Rural Life

Still not a hint of summer!

Meteorological summer starts on the 1st June - next Saturday in fact - but you wouldn't really know it yet.  The key summer crops of maize and sunflowers are either very short or not even sown yet, we still have sweatshirts ready to wear morning and evening, shorts rarely make an appearance and there is no cover on the gazebo yet.  With the long evenings, I am doing my walk to the top of the hill after closing up the chicken run, and on Tuesday, this was the inspiring sight that I was greeted with - standing water and maize just about 3 inches tall.  It's not right!

I did get the cover off the area of soil where I wanted to sow carrots, parsnips and salsify.  It had been providing shelter to a number of baby slowworms, one of which is pictured below, while keeping the worst of the weeds at bay.  I think the slowworms and toads are one of the reasons that we don't get too much slug and snail damage on that particular area, and they are supported by thrushes and other birds of that broad family.  The soil was very wet, very heavy and claggy, but somehow I got the seeds sown - how successful they will be, I am not sure.

While we are not hosting the Comice in Vieil Baugé this year, we have a relatively prestigious place in the parade of decorated floats, so we have to take it seriously.  Flowers have been made (possibly not enough green ones) and now we are starting to stick them onto the cardboard frames that get attached to the float.  That is something we can do in the rain as we have a nice dry barn to do it in, and it makes for a nice, convivial afternoon.  One thing I need to remember for the next session, is to sit down for part of the time - standing and leaning at a bad angle did nothing for either my feet or my back!

Today we went out for Sunday lunch, to Chinon.  Now this was a daring move as today is Mother's Day in France so there was a danger of too many people and not enough restaurant tables, but we know people, therefore it was not an issue for us at all.  We started out by visiting the amazing British craft brewer in Chinon, Simon at Brassefort.  He is a charming character, and has worked as a stone mason, as well as now being a brewer, so has lots of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, and the beer is jolly good too!  Lunch was taken at the Lion d'Or on the Place Jeanne d'Arc, where the food is always good (they also do an excellent café gourmand - a small coffee with half a dozen mini desserts), the wine in pichers is of a high standard and everyone is very friendly.

Now I must go to the kitchen and wrestle with the mangos we were given by our neighbour - someone had given him a case, and while he had eaten most of them, he was now fed up with mango, so would we like them?  Yes please!  Except they aren't the easiest to peel and eat - my godmother used to sit in the bath to eat them and then wash herself down afterwards.

Have a good week!

 

Boring weather

Last Saturday, when I wrote my last piece a day early, the weather was glorious!  Hot sunshine, hardly a cloud in the sky, just a gentle breeze to stop it getting too hot, but a lovely 25ºC in the shade.  That changed on Sunday, just in time for the trout fishing day, to what we have now.  Nice mornings that fool you, afternoons that don't get much over 20ºC with thunderstorms rumbling around and unpredictably dumping rain and hail on me every time I put my nose out of the back door, while the evenings are cool but calmer after about 9pm.  It is great growing weather for weeds and wild plants, not great for setting off seeds of courgette and butternut squash and impossible to get the thyme seedlings to do anything more than pout.  But it has brought out the bee orchids, and this year, I've managed a couple of cracking photos of them too!

The various alliums we have growing are putting on a lot of green growth, although rather floppy.  At least the onions are mostly growing under frames to keep the worst ravages of cat bottom under control, so they are supported, while the growing habit of shallots is such that they are quite perky.  The garlic have lovely strong stems and leaves, but when I lifted one today to go with broad beans, it looked like a very healthy leek underground.  I think they need a bit of sunshine and heat to bulk out.  Not that the forecasts are promising any of that for the moment.

The Fergus Memorial Rose (aka Orange King) is now out and looking magnificent!  I could go a bundle on roses if they put on displays like this all the time!  Actually I am fond of roses, but I like them to have perfume - this one doesn't seem to, but with this, the colour was the important aspect.

The electrical activity is making writing this very challenging - it is taking about 8 goes to get a photo loaded up and inserted which is not doing my blood pressure any favours, so I think I will finish with a short word about the trout fishing day, and go and do something else.

The trout fishing day is run by the fishing club la Gaule Baugeoise, who stock the lake with trout of the right size, manage the fishing tickets and provide snack food at lunchtime.  The Comité des Fêtes du Vieil Baugé, of which I am a member, provide a drinks stand all day long - coffee, wine, beer and soft drinks, served with a smile.  Very successful events in past years have seen over a hundred rods, and a three hour long. lunchtime rush for drinks from 11:30am.  This year was more sedate, in part due to the weather, in part due to a very long holiday weekend (known in the media as a viaduct holiday weekend), and in part due to people feeling less like splashing the cash than they used to.  Even so, there were perhaps 70 rods and a continuous stream of drinkers and we didn't get too wet, and my feet stopped hurting about 2 hours after I got home.  A success overall I think!

So I'm now going to quit while I'm ahead, and wish you a very good week!

 

Time for flowers

While the wisteria (which we don't have any of) is now over and the roses are getting ready to explode, the range of flowers out there at the moment is quite stunning.  For lovers of a light, fragrant honey, now is the season of the (false) acacia flowers that provide the nectar for honey.  The trees themselves are a pain - they have many, very sharp thorns and they spread rapidly by suckering.  They are regarded by many environmental groups in France as an invasive, non-native species and you can get help to get rid of them, if you weren't responsible for planting them in the first place.  The flowering season doesn't last long, but while it does, there are huge bundles of these lovely white flowers to be see all over the place, and they smell nice too.

A more traditional flower, and one familiar to everyone is the elderflower - beloved of cordial makers and an essential ingredient for elderflower champagne.  I've made it a few times over here, but the pressure in the bottles needs to be released at least twice a day as it is warmer than the UK at brewing time, and then you wonder, what's the point?  With good Saumur fizz easily available and local, why bother to make a substitute? Of course if you are partial to a Gloucester gin (one part gin to 3 to 4 parts elderflower champagne), then you have to make your own.  We wait for the berries and make a rich and healthy berry cordial that keeps colds, 'flu and Covid symptoms under control.

The wildflower meadow is near its best at the moment and humming with insects - in fact insect noise is louder than birdsong at times!  The oxeye daisies are coming out, the pink clover is at its best, the yellow trefoil is vibrant and there are also pockets of knapweed.  In a week or two, the bee orchids should also make an appearance, and there may be a blush of blue linseed too.  It isn't easy to photograph but here is a best attempt.

At the top of the wildflower meadow and underneath a walnut tree, there is a patch of posh irises.  They are always the last of this type to flower, probably because of being under the walnut tree, and are dramatic with white tops and nearly black bottoms.  I keep meaning to transplant a few to somewhere a bit less hidden away, perhaps I will remember to this summer!

When we had to let Fergus the ginger cat go, we went looking for a ginger coloured flowering shrub to remember him by.  At the time we were looking, the only thing that was really available was a rather splendid rose called Orange King.  The first year it had a couple of magnificent flowers, but since then it hasn't done as well as I would have hoped.  Probably as I don't keep the weeds down around it as much as I should.  This year it looks like we are going to get a splendid display in about 5 days time!

Another promise of things to come, is my flowering turmeric.  For the last couple of years, Aldi (other discount stores are available) has sold pots of flowering turmeric as an ornamental flower in around June or July.  Last year I succumbed to a pot as it was discounted, and had it on the outside dining table under the awning as a talking point.  It did extremely well too, with lots of growth and flowers.  When we took the awning down and there were threats of frost, I brought it indoors and put it in the bathroom, giving it a bit of water now and then.  Everything died down in the winter, and by mid-April I was seriously considering doing a forensic search of the contents of the pot before ditching it.  I'm glad I didn't, as during the week, first one, then a second and now four shoots are coming up in total.  Once the awning is back on the pergola, it can go outside again, and we can talk about it and hope for as many flowers as last year!

The computer has vetoed the photo of the flower pot, so I leave you with a photo of bunting, as everything is better with bunting.  This is for the Olympic Flame which arrives in Baugé on the 28th May, and we are getting very excited about that!

As Sunday is Trout Fishing Day here in Vieil Baugé, I am having another go at delayed posting.  Let's see if it works!

 

There's lots around if you know where to look!

We might have had a log fire going last night, resorted to a local discount warehouse yesterday afternoon due to the rain, and be working on our tax returns today, again because of the weather, but actually nature is out there doing what she does and getting on with Spring.  Beating the bounds today before giving up due to the rain (have I mentioned it is a wet weekend?), we spotted a new orchid plant and location.  Because they have tuber-like roots, for many orchids, once you have seen them flower in a location, you know to look in the same place the following year, particularly if that location isn't subject to local authority or local authority contractor "maintenance".  So spotting this new flower on the opposite side of the meadow to its usual haunts was really pleasing.  I imagine the seed was moved around by badger paw.

Thursday was a rare fine day, although not particularly warm.  I was able to take advantage and plant more of the well chitted seed potatoes, so now there is just a final row of 8 or 9 to go in during the week.  Each time I passed a particular tree where we had put up a nest box, I was aware of a lot of chattering noise, so I decided to pause, lean on my metaphorical spade and watch.  Sure enough, after a couple of minutes a Great Tit went to the nest box opening to be greeted by a lot of squeaking and then silence as goodies were shared out.  Once one parent had gone, there was a short pause, then the other parent turned up and the noises repeated themselves.  Today when I walked past the box, all was silent.  I hope the babies were tucked up warm and safe.

On Thursday, the Meadow was humming with insects: it was so loud, it was hard to distinguish the different birds that were also singing.  I'm sure it made finding food easier for the fraught parents from the birdbox!  At the entrance to the Meadow, I met a slow worm, basking in the sun and trying to warm itself up a bit.  We have quite a lot in the area, but it was nice to see one, although I then had to make sure my accompanying cats ignored it.

It must be nearly a year since I invested in a pond dipping kit, and early in the week, while the ground was still too wet to work, I decided to have a play.  You don't get instructions with a pond dipping kit - I guess they think it is obvious, or if you are getting a kit, you know what you are doing.  My first attempt was therefore marginally successful and with lots of learning points - take a chair and a kneeler and some spare white paper, and only source water from one pond at a time being top of the list.  I needed more time and more stable surfaces and a chair to let sediment settle properly, to focus properly and to have a chance of seeing whether the elongated fast thing had a hook on its tail or not.  A better field guide might be useful too.  I was cheered to see that there are a lot of water fleas around, as they are at the bottom of the food chain and if they are there, then other things can be too.  I don't have a clue as to what the elongated fast thing was, other than fast and about a centimetre long.

There is a parasitic plant that can be confused with a bird's nest orchid, but isn't one of those.  It grows off tree and shrub roots but at quite a distance and has no leaves.  We found a lot of them on the eastern side of the Meadow this weekend, just starting to come up, and about 2 to 3 metres away from the row of fruit trees.  I've not seen them there before, so am not sure if it is a weather related thing or a problem for the trees.  Anyway, here is a photo.

While not totally unusual, the past few Mays have been warm and sunny, so this year's wet and cold version is not going down well with humans or cats.  So far this month we have had over an inch of rain and a bit of thunder and hail, and more rain is forecast for the next couple of days before a 5 day window of warm and nice - or that is what we are promised.  I hope "they" are right, as while the rain is keeping the water level in the ponds at a useful level for wildlife, everything else is getting a bit miserable.

Have a good week!

 

This late April is weird

Each of the last 7 months in France have been the warmest ever recorded for that month.  It is highly likely that April will continue that dismal record, and yet it doesn't feel like it.  While the first half of April was warm, extremely warm at times, it continued the wet theme from March, but then it went cold.  There have been frosts, although we've not noticed much (up too late to catch the signs I guess), but very limited rain and temperatures rarely over 12 or 13ºC have halted or limited growth for some things, while others have carried on regardless.  In 3 day's time it will be May, yet the canopy at the One Acre Wood is quite sparse - chestnut is always a bit slow and one of the oaks in the picture is dead, but it doesn't feel right.

The lower growth is coming on nicely and we have a crazy oak lawn situation in places, so there is a nice green haze at ground level however.

We are into orchid season, and while it is too early for the lizard orchids, the lady orchid is looking better this year that it has for quite a few seasons.  There are also magnificent early purple orchids if you know where to look (mostly road side verges unless they have been mown).  One garden we know also has what are variously called spider orchids or fly orchids - not as pretty as bee orchids but similar to look at.  These seem to be out earlier than usual this year.

Over the next thee weeks I will no doubt drive myself mad trying to get the best possible photo of a bee orchid!

John likes the unexpected, so he was quite happy when I looked out of the bathroom window on Thursday morning and went downstairs to tell him that there was a ****ing great duck wandering around outside.  Too large and too stupid to be allowed on the public highway on its own, Quackers the Doose (too large for a duck, too small for a goose) was herded into next door's garden and a suitable notice put on the community Facebook page for the owner to come and remove their livestock.  Someone clearly took notice as by Friday morning, Quackers was gone, leaving just a few photos and an intriguing memory behind.

In unrelated poultry news, the Economic Migrant shuffled off her mortal coil this week - we think she was about 4 years old and hadn't laid an egg in about 12 months.  I feel guilty we don't have a photo of her!

So I have been through the videos from the trail camera that came in last weekend prior to being re-sited.  I messed up in that when checking things were working in mid-March, I managed to turn off the video function, so there weren't as many files as I would have expected, and about half of them were of me walking past in one direction or another.  There were a small number where something had clearly run past quickly so that while there was a photo, there was no accompanying interesting video to enjoy.  Then there is a rather dull video of a badger walking away - once you have seen one badger's bottom wiggling as it wanders off, you have seen all you need!  The main antics of interest were the deer, so here are two daytime videos of a couple of does and a nightime video of a stag being a bit boy-like.

 

 

 

During the coming week I hope to do a pond dip in the upper pond to see what might be living in there, so next week there are bound to be fuzzy photos of disgusting small water things.  I will also have finished and analysed the April bird recordings, and hopefully I will have planted more potatoes!

Have a good week!

 

A day out and lots of garden work

We've had a busy and a social week, meeting up with people over to see their second homes, as well as getting a bunch of stuff done ourselves.  We declared Tuesday a Holiday, and once we had done the very important job of choosing a new mattress and ordering its delivery (we've had the current one for 25 years, a change is allowed!), we set out on a jaunt of frivolity.

Our first job was to find somewhere for lunch, and clearly in the tourist areas, Tuesday lunch is not a popular meal.  It took us a while to find the Quatre Saisons opposite Langlois Chateau in St Hilaire/St Florent on the south bank of la Loire.  It was worth the search.  While the menu on the board looked delicious and may have had too many choices to make life easy, the menu du jour was cheaper and excellent.  Pan fried sander fillet with salad, chicken supreme with rice and beans and a nice wine jus and the most amazing vanilla pudding that I still fantasise about.  All served in a nice room overlooking the Thouet and served by the chap doing the cooking.  We were very pleased.

After a brief retail therapy stop at Decathlon, we drove on to Turquant.  This really is a tourist village, but again the out of season Tuesday effect meant that people were few and far between, although I can imagine it is the seventh circle of hell on a sunny Sunday in July or August.  It is an arts and crafts centre, and while the gallery was nice enough, the shop set of caves were a better display of the talents around.  Even so, the delicacy and chichi-ness of it all were not really to our taste, so while we could appreciate the talent, we were not tempted to put paws in pockets.  Not least as there were no ants for sale - they are big on ants in Turquant!

From there, our final stop was with a friend and wine producer in Restigné to buy red and rosé wines and hear about the challenges of selling a nice little vineyard as a going concern.

Now we are trying to catch up on all the gardening work we need to do but the weather has not been helping us with.  On Friday I topped out the broad beans, as there were enough small beans set to make me feel the time was right.  I guess there are something over 100 plants and only one had blackfly on already, so I feel my timing was impeccable.  I had some assistance with this slightly back breaking task, as Monsieur Clause supervised while squashing a number of sprouting onion sets.

Getting the potatoes in is slow work.  Through all of March and the first week of April the ground was too wet to work.  Then John got the cultivator out and cleared some space, but also pulled muscles nearly everywhere, so had to rest up for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday he felt up to giving it another go and I was able to plant another 18 chitted potatoes.  We now have half the available spuds planted, although I think we might not get them all in this year.

After some 6 weeks in place looking along a much frequented path, I brought in one of the trail cameras to see who is around.  After some quick copying and editing of the SD card, it is now back out again, in a different location, with the aim of admiring boar having mud baths.  Anyway, a trundle through the files reveals that we have just as many boar and deer in the zone as ever.  That the badgers are still knocking around, as is the fox and a hare and a probably pine martin.  It also revealed that images and videos of us walking away from the camera are beyond unflattering, and that goes for the boar and the deer too!  I have deleted all evidence for us, but the animals don't have those editorial controls.  Here are some of our neighbours.

The new cameras are less intrusive but still need to be checked out closely!

Have a good week!

 

Technology let me down!

Apologies!  I knew I wouldn't be able to write anything yesterday, so on Friday I spent time carefully honing a short but interesting piece on nature playing catch up (I think), and programmed it to publish yesterday.  It didn't and the whole thing has gone.  I'm sure it was great, but I haven't got a clue what I wrote, although I do have pictures which may help!

Why couldn't I do the blog yesterday?  It was vide grenier day in Echimiré, so we had to be there by about 7am (dawn is very pretty but way too early for me at the moment) to get in and set up.  Even arriving when we did, it was too late to be able to use the van and trailer as part of the staging as our two neighbours had encroached on our space with trailers, tables and a cast iron barbeque, so we had to dump everything, move vehicles and then see what we could do with what we had available.  It worked OK as you can see, until...

Someone bought the stepladder!  We didn't make our fortunes, but could afford Rosé and chips each, and we got rid of a lot of stuff.  I think I sold perhaps 8 vases, 3 salad bowls, 2 bedside lamps, decorative plates, and a load of other small stuff, allowing more space in our storage lockup.  It was a beautiful day and the lovely old parasol from Worcester days was much needed as the sun was very powerful.  I have a sunburnt elbow!

On Friday I was very excited as my tree peony flowered.  I've had it perhaps 8 years and have never repotted it.  It is in a very exposed spot by the front door and yet somehow keeps going.  The fact it only has one flower this year says to me that once that has faded, I really better had treat it a bit kindly with some new soil and perhaps a bigger pot!

On Friday I also spent a bit of time (when not preparing for the vide grenier) admiring the broad beans which are well in flower now.  I am waiting until I see a set bean or two before I take out the growing tips to discourage black fly - could be a job for Wednesday or Thursday I guess.  Not least as this magnificent masonry bee has spent a lot of time with the broad bean flowers!

I think I said a week ago that the cultivated cherry blossom was magnificent so thought I had better include a photo to proove it.  Today much of the blossom has faded or been blown away.  I'm hoping the bees had a wonderful weekend with it, as it was warm and sunny.  Unlike the blousy pink cherry blossom, individual flowers are single, so easy for pollinators to get into and do their thing.

Apologies again for the delay - honestly (or rather honesty - a lovely purple flower and our bank of them increases year by year as they self seed)!

 

Nature presses on regardless

The headline floods of last weekend are subsiding slowly, despite the continued rain through the week, but it hasn't been as intense or as much - just 18.5mm through the week. The rivers and streams are getting back to normal while the ponds remain well charged.  One evening I went to look at the sunset view, and heard the water oozing and sinking in a field nearby, which was rather unpleasant, but notable.

Nature is doing her thing now, and with every day, the veil of green and white spreads through the hedgerows and woods as new leaves are unfurled and cherry, plum, crab apple and quince blossom all open.  Some orchards are also full of blossom, but most commercial apple varieties will be a bit later.  it is the quince blossom I love the most - it is simple, but the flowers are large and generally tinged with pink.

At a distance, the wild cherry blossom is magnificent, but close to, the flowers are small and meagre, nothing to compare with the cultivated varieties, which have more and bigger flowers.  But when you get a run of wild cherry down a hedge line, it is magnificent.

Irrespective of how we might feel about working in this weather, the kitchen garden plots need to be sorted out and planted up or any crops will be too small or too late to be of much use.  I pulled up the matting that has been suppressing weeds  on this year's potato bed, so that John could get the rotavator on to it, and met a small helper.  They are very good at keeping slugs under control among other pests, so I am always pleased to see slow worms, and particularly baby ones.  This one can't have been more than five inches long or so.

Less welcome visitors are the Asian Hornets, and for a number of years, I have been part of a local observatory group, that catches and records the numbers of Asian hornet queens captured in Baugé en Anjou, with the aim of reducing the damage they do to local and native insect life.  It isn't only their predilection for eating the heads of honeybees like candy, they have also been found to reduce all insect life by 40% around their nests.  In addition, they have a really nasty sting.  Yesterday's warm weather had them out and looking for food, and my trap caught 3 of the brutes, and I am very happy about that.

Finally I managed to get the onion sets planted, while the shallots that went in a couple of weeks ago are now starting to show.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the wet weather though.  Back in Worcester, we couldn't really grow any alliums as onion white rot is endemic through the Vale of Evesham and into Worcester, and there is no real cure other than not growing any of the onion family for at least 5 years.  I get very twitchy and hope that we can stay free of it!

During the week I moved the trail camera that had been in the One Acre Wood back to the Orchard, and put it where I got film of the water rail.  The new and unsophisticated cameras don't use much battery power, so in theory I can now leave that one in place for the whole of the summer and will only run into problems if the memory card gets full.  During the time it was in the Wood, the camera got 54 files, and when I reviewed them, they were all of John and/or I moving about the wood, nothing else.  Given it was by a clearly used wildlife track, it was disappointing, as in 24 hours it captured 26 files of wildlife at the bottom of the Orchard. 

But that is the wonder of our land in the country - the mix of habitats means it provides a marvellous corridor for things to move along, as well as the food sources and shelter for a huge range of birds and animals.  My Merlin bird song app tells me that there is a skylark or two in the zone, and a nightingale has just arrived too.  Very few of the bird species convincingly identified are considered particularly endangered (mostly in the Least Concern category), but it is the wealth of species and the density of the birdsong that tells me it is a rich area in the best sense of that term.

So I finish with a photo of some tulips that I bought cheap at a discount supermarket, planted late as I had other concerns, and that have rewarded me with a magnificent show of flowers that I hope will be repeated in future years.

Have a good week!

 

Nature is in charge

Apologies for being a day late with the update - Easter visitors and fun took over yesterday and I hope you consider the wait worth it, as we are dealing with national news in a bit.

The week started fairly quietly, with a magnificent view of a full moon from the garden when I went to close up the chicken run.  This isn't to keep the wee darlings safe, as they sleep 4 foot off the ground on a suspended perch, but to ensure that they don't roam around the garden from first light, killing my plants more than they have to.

A couple of days later, we were treated to a magnificent sunset, with rich colours.  This is normally an autumn phenomenon, but we enjoy them whenever and aren't going to complain!

Spring has sprung and the cowslips and oxslips are looking fabulous in the Orchard, with the red and orange variants adding vibrancy to the mix.

So given all that mellowness, Storm Nelson was a bit of a downer, with winds whistling around the corners of the house and one of the sheets of metal on the chicken run roof deciding to submit to the forces of nature!  John had to miss a hot cross bun party in order to fix it and shelter the chickens from the worst of the rain.

But the big story is the flooding.  Not so much around us, although people did get caught out in Saumur as they foolishly left cars overnight on the quayside.  Yesterday was spent keeping an eye on a red alert on the River Vienne - a tributary of la Loire - running through Chinon.  Some reports were getting quite scary, and although the worst didn't happen, a few hundred people had to be evacuated from the part of the town to the south of the river.  As we were returning our visitor to Chinon, we had to go and have a look (it would be rude not to!).

The speed of the river and the height (5.3 metres at lunchtime) were dramatic, particularly by the old bridge in the centre of town.

In the direction of the Eifel bridge (yes, that Eifel), there is a "low road" to a village called Cravant.  Walking through the park by the river, it wasn't immediately obvious, but the river had taken the opportunity to sneak through a gap and fill up a road, blocking access to a community centre (not the one taking evacuees) and a driving school.

Back in early March, I wrote about flooding in Chinon here, with a fine photo of a Stop sign up to its waist in water.  Well the Stop sign itself was completely submerged, but the top of the higher sign just by it can be made out sticking out of the water here.

The height of the flood has now passed at Chinon and is heading for la Loire, where the peak is expected at Saumur at about midnight.  The Loire valley is so wide, it shouldn't cause too many problems now, but I saw that two further departments are on red flood alert, for tributaries of the Seine, so no doubt Paris will have a big flap about it all very soon. 

The moon will change in the next week and I hope that brings less rain, a bit of warmth to dry things out, and a chance to get into the garden and get the onions planted and the potato bed rotavated.  Things are starting to get a bit delayed!  Have a good week.

 

Using the new trail cameras

Last week I brought home the trail camera that had been on the ridge separating two pond areas.  Lazily, I hadn't deleted the 600 odd files from the camera being placed in the cats' kitchen to see who might be stealing their food (a couple of visitors, but mainly they are greedy gut buckets), or the 300 or so files from 24 hours in the chicken run, checking for rodents (no rodents, but sparrows and a big, fat, cat that isn't one of ours).  But lucky me, there were a further 600 odd files showing who spent time on the narrow paths that crossed just by where I posed the camera.

There were a few visitors I had expected - the ducks.  They really are rather sweet!

I was a bit concerned to see that a boar had tried to go along the path, but it turned around and went back.  Still, the photo was pretty worrying!

It should be no surprise that there were rodents.  I got one short film of a rather cute mouse with huge ears, which is quite difficult to see.  I got a lot of footage of what rats do when there aren't sewers and garbage bins around to rummage in.  I actually find it rather good to see a wild rat a long way from human habitation, and I have no intention of doing anything to move them on.  This is their natural environment after all.  Here is a bit of rat activity for you.

The mouse was about a quarter of that size, so that is definitely rat.  While this is definitely coypu!  Fortunately it only passed the camera once during the two weeks the camera was in situ, so I'm hoping that means it doesn't live around there.  If I spot it on another camera and a lot, then I will have to intervene.  Coypu are an invasive, non-native species that cause habitat damage and have no natural predators.  They are also rather ugly to my eye.  You can see he is a lot bigger than the rat, but has a similar style tail, so cannot be confused with a beaver.

Deer passed through and a thrush looked for snails, but the real find at that location was a bird I had to get a chum to identify as my original thought was a partridge with a dodgy beak.  It doesn't make much noise, so my Merlin bird identification app hadn't picked it up either.  May I introduce my new best friend, the water rail?  Elusive and rather scarce but seemingly happy to pass through the plot from time to time.  It went backwards and forwards for three days, and was a privilege to see.  

 

Otherwise, we have been working hard on the gardening front - I've been planting shallots and eyeing up the flower buds on the broad beans, which should come out soon.  John has set up and planted the new asparagus bed, complete with commercial compost on the top to give it the best possible start.  A good asparagus bed will last at least 10 years, while the corms we planted just before we moved (so back in 2003 or so) are still productive, or at least those that still survive are anyway. 

Some of my favourite spring flowers - flag irises - are starting to come out.  These purple ones are the earliest, but will be followed by the reddish ones and the deep purple and white as the weeks go by.  As there is left over compost, I must also plant up the bag of freesias I bought a couple of weeks ago and then think about getting the onions in.  For ages we were saying that spring was still a way off, but now it is here, and it is action stations!!

So I'd better stop writing about it all and get back to doing useful stuff!  Have a good week!