Rural Life

A promise of things to come

Before we get onto that, a word on chickens.  Muck left us for the chicken run in the sky - brown chickens never seem as robust as other types, so we watch Brass with a certain concern.  Currently we are home to 7 fowl - Delenn the Doyenne shown below, demonstrating that you don't have to be young and agile to get to roost on the high perch, old, creaky and fat can do it too.  Then there is Brass, and Mac and Jak the newbies for this year, Bridie the freeloading bantam, and The Asylum Seeker from next door.  I was a bit concerned to find another of next door's marching around the garden just now when I popped out for some bay leaves - we are not going to be a sanctuary for discontented chickens!

British visitors are starting to turn up in the Pays de la Loire, as restrictions ease and a pent up need to visit their properties becomes overwhelming.  It is lovely to see them, although we panic about getting gardens just so in the days before they arrive.  I was doing one garden, and had time to stop to admire a bank of some sort of pea flower along the side of a lake, and a yellow wagtail marching up and down the landing stage (believe me, that is what it is, the photo is just fuzzy).  Monday night the President will make announcements and that may stop the tide again - and not exactly a tide, just a few more faces in the area!

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We've found evidence of very welcome visitors to The Garden in the past week.  I do not see them when I visit, well I make a noise and am generally accompanied by cats, so have to find other ways to know they are there.  In the photos below are two different thrush anvils and the shells of the snails they have beaten out of them.  It is so great to see that, as I've not seen a real live thrush for ages, and they are such beautiful and useful birds.

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The promise of good things to come includes something else I've never seen before.  The sweet chestnuts are in flower and normally the flowers are high up so you see the long tails of essentially male flowers with their fluffy petals, and if you are a hayfever sufferer with a problem with tree pollen, you tend to suffer too.  But get up close and personal, and you can also see the female flowers, miniature spiny cocoons where the nuts will form during the next three months.  The first sweetcorn are also starting to produce male flowers (round here castrating maize is a thing, but I'm not going to bother), and signs of where the cobs will start forming very soon - that makes me hungry and yearn for them to get on with it!!  Finally the sweet peppers (or bell peppers) are in flower and I've spotted some tiny fruits too, so that will be something else yummy soon.  Ideally a bit of sun and the tomatoes will start to ripen too!

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We've been working on a flower border in the garden, filling it mainly with things we have rescued from compost heaps or have been sitting in pots for ages or packets of seeds that seemed like a good idea at the time, with the honourable exception of the Fergus Memorial Rose.  On the left is an early shot, on the right, how it is looking today - full of flowers for bees and insects and full and blousy.

Finally a gratuitous photo of one man and his favourite machine making a noise this morning during the window of opportunity for using loud machines.  Useless scrub has been pushed back for a day or two.

Brutal weather and projects

I stupidly mentioned kindly weather last time round - well that will teach me!  Last Sunday was hot and the temperatures just kept rising on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I was on mowing duty on Monday and had to do that in the morning to keep it reasonable.  Tuesday evening aperos were in the garden and 31ºC at 7pm, so of course when it broke on Wednesday, it went with a bang!  There were reports of tornados, hours of sheet lightening and heavy rain Wednesday to Thursday, and I saw the damage as I drove the roads round Rillé on Friday.  It was still hot and sticky though, so more showers, more storms, more humidity.  Yesterday that culminated in a storm front that went across France causing havoc.  We were lucky, but St Nicholas de Bourgeuil lost its church spire to a tornado, while the floods in Saumur and towns near Paris and Reims were extraordinary.

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Yesterday was market day, and as I had company and the terraces are open, we took the opportunity to stop at one of the cafés around the market to have a drink and watch the world go by.  I am used to watching sparrows scavenge around under tables, but it was the first time I've seen a chaffinch do that.  If you are reading this on a computer or tablet, it is worth looking closely at the third photo - I'm rather proud of that one!

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This morning, after paying homage to the Cats in the Country, we went to the open day at l'Or de la Ruche - a professional bee keeper and purveyor of honey, where there was also an exhibition on Asian hornets and how to trap them, and a bit of a producers' market too.  It was a lovely little event, no face masks as there was plenty of space to spread out, and yet enough people to let you think life might return to normal one day.

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This afternoon we went out to a Brocante - O, how daring and how wonderful!  We were on a mission as the Chinon One would like a footstool for his birthday next week, and this seemed a likely place - a huge warehouse at Beaufort en Vallée.  Bizarrely, footstools were not plentiful.  There were bar stools, milking stools, coffee tables and a camel saddle, but just one footstool - rather modern and with a not very nice cover, but at 10€, something of a bargain, even if we are going to recover it.  It seems to do what was required anyway.  We did find another option as well - an old barley twist chair that has certainly seen better days, and the back struts are badly split.  But take off the back, cover the sawn off bits with a bit of foam and new fabric, add the missing stretcher, give it a good polish, and the chair will make a rather fine and unique foot stool as well.

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Until next week!

 

Orchids, roses and vegetables

The first half of the week passed in a blur of reading reports, analysing numbers and trying to get it all down in a logical way and make some sense of it all.  By Wednesday evening, when the first draft of the report was sent, my mind was mush.  Thursday I must have done something useful - but it is hard to remember what.  Ah yes, new cylinder for the sodastream, visiting a couple of clients, feeding cats and sewing labels into summer shirts - clearly I did quite a bit that was useful!!

After the usual Friday visits, the new normal allowed us to go to the pub, sit out on the terrace and enjoy being around people, while taking on a glass or two of something cold.  It is so good to start the old normal experiences.  Tomorrow should have seen a bit of yoga too, but local elections mean the large village hall wasn't available, while the room offered as a substitute, as well as having a huge framed photo of the President, was not really conducive to socially distanced yoga for seniors.  So we are cancelled until September, which is a shame.

Today we were out and about before the temperatures got too hot to do anything other than wilt.  As well as productive things (more later), I spotted three different types of orchid out - two in the Orchard, and one in the One Acre Wood.  Here are a bee, a lizard and a birds nest!

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The roses are also coming on nicely at The Shack.  There is a splendid white climbing rose with a delicate scent by one of the outbuildings, which is putting on a great display - next week will be all about dead heading I guess.  The Fergus Memorial Rose, or Orange King as the label more officially calls it, has also put out its first flower.  I photographed it both yesterday and today, but today's photo was after there had been a lot of strimming, so there were bits of shredded weed in the flower.  I've not included that one!

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The vegetables are coming on.  Today I picked all remaining broad beans, and also lifted one of the main crop garlic to see what was going on, as the leaves and stems looked like they had been ravaged by rust, but there was a nice bulb and later on we will eat it to check on flavour!  The sweetcorn I sowed last Saturday ALL came up, so I had to spend time thinning out the excess plants, which really, really hurt.  I also planted out three more butternut squashes and four Bright Lights chard, the latter hidden among the shallots to get a bit of shelter while they establish themselves.  The shallots will be lifted in about a month at which point the chard can do what it likes.  Getting rid of the broad bean plants will give the peppers, aubergines and tomatoes more light, which will be good.

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There is also a lot of wildlife around.  Yesterday we visited a friend so John could do his Lawnmower Repair Man act (not totally successfully, but there is a deeper seated problem than he can get at).  She has swallows nesting in her stables and while the parents were out gathering beakfuls of insects for the offspring, I was able to look in and catch a photo.  Today, after I had toiled and done hammock time as a reward, I did my nature walk around the Orchard and the Wildlife Meadow.  The wild scabious is coming out which means an explosion of marbled white butterflies, which are just lovely to watch and occasionally take a photo of too!

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Next week's episode may be a bit late, but should have more exciting things to discuss, assuming the weather is a bit kind.

 

 

Waiting for Summer, although Spring might be nice!

No lockdown title at the moment, although we do still have curfew between 9pm and 6am, and aren't really supposed to travel across international borders unless it is really important.  I said I would continue to do the odd blog - I'm going to try for Sunday afternoons, once I've done my afternoon's work.

The big news this week was of course that café, pub and restaurant terraces could open to customers outdoors - our local opened on Thursday (officially he could have opened on Wednesday, but it isn't one of his "days"), but we were tied up with work until 7:30pm, so our first indulgence was on Friday evening.  Normality was restored and beer o'clock (or wine o'clock) was back!

Of course this had to be outdoors, and while there is a high roof over the terrace, that doesn't stop wind, and when it rains and there is wind, it doesn't stop rain much either, so we had to move tables.  The showers currently are very localised, so while it was pelting it down with rain, there was also sunshine and therefore a rainbow, or even two!

This morning we spent at The Shack, hedge trimming, a bit of mowing, a lot of weeding, some potting on and some planting of seedlings, but probably the most important activity was getting the ropes installed for the hammock.  And then we had to try it out - OMG!  Really rather blissful, to lie in the hammock, swinging slightly, listening to the birds and the blasted wind in the leaves, because yes, that wind is still going.  Cats also thought that this was pretty good, as whichever of us was in the hammock was also pretty horizontal and therefore unable to do much about being laid on and licked.

I also beat the bounds and found more bee orchids coming into flower - I'm quite pleased with this photo.

Finally, a serious bit.  The past 18 months with Covid have been hard in many ways for many people.  I guess John and I have got away with it pretty well, as we are fairly antisocial, and with our outdoor lifestyle and the gardens, have been able to be out and about without too many constraints.  But we have been pretty limited in how far we can go and who we can see, and this was brought home rather brutally, with news that an old friend died during the week.  I'd seen him in September 2019, and had planned to see him again in April or May 2020, when over for work, but of course that didn't happen, and in any case I wouldn't have been welcome because of the virus.  But I have good memories of September 2019.  Worse is that he was one of a pretty tight knit bunch of us that worked closely together in the early 90s, and at this time in normal circumstances, we would be able to get together, share stories, memories and a glass or three, and that most basic of human comforts, a hug or four.  This blasted disease has deprived us of that comfort, and that is the same for so many families and groups of friends across Europe over the past months.

But looking forward, have a good week all!

 

Lockdown III, Day 24 - possible slum renovation!

It's not really rained for days, and for two weeks we have had a nasty wind from East.  It's a dry, cold wind, which assisted the frosts a while back.  Closer inspection of our garden fruit trees shows nothing on the peach, very little on the pear and heartbreakingly, very little if anything on the Victoria Plum - so much for wrapping the tree in fleece! 

Despite the wind, we could sit at the end of the garden, sheltered by the back wall, and watch the world go by as we sip our evening drinkies.  Yesterday we were treated to the delightful spectacle of the biggest chicken, Delenn, keeping Zola pinned down on a plant stand for about 10 minutes.  Apologies for the slightly hazy quality of the photo as it was on maximum telephoto.

The dry conditions aren't ideal for some of the wild flowers and the normally magnificent lady orchid in the wildflower meadow seems to be suffering.  It is fully exposed to sun and wind, as it is right in the middle, and just to one side of a badger trunk road.  Nature will do her thing, and I'm not going to interfere, as she knows best, but it is sad all the same as I was looking forward to a magnificent orchid flower this year.

A disturbing ripple is in the offing.  The traditional longère next to our house has always been a bit of a pain.  The now deceased owner was something of a slum landlord, and we have seen a trail of tenants over the time we have owned our house.  We've had a slattern who ran a dodgy childcare business from there and chucked "things" down the well, two members of a family known for being mentally challenged (not at the same time), two artists, one of whom was chased by demons (although he stayed in the house the longest), a postman who had a vast menagerie of rescued animals, a few nice people (who never stayed long) and finally an alcoholic slut who brought the place into such disrepute that the mayor and police had to intervene.  When she left, she "paid" her removal boys with the antique floor tiles in the attic (not hers to sell), and a year later, the ceiling fell in on the middle room of the building.  It has been empty for perhaps 5 years now, which has been a relief. 

But on Friday, people started to visit the property, and we fear renovations are going to happen - while eventually probably a good thing I guess, it will mean at least 12 months of dust, rubble, no parking and inconvenience.  My word I'm going to have lots to chunter about!!

Lockdown III, Day 22 - I'm not planting any more potatoes!

It being Sunday and a day of "rest", we were back at The Shack carrying on the labour of love (or greed) that is getting the crops in for this year.  The final third of the potato bed was so much harder than the previous two - I'm not sure why!  There were more roots, more bits of branch, more stones, more cat poo, less wind, less cool air and therefore more breaks for rest and water, but it is done - 16 more spuds planted, and that's it.  I have 12 good quality, chitted, seed potatoes left if anyone in the area wants them - certified stock and purchased at Jaques Briant.  I'm not saying their stuff is any better than anywhere else, just that is where we got them.  Let me know.

In one of my many moments of resting before the next bout of root extraction, I took the time to look up and found (yet) another spectacular view across the fields of Anjou, but one that will soon be gone.  The walnuts are about the last of the trees to get their leaves (along with a number of one variety of oak, possibly sisal), but I reckon that this view will be blocked by leaves in a couple of weeks time.

While I was getting the potatoes in, John was tidying, mowing, rotavating and making a nice seed bed for sowing a few carrots and beetroot.  If you don't look too closely, it all looks rather ordered and like we know what we are doing.  I can guarantee that in another 4 weeks it will be knee high in weeds again, but for the moment, we are feeling a bit smug.

Once everything was put away in an orderly fashion, we popped into the orchard to try to enthuse ourselves about getting that tidied up (fail), and on the way back to the car I noticed this little fellow sunning him/herself.  It is really good to know that we have such creatures around the place, and who will help with the inevitable plague of critters that will try to eat our fruit and vegetables before we do!  It's a slow worm by the way, for those who've not seen one before - probably about 10 inches long in total.

We treated ourselves to a trip to the One Acre Wood on the way home, partly to retrieve the ropes for the hammocks which have been tied round a few oak trees for about 10 years.  We have identified a spot in The Garden by The Shack where a hammock will fit most nicely, sadly only the one hammock, so there will clearly be a few "discussions" about who gets to loll around in it, but that is something to look forward to for May.  Anyway, the lily of the valley are finally out, which is a joy - so I leave you with flowers for today.

 

Lockdown III, Day 19 - mostly details

I have a friend who is a proper photographer, and one of her well known and loved pictures is called something like Ted's workbench or shed - it is a loving study of a well ordered and well used garden shed, clearly a place where a chap could potter productively and did so with pride.  Our shed will never reach those heights, but it is a bit disconcerting at dusk to put my head into the shed and see the freeloading bantam perched there like some Taunton cider man.  No wonder we find broken eggs dotted around the shed if this is her idea of a safe roosting place!

Today was a cat feeding day, so I was able to see how my Dame Edna experiment was getting on.  Two years ago I bought a cheap bag of gladioli corms, fully intending to plant them somewhere, and then totally forgetting.  About a month ago I found them again, and potted the whole packet into a tub with my patent mix of sifted horse poo and leaf mould, put water on them and left them to do their worst, during the last really cold snap.  Today I think there are about 7 or 8 coming up along with a couple of cosmos seeds that have germinated.  I'm hopeful of some August colour if things go well, we remember to water the tub, and the cats don't decide to make it their outdoor bed!

I also sowed more bee friendly flowers - we'll see if any of those come up.  The seed is fresher than much I have used this year, so I am hopeful.  On the other hand, the generous dose of wood ash may have been a bit too strong - we'll see.  Anyway, I was resting from my labours and noticed that finally the work of the solitary bees has paid off and there are tiny, tiny bean pods set on the broad beans.  That will be delicious in about 3 weeks time.

Finally for today, while checking round the plot as I do, I noticed that the new weed suppressant mat I had laid where the sweetcorn will go, was not looking as lovely and shiny as before.  Closer inspection showed that the shower of rain the day before yesterday brought vast quantities of colza pollen with it, which is all over the matting.  It is also all over my car, and probably all over me too when I am outdoors.  Hay fever season is here again!  Good thing my GP has agreed to prescribe the antihistamines required as I can't pop into Boots this year!

It remains to be seen whether I will have a chance to update you tomorrow - I'll try, but I'm not promising!

 

Lockdown III, Day 18 - something a bit different

It's getting warmer and sunnier here, and because we had a bit of a weird day planned, John was able to come up to la Flèche with me for the market.  He hadn't believed my tales of long queues for pretty well everything, so I was pleased he got to see it for himself!  Despite both cheese waggons being in, the queue for our preferred purveyor of fine cheeses - Jean-Marc Charland - was huge!  Two ladies of a certain age behind me were plotting how to get people to leave the queue for a while, but eventually settled into gossiping about the local health centre.  As I stood in the queue, having done all my other shopping apart from charcuterie (delegated to John for today), a band turned up, playing a variety of instruments, calling out rather than singing, and with a group of followers bouncing along in their wake - it was rather fun and certainly made queueing more interesting!

A chunk of the afternoon was spent waiting for the arrival of the septic tank (fosse) emptying man and his big lorry/vacuum cleaner for smelly stuff.  While it felt like longer, it was only an hour (for a nebulous "in the afternoon" appointment), and then he was there.  So I proudly showed him the cover of what I had been assured was the fosse lid, and was told that no, that was the filtre bed cover, and was even shown that to prove it.  I was then given a lecture on how to find the missing fosse, which involves metal poles with a sharp end and stabbing the ground.  When it has been located and uncovered, only then will he come back and remove the contents - seems reasonable I guess!! 

What was slightly surprising was that the fosse inspector had not spotted that the trap he was shown was not actually for the fosse - that strikes me as a cop out but there we go.  

Anyway, the venue was very scenic and it was a lovely sunny day, so here are two views that I wouldn't normally share, as they are not near us.

Lockdown III, Day 15 - preparing for summer

Sunday morning means hard work at The Shack, but only for a limited time with powered tools, the rest of it is sweat of our brows.  Yesterday I made a start on planting the potatoes that should keep us fed next autumn and winter, and today I carried on.  I thought working in the morning might be a bit easier than in the afternoon, like I did yesterday, as it wouldn't be quite so warm.  How wrong can you be?  As that bit of the garden is relatively exposed to the east/south east, I was in full sun as I picked over the soil for wood, rocks and bundles of roots.  I then retrieved a piece of weed suppressant mat with ready cut potato holes from another part of the garden, laid and stapled it, and planted another 16 seed potatoes in the holes.  Now it is nature's turn to work her magic.  There is still another chunk of plot to pick over and cover, and another 28 seed potatoes to be planted, but not for a few days, as I have clients who need me and the Azay One to visit on Friday.

While I was cleaning and picking over the potato bed, John was out with the strimmer style brushcutter, trying to clear paths round the ponds at the bottom of the orchard and the wildflower meadow.  While deer, badgers, cats and pheasants can get round there, up until today, we couldn't.  It is still a work in progress, and we look forward to the day when we break through to have a circular walk around pond 2 and actually find pond 3, but it was rather wonderful to walk around the other side of pond 2, as if I too were a wild deer.

I got back to the garden to find the most awful violation of 'elf and safety violation going on, but in a good cause.  How many unsafe working practices can be seen here?

Having said that, it was totally worth it.  One day we will have one of those picnic benches here, so we can sit with sandwiches and cats and admire this wonderful view of rolling Anjou countryside.  Today we stood and admired and watched the tanker from the dairy drive through the view to pick up milk from the farm, and thought that life is good.

Finally, to note that we are getting into wild orchid season, with the first, an overblown early purple style, coming out in the middle of the wildflower meadow.  It will be two or three weeks before the bee orchids send up their flower spikes here I think and then another couple of weeks before the lizard orchids do the same.  Nice to see the first one though.

A demain!

 

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!