Rural Life

Apologies for the delay

Yesterday was a birthday - not mine - and meant a bit of celebrating, a bit of exercise, and by the time we were done with that, I could not face being near the computer (actually I was tied to the juice pot, as we had 4 pounds of elderberries doing their thing).

The weather has not been inspiring once again, which has resulted in two cats finding their inner kitten/getting stir crazy and needing to run around like crazy.  Normally the lizard population provides summer entertainment, but this year we have needed the help of the mouse on a long string, a piece of rolled up newspaper and the Red Dot.  "They say" that summer will restart this week, but first it was today, then tomorrow, now Wednesday seems to be Summer - we'll see!

There have been two flower events this week worthy of note.  During the week the final bud opened on the large red orchid I bought from Aldi - this is much bigger than my other orchids, so is having to live on the kitchen window sill for the moment.  I have bought another like this one, but it was half price as the flowers had finished and the shop (not Aldi) didn't want the ugly thing sitting around.  We'll see what happens with that one too.  The other flower event is the first flower on one of the many chilli plants we have knocking around the garden out of the range of chicken beaks.  What these plants really need is heat and sun, so fingers crossed from Wednesday (bit of a theme developing here).

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The potato harvest is in full swing at the plot, and as I moved the weed suppressant matting that makes potato crops possible, I found another of my little garden helpers - a rather fine baby slow worm (less scary than the sloughed snake skin I found last week).  The first sweetcorn - the six or so that came from the first sowing of 51 seeds - are starting to look promising.  I think they may be ready before the end of the month.  The second sowing are starting to show their male flowers and there are hints of the female flowers (the tassels and the cobs).  They won't be ready until September, unless the weather really bucks its ideas up.

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We have been joined by yet another chicken this week.  Following our purchase of Mac and Jak in the Spring, and being invaded by the Economic Migrant in July, we have been prevailed upon to provide shelter to an old girl who was left on her own when her chums died off (after a suitable quarantine period).  She needs company, we were told, she is pining for the company of other chickens we were told.  Meet Auntie Mo, the chicken that walks by herself.

The Birthday Weekend started with a tasting at a craft brewery in Chinon on Friday night, on Saturday we went shoe shopping and won (well, found two pairs that were considered acceptable), and Sunday was lunch at Buffalo Grill.  They are formulaic, but the meat is good quality, the chips are very nice, they have a full range of steak sauces, and the puddings are magnificent.  Of course after that lot, you then need exercise, so we walked round the wildlife sanctuary lake at la Monnerai, which was new to us.  Using the free telescopes, we could admire egrets and cormorants on an island in the middle of the lake.  The wildlife lake is also less visited, and there were mobs of people around the leisure lake, as you would expect on a Sunday afternoon in August!

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So apologies for the delay, and until next Sunday, which should be Summer!

 

 

A beano and evidence of a visitor

Now I don't mean the comic, quality as that is, I use beano in the sense of a day's outing, such as used to be taken by workers from the East End of London, because I took a rare day off - needless to say the weather was not propitious but as a couple of things had been booked, Tuesday it was. 

I went with a chum, and first of all we stopped at the lac de Rillé, an artificial lake (supposedly the largest in Touraine) which is normally about two thirds empty at this time of year.  Not in 2021!  The trees around had been damaged by the storms with strong winds in June and July and there was still some tidying up going on.  It looks a lovely place for walks later in the year and over winter, with a bird hide.  We then went to Langais for lunch and a mooch around, admiring the outside of the Chateau, the inside of the Church and a very lovely bronze sculpture on the outside of the Church.  I couldn't photograph it, but the Church had the dodgiest ever crucifix above the altar, made by a local art group.  The pose on the Cross was actually more #paintmelikethosefrenchgirls, while the back was decorated with Nespresso capsules.

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Last week I was worrying about blight.  The potatoes escaped it seems as they were second earlies and therefore pretty well over before it hit.  I've resorted to the French trick of removing leaves, growing tips and anything that displeases me, and at the moment we are under control.  Evidence that the potatoes are looking good below, as well as a view of ripening tomatoes as proof!

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The Garden and the Meadow are good for wildlife and we find lots of evidence and see lots of things.  This week's interesting finds were a large and beautiful red admiral sunning himself on a log pile, a comma butterfly (I think) gorging itself on the buddleia, and the sloughed skin of a reasonably sized grass snake under the matting that we cover the potato plot with.

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Some know of my challenges with chilli plants - the fact that chickens eat them is a particular annoyance.  The fact that my brother has a couple in a pot on his terrace and despite being planted in the same soil at the same time as mine, his always do better, is even more irritating.  So it is with great pride that I announce the first flower bud on my chilli plants this year.  Of course they need sun and heat, which is lacking this year, but it is a start!

Incidentally, if you are reading this on a computer rather than a phone, if you click/double click on the photos you get a bigger, better view of them.

Until next week!

 

 

Struggling against the elements

Last Saturday the weather changed, and summer arrived very quickly and very firmly.  No rain and temperatures up to 30ºC by Sunday and through the week, so much so in fact, that I had to mow a lawn in the morning, as while there was still some dew, it would be too hot to mow in the afternoon, when shade temperatures reached 34ºC, and you aren't always in the shade when mowing.  The farmers also took advantage of the window of hot, sunny weather to get the wheat, barley, oat and colza crops in and the straw baled.  As Benoit, purveyor of fine milk, butter and cream pointed out, once bailed, the straw was safe.  Our weird garden cactus decided it was time to flower and the Poundshop Lily finally bloomed - all very beautiful (and smelly in the case of the lily).  The blue hibiscus at Chinon was also looking very glamorous.

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The hot weather coincided with Mac going broody - I've never had a black chicken do that before!  Bridie does it at least twice a year, but she is a freeloading bantam, Mac is one of my good chickens, or so I thought.  Actually she is nicer than Dummer used to be, so while I wear gauntlets to lift her out of the coop, she isn't so savage in her attacks.  She wanders around the garden looking for bugs, and aggressively preening her wing feathers at us, while making the chuntering sounds you hear from velociraptors in Jurassic Park films.  Her eye might look odd in the photo, but it is totally fine, she was just caught badly and I didn't get another picture as good.

Anyway, one chicken broody means one less egg each day, and having to fight for those there are, so it is a pain.  Sudden heat means the weather isn't totally stable, and of course on Friday evening it broke.  The gusts of wind knocked over the lily, breaking off one of the flower stems - that is now in a beer bottle on the outside kitchen window ledge (we couldn't have it indoors as it smelt so strong, and lily pollen can be fatal to cats).  Since Saturday morning we have had another 9mm of rain, and that is before counting how much fell this afternoon during the monsoon between 3pm and 5pm.  All that makes the following comments and photo inevitable - blight!  The tomato plants are laden with fruit, but how much will ripen before the plants succumb completely remains to be seen.  I've picked two near ripe tomatoes and more are colouring up, but these two are nearly ripe, and yet riddled with blight and inedible and can't even be added to the compost or they will spread the disease.  I could be making an awful lot of chutney, except that you need other ingredients and I am not going to waste my shallots on jars of chutney that won't get eaten.

Once I had removed most of the affected leaves and fruit, I took a few more photos of the vegetable plots to try to inspire myself again.  Here is the sweetcorn looking impressive and with climbing beans planted among them as recommended by the Radio 2 gardeners, the butternut squashes that survived the snails starting to look business-like and the big square with newly planted brassicas, the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines (the latter two hidden in the main by tomatoes).

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The tomato news, a pretty vile weather forecast for the next week and a wet weekend drove us to drink.  Tant pis!

 

The camera isn't always there to hand

Well what's that about?  Only that the Patrouille de France - the French answer to the Red Arrows - have been based at our local airport for the past few days.  They arrive, they do a practice of their air show, they go off and do their air show at Saumur, they come back, they get a delivery of air force kerosene, they do another practice, then they go and buzz the Tour de France finish before heading home.  I've heard them three times and seen them twice - in formation - and not had a camera of any sort to hand to capture the moment.  Rather splendid though.  It was easier to capture us both relaxing in different forms of hammock at midday today, after working hard.

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We are getting different flowers out now.  My favourite cultivated flowers, agapanthus, are coming out by the front door.  The first cyclamen have started to show in the lawn, making mowing so much more challenging.  The gladioli are coming out but are a disappointing yellow - perhaps the red ones are the ones that got munched by snails.  Last year in the UK, when I could still get there and visit a Poundshop, and could bring back bulbs, I bought a couple of mystery lily bulbs.  They didn't do much last year but will be magnificent soon.

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I worry a bit about our older cats and that they can be a bit lazy, so last weekend, I invested in a couple of things to arouse their interest.  While Poirot has made it clear that all this is beneath her, Nibbles has taken a very keen interest in finding and catching the Red Spot, public enemy number one for all cats.  She has also taken to worshipping the planter that the giant catnip plant is wedged in at the moment - I don't think she can climb into the planter, or it could get very ugly.  She is not a pretty spaced out person.

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We lifted the shallot harvest on Wednesday - magnificent though I say so myself - and they are now drying on a nice bulb drying tray I got from a chum locally - thanks Brigitte!  I am concerned about the spuds.  They have flowered and there is a lot of die back.  I foolishly didn't read the packet properly and these are second earlies, so I am hoping they are doing what comes naturally, as the other explanation is Blight, which is Bad.

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Have a good week!

 

A promise of things to come

Before we get onto that, a word on chickens.  Muck left us for the chicken run in the sky - brown chickens never seem as robust as other types, so we watch Brass with a certain concern.  Currently we are home to 7 fowl - Delenn the Doyenne shown below, demonstrating that you don't have to be young and agile to get to roost on the high perch, old, creaky and fat can do it too.  Then there is Brass, and Mac and Jak the newbies for this year, Bridie the freeloading bantam, and The Asylum Seeker from next door.  I was a bit concerned to find another of next door's marching around the garden just now when I popped out for some bay leaves - we are not going to be a sanctuary for discontented chickens!

British visitors are starting to turn up in the Pays de la Loire, as restrictions ease and a pent up need to visit their properties becomes overwhelming.  It is lovely to see them, although we panic about getting gardens just so in the days before they arrive.  I was doing one garden, and had time to stop to admire a bank of some sort of pea flower along the side of a lake, and a yellow wagtail marching up and down the landing stage (believe me, that is what it is, the photo is just fuzzy).  Monday night the President will make announcements and that may stop the tide again - and not exactly a tide, just a few more faces in the area!

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We've found evidence of very welcome visitors to The Garden in the past week.  I do not see them when I visit, well I make a noise and am generally accompanied by cats, so have to find other ways to know they are there.  In the photos below are two different thrush anvils and the shells of the snails they have beaten out of them.  It is so great to see that, as I've not seen a real live thrush for ages, and they are such beautiful and useful birds.

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The promise of good things to come includes something else I've never seen before.  The sweet chestnuts are in flower and normally the flowers are high up so you see the long tails of essentially male flowers with their fluffy petals, and if you are a hayfever sufferer with a problem with tree pollen, you tend to suffer too.  But get up close and personal, and you can also see the female flowers, miniature spiny cocoons where the nuts will form during the next three months.  The first sweetcorn are also starting to produce male flowers (round here castrating maize is a thing, but I'm not going to bother), and signs of where the cobs will start forming very soon - that makes me hungry and yearn for them to get on with it!!  Finally the sweet peppers (or bell peppers) are in flower and I've spotted some tiny fruits too, so that will be something else yummy soon.  Ideally a bit of sun and the tomatoes will start to ripen too!

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We've been working on a flower border in the garden, filling it mainly with things we have rescued from compost heaps or have been sitting in pots for ages or packets of seeds that seemed like a good idea at the time, with the honourable exception of the Fergus Memorial Rose.  On the left is an early shot, on the right, how it is looking today - full of flowers for bees and insects and full and blousy.

Finally a gratuitous photo of one man and his favourite machine making a noise this morning during the window of opportunity for using loud machines.  Useless scrub has been pushed back for a day or two.

Still a chunk of weather out there!

I wouldn't want to be considered one who rubbernecks, but I did feel that if it was from a suitable distance, getting sight of what had happened at St Nicholas de Bourgeuil a couple of weeks ago would be interesting.  It didn't disappoint, and on Friday, as I took a different route to Chinon, I was able to stop just below the buildings of la Jarnoterie (many may know this grower) and look across the vineyards to something that might be compared to what Godzilla would do if she visited the area.  The village is still blocked off, and quite rightly.

The weather is really not right for this time of year, with sweatshirts not banished to the back of the cupboard, jeans de rigeur much of the time and mushrooms!  Further south, friends have found cèpes.  Yesterday we found three different varieties in the Garden - none of them convincing for eating purposes, but wrong at the beginning of July.

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There are also the things that you would expect from this time of year - lovely banks of lavender humming with bees and hawkmoths, peacock butterflies on the buddleia and marbled whites on the wild scabious.  Our nascent herbaceous border has lots of bee friendly flowers out now as well as hidden shrubs and rampant weeds - actually it is hard to distinguish it from the surrounding weeds as it has been too wet to get a mower in there to define the edges.

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Of course July in France is all about la grande boucle - the Tour de France - and today they are up in the mountains with an uphill finish at Tignes.  I downloaded the Tour de France app this lunchtime and am impressed by it.  But now I must go and watch the utter pain and ultimate glory of an uphill finish!

Until next week!

 

 

Let's talk weather, gardens and partying

The weather remains the number one topic in our household as British visitors start to drift over for the summer and expect their gardens to look lovely, while the incessant rain makes that pretty near impossible.  There was a brief window of dry weather on Thursday when we could get out to deal with the two most urgent cases, but even so the ground is now soggy, and in places it isn't nice to drive a ride on lawnmower.  To add insult to injury, in the short period where you can use motorised garden tools yesterday (Sunday) morning, it rained and then rained most of the afternoon too, so that we got soaked again doing a necessary harvest, plus some emergency weeding and sowing!

Weather

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The crop that had to be harvested yesterday, when I should have been writing this blog, was the garlic.  The stems were dying down and the wet soil would not help the ability to store the bulbs, so we got them in and put them to dry in the wood store.  In about a week I should be able to pick over them and pack them better for storage.  We also lifted another of the conical Hispi cabbages that we have been growing.  We picked the first one on Tuesday and had it steamed with butter - o my word how yummy was that!  There are also occasional surprising flowers, like this magnificent orange day lily.

Garden produce

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As more people get vaccinated (I had my second jab today), and we get used to seeing places open, life is getting a little more social.  Monday morning was nice (the afternoon was truly vile), and it was pleasant to sit out in the place near the Mairie in Chinon and watch café society.  Saturday was a day for partying, and so as well as going to a micro-brewery for an excellent beer tasting (as designated driver, I got a tiny sip of each), we actually went out for a meal for the first time in many, many months.  I don't think I've eaten out since October last year in fact, so it was lovely to sit under the plane trees in Chinon and have a meal cooked by a professional.  Finally, there is a significant birthday (well not in number terms, but in the person whose birthday it is) in the village this week, and the pub laid on a little do for her and her chums (including us) yesterday morning on their covered terrace.  A good thing the terrace is covered, as it p***d down with rain all through.  It was so nice to see people other than the family circle!

Getting social

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And then there are animals.  Don't ever think that chickens are cute and cuddly, they are closely related to dinosaurs (remember the velociraptors of Jurassic Park), omnivores who will eat anything.  Mac or Jak found a baby bird, and spent a happy hour running around trying to eat it and keep it all for herself too.  As hens don't have teeth, and don't know how to keep things quiet, this took a long time, and was disgusting. 

There is a small, spring-fed pool at one of the houses where we do lawns.  We have seen newts in it in the past, but this week it was all waterboatmen and frogs.  When the photo was taken, there were 8 sitting out on leaves and making a racket, and I suspect if I had stood still for a bit longer, there would have been more.  Either a frog orgy or a tenement!

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Apologies for being a day late - I'll try to do better next week.

 

Brutal weather and projects

I stupidly mentioned kindly weather last time round - well that will teach me!  Last Sunday was hot and the temperatures just kept rising on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I was on mowing duty on Monday and had to do that in the morning to keep it reasonable.  Tuesday evening aperos were in the garden and 31ºC at 7pm, so of course when it broke on Wednesday, it went with a bang!  There were reports of tornados, hours of sheet lightening and heavy rain Wednesday to Thursday, and I saw the damage as I drove the roads round Rillé on Friday.  It was still hot and sticky though, so more showers, more storms, more humidity.  Yesterday that culminated in a storm front that went across France causing havoc.  We were lucky, but St Nicholas de Bourgeuil lost its church spire to a tornado, while the floods in Saumur and towns near Paris and Reims were extraordinary.

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Yesterday was market day, and as I had company and the terraces are open, we took the opportunity to stop at one of the cafés around the market to have a drink and watch the world go by.  I am used to watching sparrows scavenge around under tables, but it was the first time I've seen a chaffinch do that.  If you are reading this on a computer or tablet, it is worth looking closely at the third photo - I'm rather proud of that one!

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This morning, after paying homage to the Cats in the Country, we went to the open day at l'Or de la Ruche - a professional bee keeper and purveyor of honey, where there was also an exhibition on Asian hornets and how to trap them, and a bit of a producers' market too.  It was a lovely little event, no face masks as there was plenty of space to spread out, and yet enough people to let you think life might return to normal one day.

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This afternoon we went out to a Brocante - O, how daring and how wonderful!  We were on a mission as the Chinon One would like a footstool for his birthday next week, and this seemed a likely place - a huge warehouse at Beaufort en Vallée.  Bizarrely, footstools were not plentiful.  There were bar stools, milking stools, coffee tables and a camel saddle, but just one footstool - rather modern and with a not very nice cover, but at 10€, something of a bargain, even if we are going to recover it.  It seems to do what was required anyway.  We did find another option as well - an old barley twist chair that has certainly seen better days, and the back struts are badly split.  But take off the back, cover the sawn off bits with a bit of foam and new fabric, add the missing stretcher, give it a good polish, and the chair will make a rather fine and unique foot stool as well.

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Until next week!

 

Orchids, roses and vegetables

The first half of the week passed in a blur of reading reports, analysing numbers and trying to get it all down in a logical way and make some sense of it all.  By Wednesday evening, when the first draft of the report was sent, my mind was mush.  Thursday I must have done something useful - but it is hard to remember what.  Ah yes, new cylinder for the sodastream, visiting a couple of clients, feeding cats and sewing labels into summer shirts - clearly I did quite a bit that was useful!!

After the usual Friday visits, the new normal allowed us to go to the pub, sit out on the terrace and enjoy being around people, while taking on a glass or two of something cold.  It is so good to start the old normal experiences.  Tomorrow should have seen a bit of yoga too, but local elections mean the large village hall wasn't available, while the room offered as a substitute, as well as having a huge framed photo of the President, was not really conducive to socially distanced yoga for seniors.  So we are cancelled until September, which is a shame.

Today we were out and about before the temperatures got too hot to do anything other than wilt.  As well as productive things (more later), I spotted three different types of orchid out - two in the Orchard, and one in the One Acre Wood.  Here are a bee, a lizard and a birds nest!

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The roses are also coming on nicely at The Shack.  There is a splendid white climbing rose with a delicate scent by one of the outbuildings, which is putting on a great display - next week will be all about dead heading I guess.  The Fergus Memorial Rose, or Orange King as the label more officially calls it, has also put out its first flower.  I photographed it both yesterday and today, but today's photo was after there had been a lot of strimming, so there were bits of shredded weed in the flower.  I've not included that one!

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The vegetables are coming on.  Today I picked all remaining broad beans, and also lifted one of the main crop garlic to see what was going on, as the leaves and stems looked like they had been ravaged by rust, but there was a nice bulb and later on we will eat it to check on flavour!  The sweetcorn I sowed last Saturday ALL came up, so I had to spend time thinning out the excess plants, which really, really hurt.  I also planted out three more butternut squashes and four Bright Lights chard, the latter hidden among the shallots to get a bit of shelter while they establish themselves.  The shallots will be lifted in about a month at which point the chard can do what it likes.  Getting rid of the broad bean plants will give the peppers, aubergines and tomatoes more light, which will be good.

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There is also a lot of wildlife around.  Yesterday we visited a friend so John could do his Lawnmower Repair Man act (not totally successfully, but there is a deeper seated problem than he can get at).  She has swallows nesting in her stables and while the parents were out gathering beakfuls of insects for the offspring, I was able to look in and catch a photo.  Today, after I had toiled and done hammock time as a reward, I did my nature walk around the Orchard and the Wildlife Meadow.  The wild scabious is coming out which means an explosion of marbled white butterflies, which are just lovely to watch and occasionally take a photo of too!

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Next week's episode may be a bit late, but should have more exciting things to discuss, assuming the weather is a bit kind.

 

 

It's starting to get seriously nice finally

The weather has mostly perked up nicely, but we did have a blip between Wednesday and Friday, first with storms and lots of rain (26mm over three days here, a bit more at The Shack as it was in the path of a big storm) and then a really nasty, cold, wet Friday, before picking up again yesterday.  If Meteo France are to be believed, we now have a clear run of fine and hot weather (over 25ºC apparently is the definition they use for hot) for the next 15 days.  We'll see!

Friday was a day for a bit of private contemplation and a vigil on the way to Chinon and Azay - the weather was "ideal", or at least reflected my mood.  At la Chapelle sur Loire you can get down the river, where there are benches, picnic tables and bike racks, as well as a slipway into the river.  It was peaceful, despite the traffic on the levee road, and I was on my own, but entertained by swallows and sand martins skimming the river for bugs, egrets doing what egrets do, and things that looked like plovers, but probably weren't, out on the sandbanks.  The river took a reed down to the sea with my blessing.

Cats have been relatively disgraceful during the warmer weather (during the cold wet weather, they got wet and smelly).  Zola and Nibbles demonstrate their personal preferences for drink, while if Donald spots anyone in the hammock, he launches himself on them and has a wiggly love-in!  All very cute.

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The vegetable plots are looking more lush, or overgrown, which ever you prefer.  The tomatoes are climbing up their supports, while the shallots are starting to sag as the bulbs start to swell.  I had to resow sweetcorn yesterday, as 7/51 is a pretty poor germination rate.  Checking the seed packets, they recommend sowing 4 or 5 seeds per station and then thinning out any stragglers - well I resowed at 3 per station as I cannot abide the thought that I might be throwing out so many plants.  Although I might have got the maths wrong...  Anyway, once they were all in and the bed tamped down, Clause launched himself onto it, rolled across the whole area and dug two test pits before finding the one that deserved his poo.  The seedbed is now covered in cut branches of leylandii.  Meanwhile I picked more broad beans and dug up another feral garlic for supper.

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While I tended to the plants that will feed us, John struggled with strimmer and mower to cut paths through overly lush grass and brambles to enable us to walk around the Orchard and wildflower meadow and admire wildlife and flowers.  Particularly in the orchard, this makes a lovely walk and provides enticing views that might make you think this was a serious bit of garden design (and of course, you would be right).  Following the paths cleared for me, I admired many bee orchids (but only so many photos of those today), and spotted that the badgers had been doing a bit of spring cleaning.

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At home, we have slightly less tasteful flowers to admire, but the bumble bee I spotted seemed very happy to work her way over the red hot pokers.

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So, have a lovely week, enjoy the weather, and look out for happy bumble bees and discrete bee orchids.