Rural Life

First days of winter

Yes, alarmingly it is now meteorological winter, and the year is really slipping away.  On a happier note, in about 3 weeks, the days will start to get longer, but we have the three cold months to get through now.  The area has got its Christmas decorations out promptly this year - to do with Baugé being a Pettit Cité de Charactère and they are collectively looking to brighten up people's lives.  What has livened up our village rather more is that the pub reopened last night after a closure of nearly 18 months.  New leaseholders, new décor, new name (not sure about that) and hopefully a new attitude towards the establishment from the locals.  The local mayor was pretty blunt when he announced that a taker had been found - use it or lose it!  Let's hope people take that to heart!  I took a photo at the opening night but it was truly awful, so here is the Christmas Tree instead.

On the sunny days this week, I have been determined to go out for a walk and admire the area.  On Wednesday morning, I was up at la Flèche for the market, and le Loir was looking particularly attractive after the recent floods.  Sadly I can't load up the photo of that - not at all sure why!

Later on Wednesday - as it really was so beautiful out - I went for a walk around the village.  I went part way up what is often called the Roman Road, and it may well be.  It is straight, making no apology for the gradient of the hill, and is well buried into the hillside, with tall oaks and chestnuts at ground level.  Half way up, when the water table is high enough, a spring follows the line of the path for some distance, so I only went as far as the mud from that, before turning back to the village.

I made my way down the hill and took the road to the Pont de Godot - yes, really you can go and wait for him there, but he never shows up!  The river splits into two arms upstream towards the town, and the water looks clear and bright and is flowing rapidly at the moment in both arms, apart from where measures are in place to slow the flow.

From the bridge the view up to the church shows the relative height of the hill and the thoroughly twisted nature of the spire.  It can be seen from quite a distance, if you know where to look!

Other days have not been so sunny and crisp, and have also been filled with distractions such as battling customs forms and websites to send a parcel, the French health service and finding an electrician.  Rebus the kitten spends much of his time trying to eat me, and when he isn't doing that, he is asleep and growing.  The slow descent to the "Festive Period" makes me less likely to do anything useful, and more inclined to sit under a rug in front of the TV with a pot of tea and a chewy kitten.  However, I need to give myself a metaphoric kick in the pants and design a Christmas card, write a Christmas letter, and more importantly, undertake the necessary steps to close my business and structure my retirement.

Here's hoping for some motivation sometime next week!

 

 

It's become cold!

Yes, we have finally had our first frosts.  I have a dim memory of this week back in perhaps 1969 or so when it snowed, and I also remember trying to drive through Flers in Normandy and negotiating drifts six inches deep, so it shouldn't be surprising that we have had two white frosts now.  Of course the cold makes everything very clear and crisp as we settle into a winter anticyclone.  That can make taking photographs a bit tricky.  This one of the turret on the back of the chateau in Baugé came out very nicely.

It was rather more difficult to get a decent shot of this hidden piece of the old town wall and turret, not least as I was down a narrow lane, with little room for manoeuvre.  The contrast with the light is really too harsh.

The weather brings out magnificent sunsets but they bring their own challenges when taking photos - this one worked OK.

The crisp clear air and frost makes it much easier to see the nests of the vile pine processionary caterpillar - last year we didn't have many, but this year this poor tree is riddled with them.  I now need to invest in attracting great tits to the garden as they are the only predator that will take the revolting things on.  I am anti pine processionaries as I am sensitive to their spines, while they can do really nasty things to cats and dogs.  They are a non-native invasive species, brought in with lumber in the past and have spread across the country.

The frosts have finally done for the cristophine vine, and it now looks very sad and ugly.  We will have to unpick it from the frame and compost all that vegetable material, and then feed up the area with manure and organic matter, as the frame is too solid to move to a different spot for next year.  John cut out the last large fruit yesterday, which had got itself well integrated into the netting and had started to sprout.  It will likely be the parent of next year's vine, although there is a spare if needed.

With the autumn and the very short days, farmers are more limited in what they can do - although I have seen quite a bit of twilight ploughing going on recently.  But give a French farmer a bit of thinking time, and their thoughts turn to their grievances and how to get their message across effectively.  Sometimes it's calendars with scantily clad peasants, sometimes it is taking large piles of lettuce and setting fire to them (never entirely sure how that works), sometimes it is dumping large piles of manure in supermarket parking areas (and removing every last trace at the end of the day as it is too good to waste), or spraying slurry on things.  This year, protests have taken a new turn, literally.  They are out in the evenings turning village signs upside down.  It is done carefully, and the markers are still there and easy to see (the village name sign is the start of the 50kmph limit for built up areas, so it is important), but they are upside down.

The argument is that French agricultural policy is upside down as the constraints put on local farmers are such that their products are more expensive than cheap imports from countries without limitations on the use of chemicals, fertilisers, a lower minimum wage for seasonal workers, lower husbandry standards, etc and while people say they want farmers to work to these high standards, they are not prepared to pay the extra so that the farmers can live from their work.  So they want a land free of pesticides, but won't pay the necessary premium for organic produce.  They have a point - Solidarity!!

Well, it is jolly cold in the non-heated extremities of the house, so I am going to call it a day and head for the fireside.  Rebus the kitten is doing well, is a bundle of energy and is going through the rather annoying teething stage - my hands are taking the brunt of it at the moment.  It won't last - or that's what I tell myself.

 

Keeping an eye out for old familiars as well as new experiences

Autumn is definitely prime mushroom time, and while there have been no more cèpes since a flush of them perhaps a month ago, there are loads of fungi popping up in the One Acre Wood, demonstrating the biodiversity and the health of the underground mycelia.  Today there were green ones, purple ones, different shades of brown and a couple that might be compared to field mushrooms except they weren't in a field!  The two types that I illustrate here should not be eaten.  The little brown ones pop up all over the place and can be difficult to spot, but I think they are quite pretty in their own way.  The other ones are deadly but are very beautiful.

If you keep your eyes open, there are still some stunning flowers around.  A neighbour has a passion vine growing on their house and there are still blooms which are so impressive.  The forecast frosts for next week will likely kill them off for this year.  The cyclamen have their last flowers glowing against a background of vibrant foliage which will last through until March or April next year and serve to build up stores in the corms.

Following on from last week - we had the parsnips and carrots in a slow cooked oxtail stew and they were great and made a lovely soup for the following day too, as I cooked way too many vegetables.  The kitten, Rebus, is a boy, and was about 13 weeks old when we got him, so 14 weeks for his vet visit.  He is now chipped and legal and partially vaccinated.  The "operation" will be in January.  

Friday was a day of new experiences.  One of the best trainers of race horses over hurdles in France is based near us, and so we wangled an invitation to visit the stables and exercise area with a couple of owners.  What a magnificent set up!  The stables were large and airy, and the exercise area was discrete and beautiful in a large clearing in pine forest.  We watched about 20 horses put through their paces on the flat - impressive to see 10 at a time charging past at a fast canter.  After a coffee and visit to the stables, we then walked back to the gallops to watch another 12 do work over hurdles and fences.  The enjoyment of the jockeys and the horses was evident, with the particular horse we were visiting very proud to show himself off, be patted, be told what a good and handsome boy he was, and to see his evident relish at stretching out at a comfortable canter.

So that made for a lovely morning.  Then in the evening we hit the town at Chinon, starting with a drink or two at the excellent establishment XV, followed by an extremely good dinner at the restaurant Un Air d'Antan.  This small restaurant does not have an extensive menu - the night we were there, there was a choice of three starters, three mains and three desserts plus a cheese plate.  The challenge with choosing what to have, was that everything sounded so good!  We didn't cover all options, but the two starters we did taste were a mushroom tarte with a small side salad and a pumpkin and chestnut velouté with crushed hazelnuts on top, and both were excellent.  The (probably) home made bread that was served with them was also delicious. 

The main courses were things that had been simmering during the day - while we could smell the Blanquette de veau (which we didn't have), the beef cheek had clearly being cooking gently for hours as it fell apart, while the fricassee of chicken was falling off the bone as it arrived!  The chocolate fondant for pudding was also magnificent.  In the winter there are not many tables, more in the summer when there is an outdoor terrace.  The atmosphere is convivial and it is a bit like eating in someone's front room.  We heartily recommend it.

This morning I finally made it into the poplar plantation at the bottom of the Meadow.  Hunters and boar had cleared a path that wasn't totally easy to follow, but was possible.  The resident woodpeckers weren't too pleased to see me.  Some of the trees are dead and creating interesting feeding stations for them.  I leave you with an image of that for this week.

Have a good week!

 

November musings

This isn't a classic autumn, with lovely colours, sharp, bright days, and cold nights with a log fire.  October was the warmest ever recorded in France, Europe and indeed the world, so the sudden shock of cold that is needed for the marvellous reds and yellows of autumn hasn't happened.  Instead we had a warm and relatively dry October, and since the start of November, we have had two named storms and at least 66 millimetres of rain.  Of course that is nothing compared to up in the Pas de Calais, where they have unprecedented floods, but it is quite enough here.  Our ponds (other than in the One Acre Wood) are filling with water finally and there are waterlogged fields, testimony to the areas of clay pan in the valleys around here.  There is some autumn colour, but really only offered by field maple.

While in the UK not wearing a poppy is near criminal behaviour, here in France, you can choose to wear a cornflower, but have to look hard to buy one.  However, every village in our district has its own Remembrance Parade, before everyone converges at Baugé for the big one.  The local Cadets get to play a lot of jaunty marches and the fire brigade and police need to attend as many of the parades as they can get to, and pity the poor standard bearers for the Anciens Combattants, not in the first flush of youth in any case, and then needing to parade their standards at least twice!  However the stigmata of war are to be found everywhere if you know where to look - small shrines to fallen planes or murdered resistance fighters, bullets and marks in walls, hidden arms in roof voids or skeletons in cellars, and a repurposed Nazi bunkhouse doing time as a garage.  It is therefore more than just the uniformed groups that are out and about whenever the 11th November falls, not the nearest Sunday, but the real day, to remember, to demand the end of war, and to think of those that have fallen.

Despite the lack of frost so far, I couldn't wait any longer and dug up a couple of parsnips.  In my defence I found a lovely oxtail in the market, and you can't slow cook oxtail without a nice parsnip or two and carrots.  That's tomorrow's joy as we have the rest of the cristophine and cauliflower cheese tonight, plus I set the slow cooker off at about 10am for oxtail and at that time today, these beauties were still in the ground!

Although the leaves are still on the trees, particularly the oaks, we made a start on this year's firewood campaign.  In late summer I check round to see which trees are either dead or mostly dead, and mark them up for felling, and then through the winter, we will cut down perhaps five and process them, taking the long dead stuff away, and leaving the lengths of recently living wood stacked in the One Acre Wood to mature. 

Three years ago, the plot next to the One Acre Wood was clear felled and that has made a difference to the light and the wind patterns.  Added to that, the desperately dry and hot summers, and there are actually nearer 20 trees marked for felling.  Yesterday we took a huge one down that had a good position to fall nicely - an easy one - as it has been almost a year since the last felling.  It came down nicely, but with a huge bang - it had fallen directly onto an old stump!  Close inspection of the trunk showed evidence of a fence nail from some 18 years ago, before we bought the Wood.

Another bit of evidence of how mucked up this year is, is a late flush of kittens.  Normal kitten time is the summer, with them being discarded by the road or in woods between late June and mid-August as people go on holiday.  So to find a young kitten, perhaps 14 or 16 weeks old bouncing around the garden and the courtyard in November was a bit strange.  A plea on the local Facebook site did not bring forth a worried owner, rather someone else who had the same kitten bouncing around, two gardens over, and wasn't able to take it on.  Another neighbour had taken it to the vet to see if was identified (a legal requirement here in France), but no.  He also tried to take it to a shelter, but was told no.  The shelter I support I know has run out of space as well.  What to do? 

Well, as an xx year old Mad Cat Woman, what could I do?  Rebus - current gender unknown (but will be neuter as soon as possible) - has landed and made itself very comfortable.  Nibbles is unaware and so not fussed, but Poirot and Zola are unimpressed.  It's going to be a long winter!

Have a good week!

 

Looking for happy things

I find late October and November difficult - the change in the hour doesn't make the difference, it is the generally short length of day, the mess and the realisation that it will be at least 4 months before it warms up again.  Every 10 years, it gets worse, with the lurking of a "significant" birthday.  Twice we have managed to avoid that - but the holidays involved were expensive, and we didn't have as many cats!

Storms Ciaran and Domingos don't help either - I hate the way that strong winds bluster around the house and garden, howling and rattling and shaking.  The amount of rain also makes visits to the chickens and just generally around the garden fraught with dangers of slipping on mud, and of getting wet if I don't time it right.  So I look out for things to cheer me up.

This year, something that just keeps giving are the cyclamen, both the pink ones that have run away from gardens (or have been helped in their mission for world domination by mice and shrews) and the more delicate but wilder white ones.  We have white ones in the One Acre Wood and each year there are more leaves, and now, with maturity, there are ever more places where one, two or a whole clump of flowers poke up between the fallen leaves.  Later, I will drive myself mad counting all the sets of leaves that indicate where there are corms, but not just yet.

The garden escapees are bolder in colour, and stronger flowers.  Between the Garden and the Orchard, there is a disused green lane, which is a haunt of boar and deer, and is gradually being taken over by false acacia.  During the late spring, the hidden garden shrubs put on a fine display of flowers, but at this time of year, the lane is filled with pink cyclamen flowers, hiding among the ivy and detritus, and lifting my heart when I see them.

Today, the sky has been swept clean by Storm Domingo and underfoot is wet and squelchy, so gardening didn't appeal.  Instead, armed with my phone and escorted by Monsieur Clause, I took a long ramble around the Meadow and Orchard.  The phone has an app that is somewhat addictive, which identifies birdsong in real time.  Standing in the sunshine at one edge of the Meadow, I was told I was listening to robins, chaffinch, great and long-tailed tits, a common firecrest and a Cetti's warbler.  I also watched a small group of jackdaw mobbing a buzzard that had the temerity to be in the zone.  The rain has refilled the ponds a bit, or the three I could look into anyway, the access to the fourth was too overgrown.  I fear it is too late for my huge fish, but many other things enjoy the wetland.  Walking back up the Orchard, I found some weird fungi - not as dramatic as Devil's Fingers which are black or red, but still ghostly and strangely disturbing.

The trail camera isn't behaving at the moment, so my only photo of wildlife this week is this huge, orange, flesh-eating, jelly slug.  I had hoped to plant some tulip bulbs in that old WC cistern, but it might not be the best idea I have ever had, if that is what lives in it at the moment!  I'll have to find a plan B.

The big news in the village is that someone has bought the lease of the pub and plans to open soon.  No hint of when soon might be, and sadly they are changing the name of the pub too (I wonder if I could persuade them that is bad luck?), but it will be good to have something happening in the village during the next long, dark months of late autumn and winter.  I'll keep you posted!

 

Well, it's good for the ground water...

Thank goodness I got the last of the potatoes up before the vegetable beds turned into a fair facsimile of a battle field!  We have rain - it has rained for much of the week, since last Sunday, and is forecast to continue raining until at least the 5th November, but more likely the 10th November.  I think that date is also pretty arbitrary as the 11th is a holiday here and of course the day for Remembrance.  It could rain until Christmas!  The only thing that seems happy about that is the cristophine vine.  At one stage, we thought there were just 9 more and then it could go.  Today we totted up 12 good sized ones, including the one shown below which had been hiding, plus another 6 small ones that are unlikely to stay small, and are in any case a size that one might see in the shops.  It is a phenomenon.

It rained during the night, it was raining this morning when we got up, it is raining now, but for about an hour and a half, it stopped and we had sun (and a strong wind).  I was able to check the trail camera, which appears not to be suitable for rain forest conditions - something going on there.  I was able to spot a recently hatched butterfly - a comma I think - sunning itself on an apple tree.

Monsieur Clause was able to sun his portly self on the steaming roof of the wood barn - at one stage he looked like he might jump down onto me, and as he is a good 7 to 8 kilos, I was not so keen so moved out of range.

And then more rain came along and we headed home.  I have taken advantage of the poor conditions to do a bit of boring work, but soon I will not be able to find any more excuses and I will have to start on the hundred odd tasks of housework I have been avoiding for the past 10 years.  Dusty corners are sneering at me, and spiders' webs are growing in number, size and density.  There are still 4 kilos of chestnuts that need peeled, steamed and peeled again - and I know I will be pleased when they are done, but it is SUCH a boring job.  There is a final jam batch that I am trying to avoid too, but in a few minutes, I will be able to avoid it no longer, and jamming will begin again.

I am very jealous of the Cats at Home - they can just lie around, snuggled into fleeces and cushions, and sleep the next four months away!

Two cat photos in one post - that show's how bad the weather has been!  Stay warm, stay dry!

 

Mixed up seasons

Earlier this week I had to be out and about earlier than usual, visiting a house and garden.  I found the early sunshine tricky driving east, as it was in my eyes.  In addition, after a few months of not needing to, I had to remember how to demist the windscreen of the car.  It was all a bit different, but once I got to my destination, something made it all so very worthwhile!  The large yukka in the garden was in full bloom and catching a beam of morning sun - what a beautiful sight!

The warmth and the sunshine were lovely, but other things are harbingers of winter and the days are certainly getting shorter.  This morning we were at the One Acre Wood to see if there were any more mushrooms - spoiler alert, no there weren't!  What was amazing were the quantity of holly berries - there were trees we have never seen with a single berry covered with them.  I don't know if it means a harsh winter or that this year was good for fruit (and it certainly has been a good year for fruit), but it is very jolly.

It is a sign that Christmas is approaching and indeed the Christmas puddings are made and wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil, and tucked away in a box "maturing".

As well as the trail camera (more on that in a bit), I have succumbed to a mobile app for identifying bird song - the Cornell Lab one, I am sure others are available!  It is fascinating as it will identify up to about 300 birds found in northern Europe based on their song.  You set it to record, and as it goes, it matches song to bird, so you can follow along in real time to see who is having a chunter out there.  It is mildly addictive and I am sure pretty accurate, although I very much doubt we have a green sandpiper at The Orchard.  It does also show that I am shouted at by Robins pretty well continuously, and wherever I am too!  It also managed to identify this wee flock of long tailed tits that were doing the rounds in the gardens by us.

The tree is dead by the way and not in our garden.

So yes, the trail camera - I went to check it yesterday and the batteries were low, so it came home for battery recharge and so I could download and check the files.  I can triage a bit when it is in situ using bluetooth and an app, but the images on my phone are very small and indistinct.  I had thought that the night of the 30th September, there had been wind and I had loads of photos of waving grass, but no, the boar were in.  (And goodie - the software links are working again!)

Actually things seemed to enjoy charging through as some young deer did a similar thing.

The badgers are also still out and about, but don't charge around like the boar and the deer - much more laid back.

So there we have it - a week in the weird season.  Today I dug up the last of the potatoes, eyed up a parsnip, but didn't give in to temptation and picked a courgette.  To find a nice one of those at this time in October is just madness!  Have a good week!

 

Preparing to hunker down - edited

Last week there were the first portents of serious autumn starting to happen - sadly not so much with vivid coloured leaves.  I'm hoping that will yet happen, but fear that leaves will just go brown and fall with none of the flaming yellows and reds of a good brisk autumn.  The trees need frost to trigger the colours, and the first forecast frosts for us are tonight and tomorrow night.  Yesterday was a mad rush of getting the delicate plants under cover, both normal houseplants that have been out enjoying the weather, and those in pots that live outdoors but need to be kept frost free.  Somehow when a shelf or a window sill is left empty over the summer, it acquires a load of other stuff, which then has to be moved. 

The giant cristophine vine also warranted some protection as there are still some 15 viable fruits on it, and after a couple of days, it's going to get warmer again.  We used to buy cheap garden shelters, but they were always getting caught by the wind and shredded, so we invested in a more permanent pergola for which I make covers.  We still have a couple of cheap covers hidden away in the shed in case they came in useful, and one is now protecting the cristophine.

As you can see, there are still viable fruits, and we prefer to leave them on the vine to ripen up fully.  By our reckoning, so far we have picked 18 fruits and there are still at least a dozen that are eating size on the vine, so it makes sense to try to keep it going until they are all ready.

On Thursday evening, as I was putting the chickens to bed, I heard a bit of tap-tap-tapping in the area, and looking across could see one of our neighbours trying to get the new slates onto the roof of the building he is renovating before the rain came.  He was assisted in his task, as it was after 7:30pm so pretty dark, by the fact the building is right by a street light.  Even so, he gave up as I think the shadows were falling unhelpfully, but all was not lost, as the promised rain turned out to be a scant 1 millimetre!  He and his woman are doing a pretty amazing job on the roof.

Today I finally had no more excuses and got round to putting together the Christmas puddings.  The raw mix as in the photo will stand overnight, fermenting, then will be stuffed into bowls and steamed for 10 hours tomorrow during the day, before being laid down until Christmas 2023 and 2024.  It's not technical, it's just finding all the bits required and chopping, peeling, shredding and juicing.  Once all the bits are ready, you just shove them in a bowl and mix a bit, and make wishes.  The magic happens in the 24 hours after, as they rest and then are steamed.  But the steaming is tomorrow's job.

This morning I got the steamer out and the mix into two basins and they are now cooking away, and keeping the kitchen warm.

It's not just us hunkering down - when I took the lid off the water butt to fill watering cans, I found two friends sheltering on the side of the barrel.  Not natural playmates I would have said, but they seemed happy enough and not too cross with me for disturbing them.  I put the lid back on when I had all the water I needed.

So that's it for the Monday update - apart from the fact that England won, France lost, and while today and tomorrow are cold, it will warm up again on Wednesday so the cover will come off the cristophine.

Have a good week!

 

 

Hints of Autumn - finally

Here in France, Autumn is late, very late.  I am happy to be indoors with my computer as the temperature in the garden is over 30ºC at the moment.  Earlier, I was digging up potatoes - hard work in temperatures nearing 25ºC in the shade and the soil is pretty solid clay.  I can't totally complain, as look what just one seed potato produced!  They are huge and unblemished, and will take some baking later in the year.

But other, more autumnal signs are there - including my first bright orange, evil, jelly slug of the season, spotted mooching around between the raspberries and the wood store.  They are deeply unpleasant to my eye, but also seem to be harbingers of mushrooms.

I saw this fellow yesterday, plus there was a giveaway headline in the local paper this morning that mushrooms were appearing, so we just had to go for a walk in the One Acre Wood before doing any work at the Garden.  For once they were not wrong - there were mushrooms a plenty, but many had gone over or had bad slug or fly damage.  We found three nice ones for lunch - a delicious cèpe and comté omelette, made with free range eggs from the garden.

It goes without saying that if you aren't confident about identifying mushrooms, don't pick and eat!  We only eat what we know.

We also need to prepare to pay our rent for the Garden, Orchard and Meadow.  The payment is in a number of forms - obviously providing all the necessary luxuries for Donald, Spooky and Monsieur Clause the cats is part of it, keeping the Meadow under control with an annual mow as per legislation is another part of it, and then there is the tribute of a shoebox of walnuts too.  Knowing that the boar like the good nuts best, well they aren't totally stupid, we have to gather them as soon as they fall, before drying them so the inner skin isn't unpleasant and bitter.  We think we have the required tribute spread out in the sun!

The Meadow got mowed finally this weekend too.  Between Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB and the LPO, it is difficult to spot at time when you can do this without being berated for being a vandal and putting life at risk.  Seed heads, chrysalids, eggs, nesting time, flowering cycles, shelter etc. are all cited as reasons to not mow.  The reasons to mow include seed heads (some things aren't supposed to be allowed to spread, including ragwort and thistle), brambles, old man's beard, not required saplings, improving conditions for low growing wildflowers and those that need a short sward to flourish (including cyclamen and wild orchids), and a legal requirement not to cause a nuisance. 

I prefer to mow in September, but we didn't have a working mower available until now.  It should also be noted that some bits of the Meadow didn't get done last year for no good reason.  Anyway, it was jolly hard work in the hot sun, and at the end I was half human, half wild carrot seed, and it doesn't look good as the saplings didn't get properly trashed, so I will have to do some of it again during the week, but finally we can see across the Meadow again!  There are large banks of scrub for shelter for my friends the hares and for any pheasants that the fox  hasn't had too.

There are no new wildlife photos to share this week as last Sunday the hunt went through our land and the valley.  They don't come into the Garden, as it is well fenced off but do treat the Orchard and Meadow as their own.  While I recognise very clearly the need to control the number of boar, as there really are too many, what annoys me about the hunters is their sheer arrogance as they stalk through other people's property.  Plus I don't trust them not to fire towards us in the Garden if they spot something interesting.  We sang and whistled very loudly while they were close by.  Once they have done a sweep through, we see very little large wildlife for at least a couple of weeks, until they find their way back to us.

I leave you with the flowers of autumn, the cyclamen that pop up everywhere it seems and spread gloriously through our gardens and the Wood.  They always make me smile.

Have a good week!

 

Dangerous beasts

For a few days last week, we had a ferocious door keeper - actually it was quite tricky at times to close the door as we didn't want to squash him or her!  While last year we saw practically no mantis, this year there have been quite a lot and this one has decided our front door area is their stalking point.  If I am in the way, then I too am a stalking point.  Either mating or cold will eventually kill them off, but until then, I enjoy the company.

Rather less fun was the hornet sting last Sunday, which is still a bit painful and blew up overnight on Sunday to rather unpleasant proportions, and made yoga moves a bit challenging.  My experience, if it helps anyone else, is as follows: the pain of the sting is like a searing hot needle into the arm.  Get the hornet off you, as they can sting more than once - to be sure, have a large person jump up and down on the blasted creature as well in retribution.  If you know you have sting allergies, get yourself to a chemist or doctor asap or use the EpiPen you carry or take the antihistamines you have been given.  There is a rumour that a cider vinegar compress as soon as you can will also be helpful - I didn't spot that advice until a bit too late.  Hydrocortisone cream will sooth, but needs fairly frequent application, and an anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen will help with the swelling, but count on pain for four to six days.  All in all I don't recommend the experience.

The trail camera has been in to have its batteries recharged - the new camera is heavier on batteries than the old one, and seems to use up the rechargeable batteries in three weeks.  It is back now keeping an eye out for boar, and indeed the boar are about a bit, keeping an eye out for walnuts.

More interestingly, when I was going through what was on the memory card, were a series of short videos of a fox with something - frequent reviews of the set of 6 videos tells me that it was probably a blackbird.  I've loaded up a few of the videos for those who don't mind watching nature red in tooth and claw.   For me the interesting aspect of this, other than that foxes don't like feathers in their teeth, is that foxes, like cats, play with their prey.  Now TypePad and YouTube don't seem to be playing ball anymore so I am hoping that if you follow this link, you can see video number 1 - but do press any back arrow to come back to this post, same for the other two links, if you can spot a back arrow or back function that is (I really hate technology at times).  Then if you follow this link, you can see video number 2.  And finally, if you follow this one, you can see video number 3.

The cristophine vine goes from strength to strength as this unseasonably hot autumn continues.  We have harvested off 8 fruits now, and counting today, it looked to me like there were a further 23 that might do something if we don't get a frost, including 6 that actually need to be eaten in the next week as they are fully ripe.  One tendril has disappeared 15 foot up into a birch tree, and the canopy the leaves provide over the structure we made for it are fairly waterproof.  It is a thing of wonder - well, to us at least, as other British gardeners over here in France seem to be singularly uninterested.  French people with relatives in the overseas departments are fascinated.

I'm not sure whether the recent full moon was the Harvest Moon or the Hunter's Moon, but it has been spectacular.  Here it is rising between houses.

We are still working our way through the quince harvest.  I have poached more and of course we do have some eau de vie de quince from a successful year about 3 years ago, so I have come up with Cocktail Maison - two small measures (a 2cl shot glass) of eau de vie, three good small measures of quince and spice syrup, and full to the top with fizzy water.  It slips down very nicely!!

Cheers! Until next week.