Rural Life

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.

 

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.

 

Cattle egrets and badgers

I became aware of the cattle egret when we first went to Guadeloupe in 2017 - we were fascinated to see odd cows tethered around the countryside, each with upwards of 3 egrets wandering around them.  I'm sure there must have been some here before then, but now we have hoards stalking the cows that we pass on the way to The Shack, and indeed on the country route home from visiting the Azay One.  It is not uncommon to see groups of a dozen or so, but more recently we have become aware of groups of what looks like a hundred or so.  This morning I tried to get a photo of them - difficult in the car, but as soon as we stopped and I opened a door, they moved so that there was at least 20 metres between us.  Still, here is a view of lots of cattle egrets - they will soon disperse for the summer, so enjoy while we can!

More to the point, it would appear that the end of February is when major changes happen in Badger world.  There is an entrance to a set in the middle of the Meadow, and over the winter it has been unused.  Badger Towers, over on a bank about 2 fields away shows more activity, so we assume our set is summer quarters for young lovers.  The trail camera picked up stills and video footage of two individuals (at least) passing through the orchard, but while I had looked at the set entrance earlier in the week, it was only today that I spotted activity.  Specifically, spring cleaning.

There is no doubt that this old bedding has been cleaned out of the set as the surface of the set entrance has been scuffled up nicely.

So what did the trail camera pick up?  It is set to take a photo when it spots movement, then take a 15 second video.  For a fox passing through, I generally just get the photo, as the fox is long gone before the video recording takes place.  As the camera is pointed at a badger path, 15 seconds is too long for a badger too, and I have reduced the time to 10 seconds for the next week.  Badgers can clearly see the infrared spectrum a bit, as they can start and look straight at the camera, before carrying on, or running away!

Here are some nice stills.

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Here is big badger (perhaps Daddy Badger?) passing on through.

Here is a smaller, perhaps younger or female badger, coming through, and spotting the camera too.

And here is a young badger spotting the camera and running away - and you can tell here that 15 seconds really is too long!

So we will see what next week brings on the camera, before I move it away from badger highway and on to another site where I can see different tracks in the mud.  January and the first half of February were quiet and a bit dispiriting, but it was magnificent working my way through 34 files of activity yesterday (I only publish the best!).

 

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!

 

Hints of better days to come

So here's a thing - not one, but TWO sunny days during the week!  Friday might have been alright too, I can't remember, as Fridays are dominated by other things.  But TWO sunny days.  Well mostly sunny days, but two of them!

We took advantage of the first (Monday) to do a bit of work on a client's garden - it is quite exposed when the wind is in the West or Southwest, and many of the trees and shrubs have a jaunty angle, but where it is sheltered, it is a wonderful sun trap at this time of year.  Following animal tracks around, I found a glorious and secluded group of daffodils, with flower buds developing nicely.  They could be out in a couple of weeks!

Yesterday (Saturday) was the other nice day - it made standing in queues at the market so much more enjoyable, and positively encouraged chatting with acquaintances.  Catching up with people and passing the time of day is one of those things that has been allowed to slide with Covid, sadly.  The sun also meant it was exceptionally pleasant to go to the One Acre Wood and sort out a problem on an oak tree that had been annoying us for a few years.  It is a magnificent specimen, about 70 to 80 years old we think, and the main trunk is straight and true, but there was a low side branch which affects the quality of the main stem, so we cut it off.  In three years, it will keep us warm.  It was lovely in the wood.

The days are getting longer and things are getting frisky.  If you are a semi-feral freeloading bantam, this means you are considered fair game by any young cat that is looking for a nice gift for the girl of his dreams.  I don't see the chasing, I just hear the objections, and if I go out to see what the problem is, I can bet I will be faced with a very cross bantam at head height.  I've tried telling Bridie that if she lived in the main run, she wouldn't have this problem, but she just won't believe me!

Something is thinking about setting up home in The Garden by The Shack - I'm not sure what it is, but it's a bit more than the test pits that the boar come up with in the wildflower meadow or the badger mess created elsewhere.  If it keeps looking purposeful, I might set up the trial camera nearby to see who it is.  This week there was more evidence that the hunters had scared everything off - the camera was set up by a trail and a pond that we know is used by ducks.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing through the whole week other than me coming to take the camera down.  I even put it in the chicken run overnight to make sure it was still working (it is).  Ho hum.

(Apologies for the poor quality photo.)

During the autumn, my new found orchid obsession and half price plants at Mr Bricolage meant that the kitchen windowsill is now orchid central.  The largest, most expensive and definitely most worrying of the collection arrived with one large flower, which lasted a good three weeks before falling off.  But over the past two months, a bud has slowly developed and after an annoying 3 days, is now fully opened.  The flower isn't as big as the one that fell off, but to my mind, it is probably a bit prettier (well I would say that, wouldn't I?).

So that's it for this week - next week there will be exciting tales of garlic planting and the latest fail with the trail camera!

 

Hope springs eternal

First off, Happy Belated Burn's Night to my Scottish chums.  In your honour, we broached our second to last tin of haggis (it is now considered contraband to bring it in - one of those gifts of Brexit), and served it with roasted potatoes from our own production (tatties), creamed swede (neeps) and onion gravy (not a drop of whisky in the house - shock, horror).  It was delicious and there was enough left over for a nice snack lunch, hot on buttered toast.

This week's location for the trail camera was, if anything, even more frustrating than the last two.  There is evidence of activity in the zone and when I checked it on Tuesday, there were 92 files saved!  I left it in situ for the rest of the week and took it down yesterday, all eager to see what had been cavorting around for my entertainment.  There were the usual shots of me leaving and arriving, and 89 files showing the sun moving around, condensation drying off, the ambient temperature rising from -1ºC and frosty to 5ºC and sunny over the space of three quarters of an hour.  And in all that time, the only thing moving and setting off the camera?  A dead leaf on the Old Man's Beard!  It was also clearly the only time that there was any sort of breeze during the whole week, which apart from that one morning, was dull, foggy, dank, overcast and really rather cold.  Here is the offending leaf - the camera has moved to another spot, which I hope gets something!

This weekend is the RSPB's Garden Bird Watch weekend, which is also running with a French bird charity too.  The evidence from a week in a secluded orchard where no birds set off the camera is not entirely hopeful for wildlife.  In all seriousness, over the past fortnight, the hunters have "been through" twice round The Shack and seem to have frightened off pretty well everything other than a couple of very dedicated mallard and the small garden birds.  Today we did not manage to raise a pheasant, which we can normally do.  As they are only supposed to be hunting boar, any claims that the hunters are supporting local wildlife seem a bit spurious to me currently.

On a happier note, spring isn't here yet, but it is definitely on it's way.  There are bright yellow catkins around the edge of the One Acre Wood, snowdrops coming up under our quince tree and the daffodils and narcissus around the edge of the Wildflower Meadow are starting to show.

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Looking forward, I'm sure wildlife will be back - roaming around today, we found someone's stash of stolen maize husks and a hole in the fence to the farmer's field with well worn tracks all around.  They may be elsewhere currently, but I'm sure things will come back.  Looking even further forward, the cyclamen are spreading well where we have transplanted corms and the flowers have set seed.  Perhaps in 20 years or so the area will be a carpet of white flowers in the early autumn!

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One thing we have learned, badgers are not put off by coffee grounds.  Back to the drawing board on that one!