Rural Life

Lockdown III, Day 9 - that orchid rant

It's been a long day and I had to be out and about rather earlier than normal so got the full benefit of the hard frost and scraping the car, but when you are faced with a view like this when you arrive where you need to be, really it's not so bad!

Back in March, I introduced Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper - our two new chickens.  I think one was hatched a bit earlier than the other, but anyway, yesterday, finally, when I let them all out for their daily vandalism session and checked the coop, I found our first new Black Chicken egg!  Isn't it sweet?  As there was another today, I know what we are having for lunch tomorrow!!

Back in November, when we were all enjoying Confinement Lite or Lockdown II, I noticed that one of my miniature orchids was doing something interesting.  I posted a few photos of it before the end of the year - you can see a nice "branch" with lumps on it which might turn into flowers or more "branches".

Well, now we are in April, and my mother's rather larger orchid has had a whole new flower branch and two large flowers, which have been out for a number of weeks in the interim.  Yesterday, we finally have an open flower!  Talk about taking your time!  I've bought more orchid "compost" or a bag of dodgy looking bits of bark, but don't like to disturb things while they are doing their best to bloom.  On this basis, I will be repotting in October!!

O so pretty and o so tantalising!

 

Lockdown III, Day 8 - down at The Shack

Sunday morning is generally our big time for doing work at The Shack - there is a period of 2 hours between 10am and midday when we can use petrol motors, so John can play with chainsaw, rotavator, strimmer, brush-cutter and other noisy things, while I supervise cats and do "stuff".  Yesterday and overnight we had the first proper rain for ages, so the machines didn't come out to play but we did have a good check round and cuddled cats.

I sorted out my box of seeds about a month ago, throwing out most opened packets and anything over 7 years old (!).  Those between 5 and 7 years old and interesting (10 packets of seeds for kale and while it may be a super food, I'm still not going to grow it) I took to The Shack along with a stack of 6 - 8 inch pots.  A couple of weeks ago, I filled 7 pots with my miracle horse poo and leaf mould mix from the bin, and sowed the whole packet of each of cat mint, dill, coriander, basil, lettuce Webbs Wonder, chard Bright Lights and Autumn King carrots.  It felt rather good to be quite so profligate!  Anyway, despite pretty awful germinating conditions - first unseasonably hot, then unseasonably cold - today's inspection showed that so far at least the chard and the carrots are coming up!  Yes, I have spotted there is an interloper among the carrots - it has been removed.

Inspection of the bed planted with garlic, shallots and Hispi cabbage showed really good growth on the shallots, well apart from a Donald shaped gap!  I'm sure the delayed ones will catch up in due course and no one was rolling around on the wet soil today!

Things aren't so good on the fruit front.  While I have a small Victoria plum tree in the garden at home that is wrapped round with fleece at the moment to protect the fruitlets, the big tree at the end of the wildflower meadow does not have that luxury.  You can see the fruitlets are nearly black and when I picked one off and dissected it with my thumb nail, it was clearly unviable and frosted.

The cherry blossom has also been affected - I'm hoping that it is just that the petals have been fried by the frost and that the fruit will somehow survive, but with more nights of frost over the next week, I fear my ability to stand and scoff a kilo of cherries while allegedly doing something useful in the meadow will be severely curtailed this year.

Tomorrow I am likely to have a rant about orchids.  Just to warn you.

 

Lockdown III, Day 7 - by way of explanation

With this lockdown being announced for the 4th April, there was a certain inevitability that I would be informed on the 3rd April that we finally had a date when a room would be available in a carefully chosen nursing home.  So much to be done, so many arguments and discussions to be had, and of course lots of work to do as well.  And then lockdown itself to contend with.  Hence going dark for essentially 3 blogging days (I don't think posting an Armadillo really counts), while, depending on your point of view, someone entered prison or a caring and safer environment.  As I left on Thursday, I admired a group of ladies of a certain age, sitting on the sun-drenched terrace wearing rather fetching boaters, drinking lemon squash and keeping each other company - I didn't feel quite so bad!

Nibbles has felt the undertones of what has been going on and this morning both sulked and lived up to her name - hopefully that sort of behaviour will wear off soon and she will go back to ignoring me and sleeping or seeing off young intruders from the garden.

And as if cat shaming isn't enough, I am now going to chicken shame.  We have 5 - yes FIVE - full sized chickens and a small freeloader, so why did I have to buy this today?

Finally a comment on lockdown rules or my notoriety locally - I'm not sure which.  Yesterday I was driving home at about 6pm after having visited a client.  As the visit had been outside the allowed 10km, I had an attestation on my phone as well as my ID card, so when I saw the police block as I drove between the Chateau and the Tribunal in Baugé, I pulled over as indicated and started to prepare.  I put on my face mask, turned off the music in the car, prepared to get my ID and phone - but the lovely young policeman just looked in at me, and said with smiley eyes, "no don't worry, on your way, Madame!"  I was a little upset at not showing off my lovely new WARP (Withdrawal Agreement Residence Permit) card, but having said that, with Vieil Baugé stickers on the car and being convinced I'd met him before, I guess I wasn't surprised! 

 

Lockdown III, Day 6 - not back to normal yet

Apologies for the disruption to service and I promise I will get going again properly tomorrow to review the first week of Lockdown III.

In the meantime, enjoy this photo from September - because everyone needs to see an occasional armadillo!

Lockdown III, Day 3 - running around doing stuff

There are things going on that can't be written about here in an open forum, but suffice it to say that trying to get work done while also trying to sort out "stuff" for the other thing has meant a dull and really rather stressful day, but progress has been made on both fronts.

Instead I will see what photos I haven't posted that people might like and comment on them.

18 months ago, we bought a selection of cheap bulbs and planted them at The Shack to add a bit of colour to the bottom of the main plot.  We are completely convinced that we bought a selection of bulbs that would produce white flowers.  Perhaps they came up white last year, I really can't remember, but this year, the only ones to flower so far are these rather fun frilly, yellow tulips.

Again my memory isn't brilliant, but we transplanted our rhubarb to The Shack either 18 months or two years ago.  It is at the bottom of the plot and near a hedge, so in theory the wettest place and the coolest, which we hope will work in our favour.  At home, the garden is too dry and sunny for it to do really well.  Last year we left it alone, but this year, looking at the growth, I am hopeful of a bit of a crop!

This is a view I never get tired of, it changes with the seasons and with the weather and makes my heart lighter.  This is the view from by the entrance to the One Acre Wood, and I love it.

Day 4 may not have a blog - if that is the case, apologies in advance!

 

Lockdown III, Day 2 - not so nice as yesterday

No sun-drenched photos today as the weather has taken a colder and duller turn, and we wait agog for some rain!  We've not had rain, proper rain, since John seeded a new lawn about 3 weeks ago - blame him!!  We had to go back to The Shack today to feed the Boys in the Country, so took some time to check the Asian Hornet trap we have there (I did write about it last year, but can't immediately find the blog).  I'd been pretty chuffed to find one critter in there on Friday last week, but today there were 3!  Nasty brutes too.  It is important to trap and kill these over-wintered queens as they have small nests dotted about, in which they are raising their fertile brood of up to a dozen future queens.  Get them now and that is up to a dozen per queen big nests full of bee eating hornets that won't happen.

We also admired, or tried to, the shallots that are starting to come up.  We were so pleased with how they grew last year, that we bought rather more this year, and there is a larger bed with 33 sets trying to do what they do.  They are hampered in that by big fluffy cats who find nicely turned, dry earth a lovely way to remove excess fur, and roll around in an abandoned fashion.  This is Donald doing his thing.

We walked the boundaries to check that all was well, and met the neighbours at the bottom of the orchard where there are a couple of small ponds.  They thought we were very interesting.

And then we admired cherry blossom along the boundary of the wild flower meadow - you can see just how different it is to the pear blossom I showed yesterday, can't you?  Sadly as it was cold, there was no comforting buzz of busy bees and no cherry blossom perfume, but that will be back later in the week with the sun.

The sun should be back tomorrow, for rather prettier pictures!

 

It's back! Confinement Blog! Day 1

From yesterday evening at 7pm, France entered its third Covid lockdown.  Many call this Lockdown Lite, as there are fewer restrictions in some ways, although reading through the rules in detail this morning I found a big difference to last time.  We don't need attestations for travel up to 10km from home between 6am and 7pm this time, so we can get to The One Acre Wood (off limits last spring) and The Shack without paperwork.  We just need to carry our residency permits with us.

So what is different?  I cannot get to la Flèche market, I will be deprived of my raw butter, my croissants and my suppliers of chorizo, serrano ham and rotisserie chicken legs.  This is because while I can travel up to 30km for purchases of premier necessité (i.e. food, plants), I can't go over departmental boundaries, and thus la Sarthe is closed to me.  Not happy about that at all.

Still today we could go to the Shack and prepare the beds for tomatoes, squashes and courgettes, and sweetcorn.  The sweetcorn bed had been manured and rotavated, so just needed to be levelled and covered until we sow later this month once the cold snap is over.  The tomato and squash beds had been rotavated and covered, but then needed manure adding and recovered.  All ready now!

From the Shack, we went to the One Acre Wood to pay homage to the King of the Forest who is just starting to get his new leaves on.

Further down the hill in the Wood, we spotted the first spikes and buds of lily of the valley coming through - in total I think there were about 7 showing but there will be many more coming up in the next couple of weeks.

At home, there is a lot of blossom.  While the plum is now over (and we will have to protect the tree overnight for the next three nights of sharp frost to protect any tiny set fruit), the pear is in full swing and the first of the apple trees is starting to have open blossom.  The cherry next door is coated and has a strong perfume (see - no sign of Covid for me!).

Although this week might be a bit erratic (major changes in the offing in some aspects of our lives), I will try to do my daily confinement blog, although I know many of my readers are now starting to enjoy ever more freedom!  We felt for you in your extended lockdown, feel for us in ours!

Spring 2021 - still not locked down again, but for how long?

Except I'm not going to bother to write about that, because as and when our new lockdown happens, I will need something to write about!  Instead I will point out the joys of spring and rural life.  One of the key "joys" of rural life are fresh eggs - well our 3 feckless girls and the freeloading bantam seem to have given up laying eggs, so just over a week ago, it was my job to get new stock - meet Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper!  So called as in general the black and yellow chickens we have had have been evil so and sos.  We shall see!

Spring brings blossom and each year it is a race between the peach and the plum blossom to see which comes out first.  In the past, it was actually always the apricot first but we don't have an apricot tree any more, so here is plum blossom.

The cowslips are also out and will be for a while yet.  I'm not sure why some become more exotically coloured than the usual yellow - I assume cross fertilisation with primulas - but it does make for some very lovely combinations.  I am particularly fond of the deep red ones.

We are now down to 6 cats - three girls at home with us, and three boys in the country.  Fergus Sunshine Superman succumbed to an aggressive tumour on his hip three weeks ago.  It is interesting watching how the three remaining boys are coping with his absence.  We hadn't realised he was pack leader, so there is some posturing going on about who is now Top Cat.  S Clause spent a lot of time looking for Fergus in the garden, which was rather sad.  Donald has gone just that little bit more loopy.

Earlier this week was the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Vieil Baugé.  It should have been marked by an academic symposium, but Covid scuppered that - it should happen in September instead.  Floral tributes were laid however, to mark the turning point of the Hundred Years War.

If we are locked down again, I will restart the daily blog.  If we aren't, I'm afraid this is going to be a bit hit and miss as there is a lot going on chez nous at the moment, but not much that makes interesting reading on a daily basis!!  As they say nowadays - Stay Safe!

 

That's quite enough of 2020!

As the t-shirt says, 2020 - one star rating.  And I think the one star is because you can't have a no star rating!  New Zealand and Australia are already shot of it and here in France we have just over 6 hours (and counting down) more to tolerate.  Not that I imagine the start of 2021 will be any better really, but short of alien invasion, this year really has had most things cr@p.

But to put a better spin on it all, things are looking up!  This morning I went to open a new sack of chicken feed and pulled the two bits of twine that are sewn along the top to close it - miracle of miracles, it all pulled apart in one smooth movement.  It didn't even need a starting nudge with the scissors!  For those who open bird seed, chicken food, cat litter, posh flour and pasta and all the other paper sacks with stitched tops, you will know the astonishment and pleasure this gave!

Nature is also doing its bit to show that there are good things to come.  The broad beans I sowed in late November are coming up, and following a badger track, I found a load of narcissus bulbs coming up under a hedge.  There are also loads of orchid and cowslip rosettes to be seen, while Aldi was selling hellebores and I was there in time to get one!  Nature shows the way (although we may also get snow in the new year).

Culture also goes on.  The online store that shall not be named, but is about the only way currently I can buy new books in English, exceeded its estimation of delivery dates and these two lovelies turned up today!  These are two of my absolute favourite contemporary writers.  Louise Penny's Gamache is the detective we would all want working on a case on our behalf - this book is about an investigation in Paris, but normally he is in the Quebec state of Canada.  Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant is a member of the Met, but is shacked up with a river goddess and is part of the Wizarding special section of the Police, so a little different.  I can't wait to get stuck in!

So I leave the final farewell to 2020 to S Clause, and look forward to the new challenges and charms of 2021.  I decided a sweepstake on the date of the start of the next confinement here would be in bad taste, but so far people have mentioned the 5th and the 15th of January.  Bonne Année, et surtout la santé as we say over here.

 

So here it is! Christmas!

And a very Happy Christmas to you all!

For many it won't be a normal Christmas, or what they had planned, and for anyone in that situation, my heart goes out to you!  For us it will be pretty normal, as it is generally just us two with cats and chickens, and phone calls/computer time with friends and family around the place.  Boxing Day sees us being social and that is where we will see the difference, as we will have to be home by 8pm for curfew.

We would normally broach Christmas cake on Christmas Eve - something to look forward to!

(This is actually the one we are giving as a present, but it is prettier than our one!)

Tomorrow we will be out and about picking the sprouts I've been growing for John - they are a bit bigger than this now, amazing what a difference a week has made!

We will also be having major cat cuddles with the Boys in the Country.

And we will go to the One Acre Wood to make offerings to the Wood Gods and enjoy the fresh air and views.

However you spend your day, enjoy the moment and don't regret what might have been.