the weather.

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Finally, in the saga of Bridie the Freeloading Bantam, she might perhaps be relenting a bit about sharing eggs with us.  She has found a way of getting into the chicken run (but can't get out again, which is weird), and laid an egg in the coop, which I scooped up with the eggs from the other chickens.  Then no more eggs, until I approached the chicken run from a different angle and found she had decided to lay in their "field shelter".  So we took those, and very tasty they were too.  Another egg appeared in the coop, which I left, and the following day, there was another one!  They are quite small but very white!

Have a good week!

 

 

 

Dear deer!

I gather today is the start of spring and the weather is certainly making it feel that way, with a hint of sun and warmth but still a chilly wind.  It was the first of the vide greniers (empty attics - the equivalent of a car boot sale but it goes on all day) in one of the local villages, so after a spot of gardening, we thought it would be churlish not to go along.  We assumed that it would be quite small and not too many people, as it is very hard to get people out to do things or volunteer for stuff at the moment.  Wrong!  We trudged a good 3 kilometres looking at baby clothes, books, computer games, knicknacks and junk.  We did pick up a big bundle of ground staples and five big flower pots, as well as sore feet.  It was great to see a few friends in the crowd too.

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Plants are coming up which reminds us that the vegetable season gets going very soon now (yes, technically we already have garlic, shallots, broad beans, cabbages and radishes in, but this is the serious stuff).  John has been rotavating this year's potato plot.  This patch has been used before so is proving a bit easier than in previous years, and when it was last done 3 years ago, it was pretty solid clay, but it looks better this time around.  The half a tonne of horse poo we added last year should have helped.  Next week I will start putting in spuds.  The other images are of peonies that I planted a couple of months ago just starting to show and our Victoria Plum tree starting to bloom.

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It may be a coincidence with the end of the hunting season, but we are seeing (or the trail camera is seeing) more wildlife in the country estate.  The previous time I had the camera at this point, we saw NOTHING, not even a cat or a duck.  This time we had a passing boar and deer.  They went through at night and in the early morning.  This pretty doe didn't seem at all phased by the camera and stayed for a while, hence the photo and the nice video.

 

Before that, a whole bunch of them came through.  At least two bucks and probably at least one doe, but we can't tell really.

Then they stopped, not least so one of the bucks could do something about all that velvet on his antlers.  if you are looking at this on a big computer rather than a phone, it is worth getting this full screen to watch, as then you see all the action.

I have read up on how to get better footage on a trail, as in general where I put the camera is where I can see things are passing through.  I have changed the settings again and moved the camera, so let's see what the next week brings!  Although it could be nothing.