Rural Life

Day 40 of lockdown - baking failure

Day 40 - this is closely related to quarantine, which indeed can be related to the French word for 40 (quarante) so wouldn't it be nice if this was nearly the end?  But no, we have another 15 days of this to go as a minimum, and it isn't really clear what "normal" life will be like on the 11th May here in France.  I guess we just keep smiling?

I was at the supermarket yesterday - first time in about 3 and a half weeks I think (John did the previous visit).  Some things were still a bit scarce on the shelves - pasta and rice were limited, as was flour and certain cat foods (notably those for older cats), and wine boxes.  There had clearly been a run on red wine boxes!  I got the last of the own brand cabernet sauvignon red - victory was mine!  This is a bit bizarre as the warm and sunny weather usually means a run on white and rosé.

Anyway, knowing that flour is scarce due to lots of home baking, naturally I too had to jump on the bandwagon, plus we have a lot of eggs at the moment.  I thought I ought to reprise my quatre-quarts chocolate cake, but with a few tweaks.  I swapped out some white sugar for light muscovado, some ordinary (well, local, organic) flour for chocolate powder and chestnut flour, and swirled in chunks of dark cooking chocolate at the end.  I used a relatively low oven, a cake tin with a protected base and a double layer of paper liners.  I checked at 35 minutes of cooking and it had risen nicely but needed to cook more.  I checked again 25 minutes later, and it was cooked, but o dear - really badly slumped in the middle.  Let's hope tastes better than it looks!

And if it tastes as bad as it looks, well, we do have a very good bakers in the village!  They are also one of a very few allowed outlets for my friend who grows and sells flowers (cut flowers) to get her product out there.  Up until now, I have benefitted from free flowers in exchange for services rendered, but this week I supported another of my local businesses and bought my own bouquet - isn't it lovely?

After taunting me for nearly a week with huge and pregnant buds, the orchid has relented and opened up; one bud yesterday, and another today.  Was it worth the wait?  Well judge for yourselves with this close up of the flower that opened up yesterday.

 

Day 39 of lockdown - cats and gardening

It is a widely accepted truth that cats love boxes - there are lovely films of panthers and cheetahs and tigers all unable to resist the lure of the delicate rectangular shape, with or without an obvious entrance.  Look what we managed to trap yesterday in a cardboard box!  Our own little panther.

This morning was cloudy and cool so I took advantage to go and see the boys in the country and also plant the first of the potatoes (yes, I know, we are late, but that's just the way it is).  Cats also like well raked soil, freshly turned soil and weed suppressant mat.  It took a while to remove the roots and stones from this newly cultivated piece of land.  A similar amount of time to remove all the cat poo that accumulated in the 3 days since it was rotavated, and mere seconds for cats to appear on the weed suppressing mat once it was on the ground.  There are 20 seed potatoes under that lot somewhere!

I think the broad beans may be not so far off a first picking!

Finally, I am always amazed at the resilience of well established plants, and this one is my particular favourite.  Perhaps 12 years ago we had a small bed here, where now there is just pavement.  We also had the wall repointed which is I think when the little bed started to disappear, before being totally covered when the new pavement was put in place.  Somehow this lovely campanula manages to survive and each spring produces this wonderful ball of mauve flowers which last a couple of weeks.  Some years it is the only splash of colour in April, this year we have early roses and geraniums that survived the winter in flower, but this is still pretty special in my book.

 

Day 38 of lockdown - further orchid torture

They are out to get me!  Those orchids keep doing this - massive, pregnant buds that don't open for days, they just get larger and larger.  Every time I look at them (so several times a day as they are by the loo) I imagine them shouting "feed me Seymour!" like in the Little Shop of Horrors.

I spend the morning Skyping with a client in Birmingham - she is not having an easy time of it, living in a nice maisonette, but without any real outside space.  She is juggling work and writing up her PhD thesis.  I really am quite lucky, not least as I spent the afternoon playing on TWO ride on mowers, making a property look very beautiful.  A slight frustration is that only the ducks will admire what I have done, but hopefully they like it!

Reasons for mowing when people won't see what you've done?  Well, left to itself, nature has some lovely flowers and insects and it has thugs with few natural predators.   Those thugs will take over, and while after 50 years you might have an interesting ecosystem, in the meantime you develop a thatch of bramble, thistle, nettle, rush, horsetail and old man's beard which strangle the orchids, lords and ladies, milkmaids, stitchwort and other charming flowers of spring.  

We sat out yesterday after work, enjoying the warmth, the bird song, and I would say the quiet, but there was all that bird song.  The first swifts are turning up, but not enough yet to start the big screaming aerobatic displays.  The swallows are frantically nest building.  The starlings are very proud of the chicks they are raising in our eaves and makes a lot of noise about it - I think someone plays a lot of old school computer games around here, as that is what our starling sounds like!  The cuckoo was also giving it some yesterday, while today where I was mowing, two were shouting at each other across the valley.  The starling likes to perch on the apex of the roof to "sing" to the world - I think he has ambitions to be the god on top of a Thai palace!

 

Day 37 of lockdown - is it getting to me?

The mystery of the plants was solved once John got home - it was his payment for helping someone to fix their ride on lawnmower.  Excellent!  This afternoon I planted 9 of the tomato plants and six of the lettuces where the boy cats live.  They may or may not survive - we know that deer can't get into that bit of the land, but I've seen some monstrously huge snails there, and they will need regular watering if the dry weather continues.  Fergus worried that I was overdoing it this afternoon, so pinned me down for a while.

It was very good of him to notice that I needed a bit of TLC.  I don't know what it was that caused it, but I woke this morning with a thumper of a headache, and none of the usual things would shift it - not tea, not rinsing my hair under the shower, not even ibuprofen worked its usual magic.  So I missed out on going to the market this morning - I just could not face it.  I'm OK now but it took a while.  But then, it is day 37 of lockdown...

In other news, we had a visitor to the garden yesterday - we all kept a couple of metres apart, but for those living on their own, and who don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time, and who aren't much into reading, it's getting tough.  So we sat outside at a good distance apart and caught up after not having seen each other for about 40 days.  It certainly seemed to perk her up and it was nice to have a change of conversation too, and all in French!!

The first of the "red" irises is out - this one is at the front of the house in the courtyard and tends to get munched by snails so it is good to have a relatively perfect flower.  The ones in the back garden aren't flowering yet, and are generally a bit more lush.

The wind from the east has dropped again, and the rain has stopped, so Nibbles has returned to her fine weather perch, ensuring that nothing and no one could get in the bath window if it was open.  I'm sure we all feel safer for that.

 

 

Day 36 of lockdown - I was only out for half an hour...

Yesterday's yoga seemed to help with the sleeplessness and weird nightmares - well, I woke up less often and the weird dream was much more pleasant and drifted around nice things, so a better experience.  So once I had done most of the work I wanted to do today, I decided to go for a walk.  As John is out working, I had to walk places where I knew I wouldn't be far from real life if I did anything silly.

I started out from our house and cut through the Pas de Mule park to the road past the plan d'eau - our little fishing lake and park.  Normally in mid-May I help out with a trout fishing day here, but it has been cancelled for 2020.  This is a shame, although as it would attract more than 50 people, it is a no-no.

I carried on up the other side of the valley, heading for the route de Beaufort, and before I got to the bridge over the Voie Verte I became very aware of the pungent smell of hawthorn blossom (or may flower) from the trees that line the path.  I think that is a good sign on a number of levels.

I carried on to the route de Beaufort and headed in the direction of Baugé.  The commune had been out and about cleaning the ditches with a digger - in my view there is little point in cleaning the bottom of the ditch if you spread broken plastic waste up the sides, but what do I know?

Once I got to the route de Pont de Godeau I turned back towards Vieil Baugé and went past one of the crossing points/access points for the Voie Verte - it is the route of an old railway line, so is ideal for cycling and joggers and for those that don't do hills.

I followed the road back into the village, past a bee keeper capturing a swarm, and up and round the church, stopped for a while at the Mairie to read the latest notices and then drifted back home again.  It was perhaps 2 kilometres and half an hour out of the house but I felt better for it.  I then released the feathered vandals and went back to the house to get a glass of squash, finish the work task for the day and write this blog.  Like I say, I was only out for half an hour, so where did the lettuce and tomato plants come from?  Goodness knows what I am going to do with the tomato plants as I've got 19 Gardeners Delight in pots anyway, while the feathered vandals will likely trash the lettuces as soon as I plant them, but someone really was very kind!

Day 35 of lockdown - apologies for the delay!

So this is about an hour and a half later than my usual blogging time and for that I am sorry.  I got a piece of work away to a client so decided to celebrate by doing a bit of yoga.  I would like to say I feel a lot better for it, I am acutely aware of my calves, but the real test will be my ability to sleep without really weird dreams tonight.

I think I have mentioned that we were adopted by a bantam just before Christmas.  She is very pretty but quite unapproachable, so doesn't live with the four normal sized chickens.  Once we got to February, she started to lay eggs, little white ones.  The first clutch we found were in the shed, hidden behind an old jerrycan.  She laid one egg in the chicken coop when the others were out and about trashing the garden.  John set her up with a wheelbarrow and a grass collector from a dead lawnmower filled with straw which she used a couple of times.  What she doesn't like, is that when we find her stashes, we take the eggs.  She doesn't do sharing.

Since mid-March we haven't seen any of her eggs - we thought she might be laying them in a neighbouring garden.  It's a bit rough on us as we feed her and provide water, and as there aren't any bantam cockerels around, the eggs shouldn't do anything.  About 10 days ago, we stopped seeing her, other than an occasional and very loud visit once day - she had clearly got enough eggs to brood.  And she's not a nice broody either - if spotted by us or one of the other chickens she has an awful lot to say.  I don't speak chicken but I don't think any of it is polite.

Yesterday I was pottering in the shed when I spotted a bit of a mess.  On closer inspection, it was dried egg yolk and nearby there were egg shells and a couple of whole eggs.  There were also tins of wood stain and wood polish scattered around, which should be on the top shelf....

I looked up and around at some of the shelves, and finally I spotted her.  But I tried not to make eye contact, so that we know where she is for a while.  There is very little you can do about a broody chicken or bantam.

The other chickens are doing fine - here is a photo of two of them clearing weeds out of a raised bed.

 

Day 34 of lockdown - a rainy Sunday afternoon

They've been promising rain for days, if not a couple of weeks, but today it has finally happened - we've got rain.  At last!  It seems odd to be saying that after it rained seemingly nonstop between mid-October and the end of February, with floods and mud, and the ephemeral ponds filling up.  But it hasn't really rained since I started this blog 34 days ago and the soil is getting very dry, so it is welcome for once.

John managed to mow the lawn this morning in the two hour window when using power tools is not frowned on, while I sowed a hanging basket with a random packet of mixed flower seeds, and thinned out some sempervivums into a pot designed to fit on a downpipe.  I also sowed some radishes and thinned out the tomato seedlings - it felt profligate but we still have at least 19 tomato plants to find space for, as well as the 17 butternut squashes, 6 courgettes, and 19 (and counting) sweetcorn.  Since lunch we really have been locked down, and in my office all I can hear is the clicking of keyboards (mine and John's) and the blatter of rain on our roof and Velux.  I should probably be listening to Oxygène - that is ideal rain music! 

OK, that is now playing; that feels better!

For the photo montage today, I thought I would go through the photos I've taken during the week and then not used.  First off, here are some bluebells as a couple of chums have been taunting me with pictures of bluebell woods in the UK.

Then there is the wisteria I go past in the morning on my way to the boulangerie - I once worked with a chap near Peterborough who thought it was essential I was in the UK in May to see the wisteria.  I didn't like to say it grows just as well here!

When I was a child, I used to love honesty, less for the flowers and more for the seed pods that were such fun to play with.  The honesty is doing rather well this year - perhaps I will remember what it was I actually used to do with/to the pods back in the day.

Finally, after all the angst about the orchid bud and whether it would ever open or not, the other orchid has chosen to have two buds in a stage of imminentness, plus the first one has another bud that looks like it could open any time.  Plus both are finding new places to send out flower stems.  A daily bout of torture for me, to distract me from the copy of Private Eye in the bathroom.

 

Day 33 of lockdown - cats not obeying social distancing rules

I gather a couple of cats and a tiger have tested positive for Covid-19 which has set all sorts of hares running in different places.  I also saw wise words shared by Pauline Draisey, that as tigers can get Covid-19, you should stay 2 metres away from them.  All seems sensible, except that cats don't do social distancing, unless they want to.  The following Jackie-style photo story emphasises the point.

After self-isolating for a couple of weeks, Donald was tempted out of his lone state by John and the promise of soft food.  Once he had eaten his fill and waited to see if there was more and got into a staring competition he was never going to win with Spooky, he decided to join us by the vegetable plot.  Fergus was already there, guarding my leg.

Clause was slumped on a chair, having had an exhausting feed and use of the "facilities".  But Donald thought that chair looked nice - "room for a small one up there?"

When Clause didn't answer, Donald thought he would see if he could fit - "I'm sure I can fit in here!"

So he settled in - "yeah, I told you I could fit in here".

And finally - "thanks for sharing, let me clean your ears out".

I left them to it.

 

Day 32 of lockdown - reflections on mallard parenting skills

No storms last night, no rain here so far today (although I got caught in a very sharp shower), so shortly I'd better go and water the potted plants, but not before writing today's reflections.

As I said yesterday, I mow at a site with a lake.  Yesterday I saw one carp, today (finishing the job) I saw evidence of more, plus a heron, plus I got shouted at by frogs again.  I was also followed around by a couple of robins and a blackbird, profiting from all the bugs I was raising.

The little river that runs past has always played host to a number of moorhens, coots and mallards.  They raise a lot of chicks, but not all make it.  From what I observed today, I am starting to understand why.

There were two mallard families knocking around today.  A (presumably) single lady mallard with four puffs of fluff (ducklings), and a couple with a single duckling.  The single mother watched me and worked out what I was up to and while I was on one side of the lake, she hid her babies in a different stream or the river itself.  I heard the odd squeak from them but nothing more.

The couple were much less careful - they swam around side by side while their little munchkin followed as best it could, then it would appear daddy mallard said something wrong and the lady flew off.  Daddy and duckling continued to mooch around the lake, but in the end, daddy got bored and flew off too, leaving the lonely little fluff bundle swimming around the lake, cheeping for its Mum.  I think its Mum was a bit inexperienced, but unless she went back once I had gone, I suspect the little one will be eaten by something.  Probably not the carp, but I've heard rumours of catfish, pike and a terrapin in the lake, all of whom would like a duck supper I suspect.

 

Day 31 of lockdown - a change in the weather

There has been a bit of a change in the weather.  The last few days have been beautiful but with a tricky wind from the East, called the Bises, which means the air is clear as crystal, but it can be cold in the wind.  Today the wind has changed and is coming from the south/south west, bringing moist and hot air up from Spain and Portugal.  Insects love it.  I was checking over the broad beans and had to pick out all the growing tips as the ants were starting to farm black fly on the tender tops of the plants.  Fortunately all had more than four sets of flowers/set bean pods so it was the right time to do it.  The down side is that I've been feeling like I'm covered in ants ever since!

The warmer than usual spring is bringing on flowers and fruit more quickly than usual.  The lady orchid gets more splendid day by day!

I was working at the site with the lake this afternoon - the frogs were making a racket and the carp were loitering.  It isn't possible to get a good photo of the carp - I've been trying for years.  The best I can do is when they are in a group, being really sinister, and then the photos are the stuff of nightmares.  Anyway, I was actually checking the outflow from the lake and looking for tadpoles (mostly eaten now), when I realised I was being watched by one of the giant carp.  Probably between 18 and 24 inches long, he watched me until I spoke up (well squeaked in surprise) and then he sank away, probably chortling to himself.  He was here...

Our fig tree can have two crops, but most years, the early figs drop off due to a frost.  This year the tree is loaded and the tree seems to have decided to sacrifice some in order to keep a respectable number going.  In a normal year, any that survive late frosts are ripe in June, but the size of some of these makes me think that May might be possible this year!

Storms are due from about 11pm tonight - bizarrely, after one of the wettest winters, we need the rain!