Rural Life

Harvests and cameras

After weeks of nurturing, watering, weeding and worrying, the first serious harvests are starting in the potager.  We've been digging up a couple of potatoes from the first block of 18, for a few weeks now - well this is the seventh weekend to be precise.  The potatoes are second earlies and were planted in three blocks over a period of about 4 weeks, and the first block are very ready to be harvested.  By taking just a couple of plants a week, we have enough and more for us to eat over the week and don't have to worry about storage and drying off.  The next two blocks will need that level of attention, but that is a way down the line, post-Comice.

Today's basket of goodies includes potatoes, carrots, a few onions that I missed yesterday when lifting the main block of red onions, a couple of courgettes that I didn't cut yesterday and a couple of little gem lettuce that looked like they were thinking about bolting.

We've also had aubergines - I think 5 so far, or it may be 7, and half a dozen courgettes already and of course there are the red onions to look forward to.

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This is only the start too - there are as many set borlotti beans as we had all season last year, and the bean vines are covered with more flowers.  The butternuts haven't yet got into their stride, but there are quite a few female flowers developing.  The tomatoes have some good looking trusses on them - fingers crossed that they ripen and don't get struck by blight.  And there is the cristophine vine, which gets bigger as you watch it and now has a vast structure set up for it to rampage over.  Perhaps one day there will be flowers and fruits too - in the meantime it provides shelter for a couple of tomatoes that I rejected for the main plot as they were runt plants, so have gone totally mad as companion plants for the cristophine.

Another bit of companion planting that we did as an experiment also seems to be working.  Parsnips are very slow to get going, so "they" recommend inter-sowing with something that is quicker off the mark and doesn't stay in the ground as long.  I put the row of parsnips at the edge of the potato bed, so one bit of companion planting I guess.  I sowed parsnips every 4 to 6 inches and in between sowed carrots.  As you have seen, the carrots are doing fine.  Many of the parsnips are also doing very well too and their leaves can be seen over the potatoes and swamping the carrots in places!  They've got months more growing time to go too.

So to the saga of the trail camera.  It developed a fault.  Basically the switch inside the protective shell got disconnected, and despite having had it less than two years, it was out of warranty (I know EU warranties are 2 years - I did point that out to the supplier, but I know when I am on a hiding to nothing).  It had been attacked a few times by boar, a pine martin, a few garden birds and a few hornets, so it had a hard life!  Anyway, I couldn't cope without one, so blagged a discount code off the supplier, who were very good and allowed me to apply that discount to something that was already discounted, and also made sure it was sent through express, so the new one arrived on Wednesday and was installed on Thursday - once I had read the instructions with the help of a magnifying glass!!  We rigged it up in a tree close to where the last one died to see what was happening and test it out.  Boar are what is happening - they must be on their second litter of the year, and they do just love the shallow ponds for wallowing in.  The fish aren't so keen, but as there is little water, despite the rain, the fish are dying off, so I guess the boar can have their fun.

We'll see what more porcine fun appears over the next week.

In the meantime, the Comice approaches at a terrifying speed and I need to concentrate on painting dancers and doing lettering (some of it very big) so that people have an idea what is going on.  I've done the logos on the two arches (photo is of the smaller one), now for the lettering....

Have a good week!

 

Being a good peasant

Apologies for not posting yesterday - I was indeed being a good peasant, and had just got my hands on 4 kilos of very ripe yellow plums - if I didn't jam them yesterday, they would have gone in the new burping barrel, and that would have been a waste.  I had also turned down a tray of apricots in favour of free plums for jam making, so had to get cracking.  But taking the stones out and chopping up 4 kilos of plums takes time, then you have to gently cook them, before adding the sugar and pushing to setting temperature.  Still, we started the half jar today at breakfast, and it was jolly yum, so definitely worth it and you will have to believe me!

And once that was done, I thought I was on a roll, so I spent an hour peeling the tiny shallots for pickling (no photo), at which point it was time to do all the bits for crab and comté soufflé for dinner.

At the start of the week, I was able to enjoy this wonderful vista over a vast field of sunflowers - in general they are nearly over but I was able to catch this field near its best.

Close to, some of the flower heads were huge, and while still flowering at the centre. birds had already started to peck away at the ripening seeds.  I picked out a few myself for sowing next year (just 8) and they were slightly sticky to the touch but fat and well filled.

Midweek I was able to spend a bit of time working in the potager and was able, after doing a bit of watering, to thin out the carrots a bit, particularly those that were quite close to the nicely developing parsnips.  I sowed a sort of heritage variety of multicoloured carrots - apparently all shades between white and black, via yellow, orange and red.  So far those I have thinned have been firmly in the white to orange spectrum, which is a shame as black carrots are so dramatic!

The woodstore by the potager is very useful for drying off crops once lifted, such as shallots, onions and potatoes, before they go to storage or are used.  It has the standard tin roof, ventilated wooden walls and a sandy floor.  This seems to be an ideal home for antlion larvae.  I've not dug down to see what they look like, but we have a lot of depressions which are very characteristic and very intriguing.  If I were 50 years younger, I would probably dig one up, now I am more live and let live.

The week has also been about Comice preparations.  I spent Thursday afternoon in a disused piggery with a laptop, projector and a load of paints, trying to trace the logo onto part of a giant panel.  It all went well until the scaffolding holding the projector shifted just a smidge!!

Saturday was Bunting Day - I helped on the morning shift, stringing up bunting down the main drag of the village to get people in the mood for fun.  It's amazing how lots of small triangles of fabric on a piece of bailing twine can make everything seem so much more festive!  In the afternoon our house got bunting on its façade too, which I can see a small bit of when in the back garden - it's the small things that can give so much pleasure!

Next week I'll try to be more timely, but there is a lot more Comice preparation to do!

 

All quiet here in our bit of rural France

Well, I say all quiet, but the countryside is rarely quiet.  There are frogs that make the most awful noises, sometimes just for the fun of it.  There are birds, so many birds, so many different songs, from the eerie cry of a buzzard having fun on the thermals, to the quiet but intense song of a robin - it sounds so melodic and sweet, but I think in the main they are saying "b*gger off, we want to explore where you are for a feed".  Annoyingly, after the quiet of lockdowns, there are planes, all sizes and at all different heights, from the air force boys who went over at about 200 feet last weekend, through the light aircraft from the local aerodrome, to the jets up high taking people to and from Scandinavia and Portugal. 

But this week it has been the Moisson - the grain harvest, with the combines out in the fields of wheat and barley, followed by tractors and massive trailers to take the grains, then more tractors with bailers to turn the straw into vast wheels, and finally lifts and more tractors with the big trailers to take those round bales away into storage.  It doesn't stop for weekends or lack of light - once conditions are right, the competition and demand for the machines is such that they are on the move 24/7, and bad luck if you are near where they are working overnight!!

Last weekend was fiercely hot and humid too - with temperatures up over 30ºC by lunchtime and not below again until after 6pm.  Two days of it was enough to undo the good that the rain the week before had done to the ponds, and sadly at least one of my fish has expired (no photo required).  It also blasted the ripe broad beans from the second sowing, and as it was too hot to pick them, they too got fried.  We rescued some beans and have sown them in some land that needs a bit of green manure, but whether that will work remains to be seen.  It was a disappointment.  The photo shows the fried out pods along with three carrots from the perpetual rounds of thinning them out, with one almost worth eating!

On a more positive note, and surprisingly with the cooler weather, I spotted a couple of my favourite butterflies yesterday - two swallowtails were enjoying a quick snack on the buddleia.  They are often found on lavender round here, but I've not seen them enjoying the buddleia before.  Of course it was pretty impossible to get close to them so these two photos are the best I could manage.

There was also some fruit!  Yesterday while doing the rounds, I spotted that the mirabelles were ripe, so went back for a bowl and picked all that I could, leaving those with a bit of damage or rot for the local critters, but for once getting some for us.  Enough for a 4 portion mirabelle crumble - wowzers!

We have not been responsible for any looting or destruction, but we have found evidence that it has been going on.  This year's thrush anvil is surrounded by empty and broken shells and it is hard to spot the stone that is being used.  I do love this as a sight, as I am very fond of the thrushes, and they do a good job.  Apart from a couple of well munched tomato plants, so far we haven't had any major snail damage this year to small plants, and this is why!

I like black flowers - I know they aren't natural in this part of the world, but i really enjoy them, even if they aren't really jet black.  This year I succumbed to temptation and bought an exotic petunia (just the one) called Black Glitter - the glitter effect comes from tiny white flecks on the flowers - you can't see that from a distance, but you can admire how happy it is in its beer barrel.  Another that is happy in its beer barrel is my black day lily - this really is stretching the definition but it is how it was sold to me!

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Not quite the grapes of wrath, but certainly very happy grapes and magnificent bunches on our vine this year.  Any marks are due to them being brushed past by a car as we drive into the courtyard.  The vine is loaded with them, so I am looking forward to making large quantities of grape jelly - no point making your own wine around here when you can buy excellent professionally-made wine en vrac (not bottled) for 2,80€ a litre!  Also these aren't wine grapes, but table grapes, although with pips so not polite eating grapes.  The chickens love them too.

On a serious note, the riots in the urban centres are frightening and disappointing.  Looting a carton of milk from your local convenience store that won't open for a while now as the owner tries to repair the damage, and your family have to find the money to travel to another, more distant shop is insane.  Similarly trashing and burning down the youth centre where you happily spend time in the winter and during the long holidays makes no sense.  It has nothing to do with the death of a young man, driving a Polish registered car in a bus lane without insurance or a valid drivers licence, and sadly paying for such minor delinquency with his life.  A minority of people are destroying holidays, livelihoods, neighbourhoods, reputation and ensuring that festivities people have been looking forward to for ages are cancelled.  I hope it stops soon.

Ideally by next weekend, if not sooner!  Have a good week!

 

Respect for farmers, and other gardening moments

Last autumn, with rising prices, and war in the East (still going on of course), we looked at ways to protect ourselves from some of the worst possibilities and knowing how much the chickens eat, we thought growing our own might be a good idea.  We had a strip of not exactly the best vegetable plot that didn't have anything in it, and sacrificed half a yoghurt pot of "blé" or chicken grain to the experiment.  Germination was OK, not brilliant, but then the autumn was quite dry really and it is quite possible that local critters helped themselves to some of the seed.  As it wasn't sown in rows, and was also pretty densely distributed, it was nearly impossible to weed, and I defy you to distinguish between wheat, barley, oats and grass.  So we let it do what it wanted, didn't water it, didn't weed it, but did talk to it.

Today I sweltered in the hot morning sun to harvest the grain.  It was hard work as it needed secateurs and as I cut each handful, I then had to triage out the weeds, the grass, the false oats and the heads of wheat and barley that had no seeds in, had been eaten or had gone a bit mouldy.  The resulting harvest is shown here:

Of course, 90% of it is straw - useful for chicken bedding except ours sleep on a broom handle slung across the run.  Then another 5% of it will be chaff, assuming I can get it off somehow - winnowing is fine in principle but, well, you need to have it all broken down a bit first!  So 5% of it will be grains that the chickens may or may not eat, depending on how bolshie they feel - perhaps 3 yoghurt pots or 2 days?  Was it a worthwhile experiment?  I'm not so sure - but lots of learning obviously.

A farmer will sow into drills, having prepared the land rather better.  She will have proper seed rather than repurposed chicken feed, but it will be on the land for 7 or 8 months.  And it can't be any old rough bit of land, or the plants will not grow strong and true.  Timing the harvest is a matter of keen judgement - too early and it will not be ripe, too late and critters will have taken a good portion, and add the weather into the mix, particularly unpredictable storms - not to mention when you can get your hands on the combine harvester and drivers to actually do the harvesting (they are mostly owned by co-operatives or contractors).  Growing grain isn't as easy as it looks!

Carrots can also be a bit tricky but ours are looking OK in between the parsnips.  Not too many parsnips - I think there are about 14 in the mix, but that might well be enough if they do well.  The carrots are a mix of colours, although knowing my luck, it will be the orange ones that make it!

 
 In an excess of hope over reality, I buy cheap bulbs from Aldi, and sometimes I remember to plant them in good time too.  This year I got a packet of fancy gladioli, and at least three of them have come up true and are flowering!

Something that we don't plant, but we don't weed out either is stonecrop and it just lurks around being dull.  This year it has decided to flower and is looking very pretty on the steps to nowhere, guarded by Winnie the Gargoyle, who is also supposed to stop intruders.

Limited action from the trail camera this week as the WiFi watch had run out of juice today, but it is always nice to see the hare passing through.  When passing in daylight, you get some decent action shots too!

Have a good week!

 

Something of a passive week - and the earth moved

Modern cars are marvellous - when they work.  I love my Peugeot 2008, but he has an awful lot of bells and whistles, and he is very communicative.  His latest communication was that the level of additive in one of his filters was dangerously low and I needed to do something about it.  Of course, with bells and whistles, you have to take the car to a garage to make any sense of it, and I have a quote for putting said additive into the required spot, but from 10 days ago, when the car started to tell me this, the garage couldn't actually put said additive in until sometime next week.  I was sent away with my quote and dire warnings about keeping my kilometres to a minimum as a problem would be even more expensive to fix (I believe them as a replacement wing mirror (new) was 650€ - I went previously owned).  Anyway, that meant that I got to play on public transport for my trip to the big city (Angers) this week for my rendez-vous with my rheumatologist. 

It was actually quite fun and relaxing letting the bus take the strain.  At a higher level, I could see over hedges and across fields that I can't as a car passenger, and shouldn't as a car driver.  The journey took about the same time as it would if I had driven myself, although the wait at the bus stop for it to arrive added on time.  it was less stressful as it wasn't me driving and of course I didn't have to find the entrance to the car park I use that seems to move every time I visit the city.  Overall a positive experience, and as I had to wait for the return bus, I could sit in a café and enjoy a pot of tea,  watching the world go by.

The big event in our village this year will be the 148th Comice - a sort of village fete/agricultural show/fertility festival/excuse for fun and games all rolled into one.  Most years I do a blog about floats and animals and the like, if you look back through August posts.  Since November last year, I have been part of the Decorating work party.  We have brainstormed ideas, then spent happy Thursday evenings making bunting, lots of bunting, panels with music, panels with silhouettes of dancers, templates for painting silhouettes of dancers on covered straw bales, bunting (did I mention the bunting), and table decorations for the sit down meals.  On Friday there was an open meeting to engage even more volunteers - an event like this needs about 240 volunteers in the run up and over the weekend of the event, and for taking stuff down too.  That is in addition to the municipal staff who have to do the 'at height' bits, and the farmers who provide the fields, the straw bales and other more arcane services.  These two photos are unashamedly nicked from the Comice Facebook page, while you can find more on the website.

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Along with most of western France, we have been on orange alert today for storms - it's been hot, consistently hot, for about 3 weeks now.  Not the seriously awful 35 - 42ºC we were going through this time last year, but consistently 28 - 31ºC in the shade.  Last week there was a bit of rain, which drove up the humidity to seriously unpleasant levels, bringing on a heat related malaise that I never want to experience again.  This morning was a bit cooler, but this afternoon the promised storms hit.  We reckon about 12mm rain here at home (probably more at The Shack as it is a bit further north and on the track of the storms), and for a while, a more comfortable temperature, but it will take a while to cool down the inside of the house.

And then of course on Friday, there was the earthquake - no pictures of that!  But at 18:38 on Friday afternoon/evening, as I was sitting perspiring on the sofa with a cat at my side, there was a bit of noise, and the sofa seemed to wobble.  I thought that there had been a particularly overloaded tractor and trailer going past, or wondered if the structural integrity of the sofa was about to fail.  Social media soon put me right.  We are so pleased we got the chimney fixed last year, or that would have come down I think.  Anyway, no damage hereabouts, although people are blaming poor internet and dodgy electricity on it.

The trail camera has been rotated about 90º to the west, as something was setting it off in the early morning, but with the rising sun falling straight on the camera, I had no idea what it might be.  I think this is the culprit and it is not one of ours!

The stag is out and about quite a bit, always handsome to see, and doesn't he know it!!

While the boar have been busy doing what boar do, at least twice a year, and then brought the latest batch to visit.  I have got a nice little video, but with the storm bouncing around making internet connections a bit hit and miss, really couldn't be bothered to fight the fight to get it up.  Perhaps for next week.  But here is a cute, stripy person.

And of course, not just one....  Have a good week!

 

 

 

Summer has arrived.

There is a massive and stable high over the British Isles and a depression in the Mediterranean, and in between, here in northern France, we are enjoying summer conditions, and have been doing so for two weeks now.  It's good for the hay crop but not so good for germinating fodder beet I gather.  It is actually marvellous at the moment for getting seeds to come up.  Last weekend the big excitement was the hourly popping up of new butternut squashes and courgettes, while this weekend the excitement is over jalapeño chillies.  Over at the Plot, heritage carrots came up in a week and parsnips are showing their first seeds leaves after two weeks, while nearly half of the sweetcorn sown last week is now up.  All this makes me feel very good.  In addition, the roses are fabulous - here is a magnificent one called Orange King, bought as a memorial to a much loved ginger cat.  Last year it had perhaps 3 rather dingy flowers, this year it is amazing!

The wildflower meadow is now definitely past its best, with the oxeye daisies nearly over, the linseed gone to seed, the pink clovers done, the pretty orchids mostly faded and the lizard orchids taking over in their rather dull fashion.  In a couple of weeks, we will need to think about mowing the meadow to keep undesirables at bay (old man's beard, bramble, small cherry trees), spread the seed from this lot of flowers and allow a better growing environment for the late summer and autumn flowers including field scabious.  At the moment, the knapweed is still pretty spectacular where it is to be found, and some late bee orchids provide a bit of interest in the shade.

The trail camera has had its batteries boosted and I have spent some time starting to go through the downloaded files - but it takes an age to work through the video files to decide what is worth keeping or not, and I have to be in the right mood.  There was no doubting that this rather nice clip of Woody doing his thing in the spring was worth keeping!

There was a pretty definitive viewing of the coypu too - he has a look to my mind of a stuffy colonial colonel wandering around chuntering to himself, but perhaps I am influenced by the old Animal Magic series and thinking what sort of voice Johnny Morris would have put to this fellow.  

It is always a joy to see the hare, and with the long evenings and the current placement of the camera, you do get some rather sweet close up videos such as this one.  That nose!  Those ears!

I think this is also a hare, but the eyes are a bit different.

Other old friends (fiends?) are back in the zone too - our chums the boar are back and making a mess in one of the ponds.  The pond with the fish, so I would prefer it if they didn't make too much of a mess, those poor fish have enough problems to cope with at the moment!

Again, rather nice photos as the light was good when they were passing through at 8:45pm one evening.  I'm glad I wasn't there to see them, but then I guess they wouldn't have come through if they thought I was there!

Anyway, it is time to enjoy a summer afternoon in the garden under the abri, as we spent time getting the cover out, mended and installed for the summer yesterday.  Sing along to the Kinks - Lazing on a sunny afternoon, in the summertime!

Until next week....

 

Something weird happened during the week

The first I knew about it was when I was walking down through the Orchard, admiring some newly appeared bee orchids.

I thought the long grass looked a bit odd and assumed that either young badgers had come out of the set and had been dancing around, or that the local boar had been through on their way to dig up a neighbouring field.  But then I found other evidence that had nothing to do with pigs or boar or badgers.

So I carried on down to the ponds, and there found a lot of the shrubbery had been pushed around and broken and someone had been wading in my pond!

I doubt the fish were happy when it happened, and they aren't happy now, as there is so little water available for them.  I am hoping to get someone in, to get them out, and transfer them to a deeper pond.  I will be sorry to see them go of course, but I don't think they will survive the summer in our pond.

Yes, some neighbouring heifers got bored, broke through the single strand of electric fence, followed the path the hunters take, and gambolled in the Orchard before being taken away again (the wire has been reconnected it appears).  As far as I can tell, there is no film or photo of this episode on the trail camera, as it was pointing in slightly the wrong direction, but I will be checking when I download all the files, as it is home to have its batteries recharged.

In the meantime, here are two different hares passing through.

Have a good week!

 

Wildlife at home and a look back at The Broads visit

The trail camera moved a while back but the grass around it got so long, we had problems with anything other than camouflage photos of what went through.  I pulled up some bits and bobs but then John strimmed through and now we can see rather better who or what is around.  Moths!  Which don't photograph well.  The deer are back but again not a good picture.  No sign of that wretched coypu again - perhaps it has wandered off?  The hare is around though, and always so beautiful to see!

Next week I will write about orchids - they are slowly coming out.  Of course I may forget...  Yesterday and today have been about getting work done to ensure food later in the summer and autumn.  I saw some small and not dead yet tomato plants in a local supermarket, so succumbed, although I know they will cause me heartache, not least if we have a moist and humid summer.  Anyway, I had the space and we have the 20 litre plastic cloches (well former heating fuel canisters), so yesterday I cleaned up the space a bit and planted the tomatoes next to the chillies and aubergines I bought at the vide grenier last week.  If they do well, there is most of a ratatouille there, I just need to set off the courgette plants.

So now for the travelogue - The Broads are very beautiful but in a rather bleak way.  But as soon as you get up on to a bit of higher land (say 40 feet above sea level), you are into standard East Anglian rolling farmland.  This on the World War II discovery circular path that goes out from Acle and I was standing by a disused and overgrown pill box.

But out in the middle of the Broads, like here down on Halvergate Marshes, you get the feel of the immensity of the sky and the landscape.  This is looking towards Mutton's Mill, but if I looked 90º to the West, there was a clump of another 3 or 4 mills.  There are spots where you can see up to 8 or 9, but some are now surrounded by trees or have fallen down.  Mutton's Mill will be having the scaffolding taken down once the driveway dries out, then the refurbished sails will be put back on and it will be magnificent.  By September all work should be completed.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust's Carlton Marshes reserve is being extended along the River Waveney, and there are accessible hides and landing stages, lots of nesting and migrating birds and some nice cattle keeping the scrub down.  The Trust has been able to rebuild the visitor facilities to create a magnificent café area, for use by visitors and by local community groups (there was a Knit and Natter group there when I visited).  The floor to ceiling window over the Marshes gives a mesmerising view.

RSPB Strumpshaw is another rather splendid reserve and well appreciated by locals and twitchers who come vast distances to see the birds there.  At one end of the Reserve there is Strumpshaw Pump House - a engine house for pumping water, so a different generation to the windmills.  It has a rather impressive chimney that is a navigation point out on the marshes.  The pump house itself has an interesting architecture and has been renovated and a bat box put on the outside although with so much natural habitat close by, it isn't that well used.  A new, wildlife bench has been installed and is wonderfully tactile.

Whitlingham Country Park and Broad is close to Norwich and the most accessible part, and will have Changing Places toilets installed by September too.  As with all the Broads, it is man-made, but more recent than the others, dating back only to the last century.  It is home however to at least 78 confirmed different species including bittern and otters.  I met Egyptian geese there - pretty, but a non-native invasive species.

Well, that's it for this week.  Next week I will be back to purely French subjects.

 

Not staying on top of things

I set off on my glorious adventure to the UK something like two and a half weeks ago, and I have been home for a week and I am still chasing my tail trying to catch up on all fronts.  I've not downloaded the lovely photos of the Broads and my visit to the UK, I've not written up my notes from my visit, I've not caught up with all my clients in France, I've not planted all the potatoes yet, I've not got to grips with the garden or the window boxes or the fridge or planning meals or anything.  I feel totally inadequate! 

Yesterday we did do the village "vide grenier" or car boot sale, so actually getting anything sorted out for that was a last minute effort, and we didn't have as much stuff on display as perhaps we would have liked.  But we were there!

Actually it was probably rather a good thing that we didn't have too much stuff out on display, and certainly no books or clothes.  That was a deliberate choice as the weather the day before wasn't brilliant.  Even so we got rid of some big items, although we did feel a bit mugged by two wee munchkins who cut down our ticket price on a cauldron by 50%!  Still, when the rain came, it was heavy and quite long duration, so it was good we didn't have fabrics other than the table covering.

We hung on for another hour, but there were no paying punters, so we legged it early and were able to spend time drying everything we hadn't sold and putting it away carefully for next year.  

The trail camera has moved and been installed on a track used a lot by the local fauna.  The grass around it was very long, so there has been limited action, although a nice bunny did pop up one day.

Rather less appealing and also rather less welcome was a suspected sighting of a coypu.  As we are desperate to keep the water in the ponds to support the 5 rather large fish (plus the army of noisy frogs and the ducks), we don't really want coypu digging into the banks and potentially draining the pools into the ditches below.  They are also a non-native, invasive species that really has no place in France, and certainly not somewhere where there is very little water held in the wetland anyway.

A much more welcome visitor was this Red Admiral butterfly I found yesterday sunning himself after a shower.  My Dad used to make up stories for me about a Red Admiral and a Painted Lady, which I am sure had a subversive subtext.  It is a shame I can't remember any of them, and that he didn't write any down as far as I know.

We had a visitor of a different sort today at the Garden - easy enough for me to hear, as I was having mud smeared over me by a cat, but it wasn't until it was nearly overhead that John heard it over the noise of the rotavator and through his ear protectors.  The Air Force still use the local airport, even though little else does nowadays, and this looks like a pretty heavy cargo plane - possibly one used for refuelling others in flight?  I'm sure someone will tell me!

We also went for a walk around the One Acre Wood to admire the lily of the valley, see some wild medlar flowers, and be enchanted by the veil of green that has crept up on us.  It was rather sadder to see that a number of the large chestnuts have not survived some very difficult growing conditions.  First it was the new invasive wasp that targeted sweet chestnuts, and weakened them by growing its young in the leaf buds.  Then the plot next door was clear felled about three years ago, changing the light and drainage patterns.  Then last year's drought and fierce heat, and finally a dry February all seem to have contributed to a number of trees having no leaves at all this year.  While good for our heating needs, we have to hope that cutting down the dead trees will encourage new growth from the boles, as many are several hundred years old.

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I don't know if the last photo will come out when you read this - but I really can't bear trying to reload them all again!

Finally here is a purple orchid we spotted in a ditch near the wood - they seem a bit late this year, and I am observing the progress of the bee orchids as I think we have a problem!

Until next week!

 

 

That was the weird week that was

Last week's blog was published a bit earlier than normal, as we had been invited to a semi-private Easter Sunday gig.  Being British, we naturally arrived well too early, but did get a reasonably sensible parking space (not that I was driving) at what in daylight seemed to be a ruined and deserted farmstead.  But as night and the fairy lights took over, it turned into something that 15 to 25 year old me would have been utterly delighted by - a rock/indie rave complete with party barn and stage, oil drum fires and people who are not normally seen in daylight appearing from an eclectic mix of vehicles.  Being in rural France, the music started nearly an hour later than advertised, and the first act was Gertrude, a burlesque accordion artist, with a fine line in animal noises...  She performed for an hour.  Second up was the reason we were there - Bourbon, a Rory Gallagher tribute band, and while we aren't into Rory ourselves, we have a chum who is and leads the band.  But as we are no longer 25 years old, the fascination with semi-pro rural music faded, so we didn't make it through to the final act, Punkabilly band D-Track, which was a shame in some ways, as they play very jolly, infectious music. 

So that was Sunday.  Wednesday is always market day at la Flèche for me, but I don't expect to see trams passing the market.  I'm not sure where this one was heading to, but it certainly mucked up the traffic for a while in town!

I also did time this week finding hidden water cylinders and photographing their detail plates - two houses, two instances of the hot water cylinder being hidden and essentially blocked away for all identification and maintenance purposes!  How mad is that!  We are on our third hot water cylinder since buying our house, as with extremely hard water, they only seem to last about 10 years.

I'm not sharing photos of that sort of malarkey.

During the week, the fish in the lower pond seemed quite distressed - the water level is getting worrying in that pond.  Of course another reason for it seeming to be quite active, is that it is not the solitary specimen I thought it was - I counted at least four.  It was therefore something of a relief on Saturday that the level of water in the pond had risen and the fish were not to be seen.

Then yesterday was Vide Grenier at Echimiré day - very similar to a car boot, in that as a seller, you arrive very early and have to spend ages swatting people off, before you can get a display you are happy with.  For the organisers, they make their money on selling a variety of liquid and solid refreshments, so the early morning coffee was very welcome as was a glass of rosé wine and a punnet of chips at lunchtime.  For us, the aim is to reclaim space, so we were happy to see large items go, and only really dug our heels in on dropping prices when someone was pratting, around making out he couldn't understand my French.  As the lady on the next plot said to him, "she will start increasing the price if you carry on being rude - your wife understands very well!"  Anyway, we do another one in a few weeks and that is our lot for the year.  

Now we come to a question of time.  If I have time, I will prepare a couple of blogs to be published the next two Sundays, as I am away to the UK and won't have the technology to post anything.  Apologies if I don't get round to it however as all sorts of "stuff" seems to be cropping up this week.