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.

 

A week with workmen

For the past couple of months, we have been anxious as we watched a bulge develop high on the chimney wall, with cracks appearing too.  In early February, we contacted a large local building company, asking for a visit and quote, and to their credit, they were out very quickly to have a look, do the professional sharp intake of breathe and muttered "merde", and produce a quote in 24 hours.  Since then, there has been an even more anxious wait until they got any necessary permissions and the weather was suitable to do the work. 

At the beginning of last week I was told Wednesday - phew!  Except no one turned up on Wednesday.  Thursday morning, 8am, there was a knock on the door, and while scaffolding went up outside, a mason came and checked the attic for any sign of internal bulges.  He disappeared, and at 9:30am, when the scaffolding was up, so did the scaffolders!  It was very grand scaffolding we thought.

At 10:30am, really serious noises started, and tucked away in my little office, I could hear drilling, banging, the odd crash and rumble.  We had all this (apart from the drilling) 16 years ago, when we had that facade repointed, an intervention where it took a whole day to get the scaffolding up.  What was missing this year was the odd cry of "merde" from the artisans.  Then at midday it all want quiet again, as they left for lunch.  So I ventured out to see what had happened, not expecting to see this!

They were back just before 2pm, so John had a word about what they could see in the hole in the wall, then the afternoon was taken up with the faint hum of a remarkably quiet mixer and odd sloshing sounds.  At 5pm they were gone, although the scaffolding was still there, but by 9:30am on Friday morning, that too had gone!  Now there is a very tidy patch on our chimney wall and one of these days we will feel brave enough to light the fire again (that wasn't a hint, John).  More importantly I don't dread seeing a pile of masonry in the road every time I turn into our road!

I left the trail camera where it was last week, in the hope of better badger footage, but it is clear they are settling into a routine of using the path to go somewhere important and not stopping on the way.  The only interesting video was a cat defecating on the badger path, the interesting bit being that we don't recognise the cat!  So the camera has moved, and there was just the one nice badger shot to show for the week.

Other wildlife of interest was spotting spawn (frog, toad or newt - impossible to tell) in one of the ponds, but clearly near to hatching, as two days later it was just empty casings left to provide food for whatever needed it.  The hares are also out and about.  The fuzzy shot was taken while a cat stood on my shoulders watching the hare, which was a good 30 meters away.  The hares come through the Meadow and Orchard too, but not where I had the trail camera set up - it's nice to see them around.  Clause, the biggest of the cats and bigger than many dogs of my acquaintance, is terrified of the hares!

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Those photos are out of order - first is the empty spawn, then the viable, then the hare - editing the image galleries is a perilous exercise on a Sunday!  But to make up for that, here is a happy picture of narcissi, which are particularly lovely this year it seems to me.

 

Things are stirring!

The weather is brighter and we are nearly shot of February and with it the hunting season, so it is lovely to know that the trail camera has finally captured more evidence of wildlife in the local area.  A fox meandered through one evening, while a green woodpecker dug for grubs and other yukky things and a male pheasant turned up as it seemed to be a good idea.  

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While the fox went on its way too quickly to be captured on video, the woodpecker hung around looking for food.  The pheasant spotted the camera and posed most disgracefully, trying to offer his best profile!

As we have a couple of pine processionary nests in the Garden by the Shack, we do what we can to attract and maintain tits in the zone - both blue and great tits have developed a taste for the vile things.  So we keep a couple of stations where we feed the birds without the cats being able to get at them (unless the birds do something very stupid), and today I managed to capture a picture of a blue tit feeding!

In sheltered positions we are starting to get the spring flowers coming through.  Daffodils can be spotted blooming where they aren't in a wind corridor while in some sheltered spots, the cowslip flowers are starting to show.  In a week or so there will be a carpet of them, but for now there are just the odd sprigs.

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We are also starting to feel the joys of spring, as it was warm and sunny enough to get the hammock out this lunchtime.  Poirot has decided it is time to start jumping again, and has made her way on to the top of the bathroom wardrobe again for the first time in 3 years.  If it weren't for the international situation, all would be rosy!

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It doesn't really need saying, but it is important to remember, in these uncertain times, to look around and find joy in the small things.  Time spent outdoors is proven to be good for your mental and physical wellbeing.

 

Winter jobs and weather

While conservation organisations would like us to do nothing during the winter in the gardens and green areas we manage, that is a bit too utopian to be feasible.  Don't cut anything back until the spring they say, but then in the spring you mustn't cut stuff back because it is nesting season, you must wait until high summer.  Except you mustn't cut back things in the summer, when they are flowering and fruiting and providing nourishment for wildlife, but then in the autumn you mustn't cut things back either as things need seeds and protected areas to shelter and hibernate in.  If you follow that reasoning, of course, you never do anything and a wild area becomes a place of impenetrable scrub which nothing much likes.  The birds don't even eat the blackberries and they shrivel up on the briars and are very itchy if you get them on your skin or down your shirt.  This is not vibrant wild land!

So, John has been strimming it back, keeping an eye out for wildlife, but seeing none, not even a duck on the pond hidden in all that skank.  The toads will be abroad soon, and later in the summer, the dragonflies will be on patrol, but otherwise those are quite uninteresting ponds (or so I think, but I will do some dipping later in the year).

In addition, we have pruned one of the juicing apple trees - it was so overgrown with branches crossing, that it was impossible for the apples to fall off!  We removed the branch with the massive mistletoe - we have others, so don't need that one, and cut out a lot of wood, including dead branches.  Many were weighed down with moss and lichen, so that it was hard to tell the primary function of the tree!

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The signs of spring are ever more visible, although there is a lot of weather to go first I suspect.  In sheltered spots of the ground there are narcissi up and in some cases, flowering.  I had forgotten where I planted a load of anemone bulbs last autumn, but they are now showing, and I really didn't think I planted them through a poppy!  The late woodland snowdrops are coming up, with one flower bud to show for it, and the garlic I planted a few days ago in a low polytunnel are showing decent sized shoots.  But things are later than last year, as there are no cowslip flowers up yet. 

There are orchids everywhere!

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And then there have been storms.  Dudley was too far north to affect us.  Eunice meant we had some reasonable squalls of wind and rain on Friday, but fortunately nothing much over 75kmph or so - nasty if you were out in it.  Franklin or whatever he is called means we have annoying gusts that hit my office roof with an alarming sound, but again not too bad.  On Monday we had thunderstorms though, which are a bit rare at this time of year.  There were lightening strikes within a kilometre of the house and heavy rain - not much fun!

Bad weather means it isn't easy to get scaffolding up, so we would respectfully request some nice, dull weather so that the masons can get the frame up and do what needs to be done to the chimney!  Hopefully there will be news on that next week!

 

Don't get too excited!

While it was relatively sunny this week, enabling the mowing season to start and getting early crops planted, I'm sure winter hasn't had its final fling yet!

The broad beans we sowed in November last year are coming up quite well and look mostly healthy.  Inevitably with autumn sown seed there are some losses, but out of the 50, we have 42 up and about which is a bit better than last year, if memory serves.  The first year we had autumn sown broad beans there, I put out over a hundred seeds and 96 produced something.  More recently I have had trouble sourcing seed (which is nuts really).  I buy my planting garlic and shallot sets in the market at la Flèche - the garlic is local, so should be right for the climate, while the shallots come in from Brittany, but they know their onions over that way (hahaha!).  Most of the garlic and shallots are under minipolytunnel - not because they need protection from the elements but because they need protection from cat bottoms and whatever it is that is digging test holes around the Garden.  The trail camera may tell us more one day!

The Asian hornet trapping season starts next week - it may be a bit early, but getting the overwintered queens is important, or they will get the big nests going and kill more bees.  At this time of year it is possible to see the old nests in the trees - the secondary nests are generally high up, while primary nests can be in a hedge or a shed or lean-to.  We spotted one today and walked back to look at it - so high it is nearly impossible to get a photo that is meaningful, certainly with a phone camera.  It does explain where all the hornets came from that ate their way through a huge pile of windfall apples!  It also puts us on our guard for the emerging queens, so next weekend our two traps will be set, as the local observatory gets going for the 2022 campaign.

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However sunny it has been, the evenings and mornings are cold, so Poirot spends a lot of time fire worshipping in the evenings, and the snowdrops are quite happy and flowering away.  Spring is still a good month off!

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There is something about the sharp, crisp light of a sunny winter's day that makes it easier to see problems - like we finally spotted the hornets' nest today for example.  A couple of weeks ago, I looked up at the west facing facade of the house and decided I wasn't happy.  I shared my fears with John and I got the big local masonry firm out to have a look.  The big boss turned up and looked at the wrong chimney and said it was not problem to fix.  No, on our house - so he looked up and said yes, it needed a bit of pointing, no problem, they can do that.  No, no, not that side, look up from the road side - silence, sharp intake of breath, muttered "lalala" and "merde", then - yes, that needs doing, doing very soon, I'll get you an estimate next working day.  Which, to be fair, he did, and we got it back within 24 hours.  Now we wait for permissions to be granted and then we will be covered with scaffolding for a chimney rebuild.  Yoiks!

There has been so little activity on the trail camera, we have wondered if it was still working.  Last weekend, once it came back from a likely but unfruitful site, I put it up overnight in the chicken run, to make sure it was working.  So now you can enjoy the spectacle of chicken breakfast time, from a chicken's eye view!  So much technology for this -

Until next week!

 

Not my video today!

Once again my trail camera placement failed!  Deep in the One Acre Wood, left alone without any checking for 6 days, and overlooking some clear trails, following all the advice, I spent the week imagining the videos of deer, foxes, badgers and boar, and dreading the images of poachers and hunters.  What did I get?  One very misty video, due to condensation we think as it was from a very foggy day, of a bird that could have been a jay or a chaffinch sitting on a branch and then flying off.  We couldn't tell which it was as it was so fuzzy we couldn't get a handle on the size or a clear view of colours.  So in answer to the question about if a tree/leaf/branch falls in the forest, does it make any sound, I couldn't tell you as nothing was there to see it and set off the camera!

The weather wasn't all dull and misty/foggy - despite being promised 4 nice days, we did manage 2 where we saw the sun at some stage, and I managed to get some laundry dry outside.  Seasonal affective disorder isn't being talked about much, as Covid is so much more important, but the high pressure gloom that has dominated the north west of France so far this year is enough to drive you to holiday porn of Caribbean beaches or Antipodean glamour.

Given that the trail camera provided no excitement, I have to point out that it hasn't been a totally dull week however.  When we brought our house the staircase had wooden panelling in places, and where someone had cut a hole for an electric socket (long gone), if you put your finger through the hole, you could feel carving.  When the whole two storey staircase had to be ripped out and replaced, we asked the artisans to keep the old panelling, and when we got our hands on it, the carving was as lovely as we had hoped.  I got a chum in the know to do an estimate of age for me, and he said that it wasn't really old linenfold, but it certainly wasn't modern either, and he put it at 17th century - think Jacobean. 

It has taken nearly four years to find another artisan to take the panels, clean them up and turn them into an internal door, but last week the moment arrived and the door was fitted.  It is still missing its transom window, and needs a little adjusting (should happen on Tuesday), but we are already besotted with it.  The guillotine door is to allow the cats to pass through easily, or not (when the door is closed).

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With January dashing by at a frightening speed, we have now invested in seed potatoes and can start chitting them soon, while John has started to build the small polytunnels that might win us a week or two on salads and radishes.  Next week he is muttering about firing up the rotavator and starting to turn the soil for the potato bed, so we can start planting in mid-March.

Finally, I get to work with some amazing environmental projects around England, one of which is Love Your River Cole in Solihull and Warwickshire.  They have just published their first VLog including work to improve the river at Meriden Park and also some nice footage of a heron and an egret.  So as my trail camera didn't provide a nice video, if you have 10 minutes to spare, enjoy this instead.

Until next week!

 

First image from the Trail Camera

Yes, finally, something other than a cat or a blackbird!  We took the camera down from its position yesterday afternoon and I watched through the videos and looked a the photos.  We now know what is making the tracks around the Garden bit of the estate (not by our house in the village), but it look a lot of zooming and searching and thinking.  This is the best image I could do (because all that image enhancement on CSI and NCIS is military boloney).

Anyway, the camera is now set up in a new position, and I will have to contain my excitement until Saturday next week to see what the new position gets (Big Hint, Santa, I want hares and badgers and deer and foxes and pheasants and partridges and hedgehogs!).

In the news today I see that Richard Rogers has fallen off his perch at the age of 88.  My Dad was very friendly with his first father in law, Marcus Brumwell, and used to stay at the house Rogers designed for him on the Fal Estuary.  I was therefore fascinated to see Creek Vean featured in the BBC obituary.  I remember visiting it once, when perhaps 13 years old.  Mum was having kittens while I was in the house due to the number of quality modern ceramics dotted around, while when I was in the garden I got annoyed with all the stones with holes dotted around - only Barbara Hepworth sculptures, but at 13 one tends to be a philistine!

The photo is from the BBC website, but is credited to English Heritage.

The days are nearing their shortest now, so it isn't surprising to see the moon rise as I go to lock up the chickens in the evening.  Or it shouldn't be, but the anticyclone is locking humidity at ground level so for much of the time we have been "enjoying" wall to wall low level murk.  Yesterday was different fortunately, so I was able to capture moon rise over the Church and next door's underwear (better photo editing required in future me thinks).  It is just past the full, but was exceedingly bright.

Although the bulk of winter is still ahead of us, there are ever more signs that plants are preparing for the spring.  There are seedlings appearing of annual flowers and weeds, and the tiny buttons of next year's sedums by the dead stalks from this year.  The polyanthus that John rescued from a bin are also starting to prepare flowers to brighten up January - and in a clever bit of planting, I got the purple ones in by the shrub with the spookily purple berries.

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Well, that's all for today - there really is very little new going on at the moment, other than laying bets as to when curfew will be reinstated and when travel within France will be limited (my personal bet is for the 29th December).  The next instalment is likely to be on the 27th and hopefully will include more wildlife photography from the trail camera.  In the meantime, Happy December 25th.

 

November Travels

As mentioned last week, I made my first trip to Plague Island since March 9th 2020 this week.  The skies were dramatic as I packed the car to leave home, but it was an uneventful drive to the port and a boring wait to be loaded and a flat crossing.  The boat wasn't really that full, so I do query why it took an hour and a half to get off the ferry and onto the M27 - in part it could be explained by a lorry driver that overslept and had clearly forgotten that his vehicle was blocking everyone else, but even so!  I think I was the second last person out of the port not driving a lorry, but then it was all behind me and the adventure could begin!

My first real stop (not including caffeine and comfort) was at Whixall Marina in Shropshire where I met a representative of the Restoring the Marches Mosses BogLIFE project for a walk out to the Mammoth Tower and to see how the Mosses are being restored and rewetted.  For a couple of old crocks, we made good time and covered a few kilometres!  The best photos (I hope) have yet to be downloaded from the proper camera, but I was truly impressed with the change at the former Scrapyard, which is slowly reverting to nature, rather than piles of old tyres, stacks of twisted metal and everything with a slightly oil stained sheen.

The following day, I took a couple of hours out to walk into the centre of Shrewsbury - quite my favourite place in England!  It was sad to see many empty shop fronts, but even so, they still have lots of small independent outlets there.  I also had a quick visit to Smethwick High Street - no photos of that, and smello vision is not a thing yet.  The spices that were on the air as I got out of my car, the enticing shop fronts and the cosmopolitan nature of the area are a total joy, though different to Shrewsbury.

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Thursday was devoted to all things Birmingham, so given HS2 and preparations for the Commonwealth Games, it was easier, but unsettling, to use public transport.  It did all pan out well, until I got back to Tamworth and had to wait for 20 minutes for a taxi, and I wore a mask more than anyone else I saw!  I visited the two Victorian Cemeteries in the Jewellery Quarter - well worth it, if you have the time.  Warstone Lane is more accessible, and I was privileged to be allowed to participate in a Remembrance Day ceremony with cadets from a local school.  It was very special for many reasons.  After a spot of eco-friendly lunch at a local café, I then visited Key Hill Cemetery, including a private view of the catacombs.  This site is more private and is home to nearly 100 London Planes - it is very beautiful.

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My final day was focussed on the River Cole, where Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and the Tame Valley Wetlands Partnership are leading work to improve a number of sites and equip local people and organisations with the skills to maintain then and do more once this funding pot is all spent.  Again the best photos are on the main camera, but the lake at Tamworth was improved with the previous funding, and the work at Meriden Park was at an exciting stage, where for once they are seeking to speed up the flow of water in a river.  I didn't film the way the ground wobbled around us as the digger went past as I was in fight or flight mode!

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The crossing on Friday night was much bumpier, so much more to my liking, and I was home by 10:30am yesterday, as it only took a quarter of an hour to get off the ship and out of the port (not least as I was nearly pole position on the car deck and I know where I've left my car!!).  But after walking 25km in 4 days, and losing a lot of sleep with the ferry crossing, much of yesterday wafted past in a dream-like trance.  Today I feel more normal and we spent time at the Garden, mowing, mulching and for me clearing and forking over a seedbed and sowing 52 broad bean seeds (must wear my glasses next time I buy seeds - 80g not 80 graines!).  I also had a good mooch round, looking at how things had changed, including my radishes sown in leaf mould, and lifted a winter radish for lunch... for the next two days!  At the One Acre Wood we found a single interesting mushroom, but left it there.

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Looking in the flower border, I saw hopeful signs.  I left the annual flowers to set seed and die back, before pulling away the old stalks a couple of weeks ago.  Looking at the seedlings that are coming up, I can see signs that the frilly purple stuff and cornflowers have indeed set seed and are now sprouting to put on an earlier display next year.  I'll not do any more weeding there now, but let things over-winter, and then see if they need a helping hand in the spring.

November and it's dull, dull, so very dull

It's been a bit of a trial finding things to talk about this week and also to find any nice photos to share to illustrate that with.  The dullness is more as it is same old, same old, as actually the weather has been fairly kind, so I have done a couple of walks (brown leaves, brown fields, brown woods) and seen a couple of fungi that were faintly photogenic, but otherwise of little interest to me.  No cèpes at all this year, so I have to keep going with my stash of dried from last year.

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There was an amusing moment during the week when I was wandering around the Orchard, and Donald decided he didn't want to walk so spent his time circling my head by standing on my shoulders (I really am stretching the point here).  The shadow we made on the ground was amusing - I'm either wearing a Davey Crocket hat or a saucepan!

Other things are preparing/being prepared for winter.  After the first significant frost of the year, I thought it was time to bring the avocado tree into shelter - they aren't known for being frost hardy!!  This is its third year, and it was grown from an avocado stone we brought back from Guadeloupe - the fruit was huge (family sized really), as was the pit, so we thought it was worth a try.  The tree actually has branches, and has done better than any other avocado stone I've grown, so I want to keep it going, but it will have to stay small enough to bring indoors each winter!

Following on from last week's pride in a first new flower on the little orchid, I can now present flower number 2, and looking closely at the buds, next week there might even be a third flower.  This small and frankly rather abused orchid has been with us now for three years and I am amazed by it.  I would like it to be an example to the bigger orchids that have since seduced me, but I don't know that they talk that much!

One thing that has made the week dull from a blogging perspective is the fact that I am preparing for a voyage to Plague Island next week.  I have had to get to grips with expensive lateral flow tests, passenger locator forms and Engagement sur l'Honneur form letters, do laundry so I have enough clean underwear, find the small rucksack for carrying my camera around, charge up the battery for the big camera, and look into the exotic subject of public transport into and around Birmingham.  All this should mean that I have lots of exciting photos for next week's blog, but make today's effort a major snooze fest.  

As even the cat is a critic, I'll leave it at that for now!

 

Scary things

Happy Halloween!  And to keep to the theme, I will draw out the scary side of everything today.  For a start, I went to a different Super U (local supermarket chain), as I was fed up with the one in Baugé and it's slapdash attitude to restocking things like Chicken Whiskas cat food, rose scented shower gel and its boycott of Duracell batteries.  So I went to the big one at Mazé - it's further away so I won't do it that often, but I felt like a complete hick when I went round it as it was so fresh, sparkling, well stocked and (dare I say it?) a bit exciting!  However, among the condiments I spotted Worcestershire sauce, which as you can see, flaunts that it has been matured for 18 months.  I would argue that it is still nearly raw, and therefore pretty inedible - it needs at least 30 months to mellow!  And as I lived opposite the trade entrance to the factory for over 10 years, I think I am well qualified to point this out!

The classic autumn sunsets continue - yesterday's was rather good, and I just managed to catch it over the top of the charming bungalow opposite.  Autumn leaf colour is also getting good.  We spotted a couple of sumac saplings showing off their best colours - the horror of that?  There are sumac roots encroaching into the Wildflower Meadow - as the nearest tree is over the road, the roots have made it under a tarmacked road, a 2 foot deep ditch and a leylandii hedge to get to where they are!

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Our spring time obsessions are cowslips and orchids, but wandering around the garden I find that they are already coming up.  Now I was well aware of the range of the cowslips, or so I thought, but the sheer density of them this autumn is a bit concerning - although something to look forward to when they flower in the spring.  The orchids on the other hand - there were no orchids there this year or last, where these two have been found.  That means that they have hitched a ride on one or more of the mowers or brush cutters, and are now colonising a new area.  They're coming to get us!

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And then there was last night - a hint of a social life again.  We went to the village bar to meet some friends and were faced with The Demented Bride, complete with knife through her head and glass shards in her heart, while the food offering wand handburgers!  For the first time in ages, I actually felt a bit festive, although as we arrived at 7pm and didn't get home until gone 10pm, I suspect I actually felt a bit tiddly!

Bring on November!

 

 

Autumn changes

Last week I picked and stored the butternut squashes, this week I picked the best red pepper I have ever grown.  Plus I also pulled two more of the large white radishes - one of them was a bit damaged, but we had a good sized salad with the two (Donald the cat insisted on being part of the picture, posing as you can see).  Now our thoughts are more about next year's crops, and I should be sowing the first of those, broad beans, in the next couple of weeks.  My darling husband acquired a trailer-load of leaf mould for me - lovely stuff that is dark and full of organic matter and will help our clay soil a lot.  It is now stored under a tarpaulin in a number of giant cat food sacks until needed.

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During the week, the weather took a serious turn, with the arrival of Storm Aurore.  She was forecast to track further north than us, although the clouds were a clear sign that she meant trouble.  She brought an hour of truly nasty winds which brought down trees and powerlines.  In the centre of the village, we had a couple of power cuts, but otherwise no major issues.  Isolated properties to the east of us weren't so lucky with more major electric lines down and some houses without power for over 24 hours. 

So here is a tip if you are leaving your house for a few days, leaving the power on, and have food in the freezer, and there is a power outage.  Have a half eaten tub of ice cream in the freezer.  If when you get back, you find a slick of ice cream across the bottom of the tub, your freezer has defrosted, if there is still a clear half and a half with ice cream in it, enjoy the rest knowing it hasn't melted and refrozen!!

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So Aurore has now passed and the sun is back.  And we have a new toy to help with those annoying branches where it is difficult to get a bow saw in and a proper chainsaw is over the top.   This little gem came with two batteries, two bars and four chains (on the basis that you work 2 chains to a bar and should replace the bar more often that we do as the bar gets clogged and damaged and warped with use).  We spent a happy quarter of an hour raising the crown on an annoying cypress style tree, and half an hour tidying up afterwards (always the way).

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Last week I wrote about my embarrassing orchid habit - this is the final one I hadn't managed to get a good picture of, while it still has a flower.  I know it will fall off soon.  The small orchid that was covered in buds now has one flower, and I'm likely to show it off next week.

And yes, that is a cat eating in the background!