Rural Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Hints of Autumn - finally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week!

 

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!

 

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!

 

 

 

Kitchen garden progress

Summer arrived with a bit of a rush, with temperatures building significantly during the last week and it also got heavier and more humid as the days went by.  Friday was agonising, as it was so sticky and hot, and while the clouds gathered, there was no rain during daylight hours.  This wasn't the case at Chinon where they had 40mm in an hour and one of the popular pubs got flooded!  All we had was this until late in the evening, when it finally started to rain - not vicious downpours but nice steady soaking rain - 10mm in all chez nous.  We could have done with more, but it did help to top up the water barrels.

Of course, when it is hot, and you get rain, a lot of it tends to evaporate again, making the air even stickier than before so Saturday was a write-off - given over to sitting flopped and moist, complaining that my phone screen wouldn't work with wet fingers.  We fed the Cats in the Country, but even walking around the plot to admire what a bit of rain does was nearly too much for us.  It did help the ancestral ponds a bit and the carp seemed somewhat happier, but it wasn't a long term solution for them.

Today there was a cooler breeze from the north west and it was possible to work in the plot, picking things, pulling things up (so much easier when the soil isn't doing an impression of first fired clay), planting things and thinning seedlings.  We got off to a very slow start really on vegetable gardening this year, not getting any potatoes in before Easter, not setting off any seeds until May, and not really having a plan.  To some extent we have caught up although courgettes will be late, and butternut squashes even later.

This bed has the overwintered broad beans in it - those sown at the end of November are nearly done and I have cleared a third of them.  Those sown at the end of December are just coming right.  There are also red onions, black mangetouts, shallots and white onions, as well as the courgettes I planted today, four aubergines and three chillies I bought at a car boot sale in early May and six tomatoes rescued from Aldi.  The soil is pretty heavy clay so hard work.

The next bed up the hill is mainly given over to potatoes this year - second earlies.  But to the right there is winter wheat we sowed in the autumn when we were worried about the price of chicken feed, while to the left and right by the potatoes is a line of carrots (mixed colour heritage) and parsnips.  In a separate bed to the left of them are this year's attempt at sweetcorn.  As last year was an abject failure, we aren't holding our breathe, but 40 out of the 52 stations sown are up and I will fill in the gaps, or attempt to, by transplanting the extras as I sow two seeds per station.  It may work, it may not, but 40 sweetcorn should be enough for us!

The next bed is the one that is highest up the hill, with quite light, shallow soil, and is the one we have used the least.  It is still a bit of a work in progress.  On the left, it is given over to butternut squashes, while on the right, we have the bean pen, where we are starting to sow borlotti beans - there are 29 up so far on the far right and John sowed a load more today on the left.

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I'm rather proud of the butternut squash plants which I grew from saved seed that had been sitting around in not the best conditions for a couple of years or so.  The root balls had nicely filled the pots without going totally mad.

A new experiment this year is growing a christophine or cheyotte - a tropical plant with nice fruits that make a good gratin and the plant has a climbing habit, hence the posts and wires.  The leaves look worryingly similar to bryony, but the fruits are distinctly different - a small green squash, somewhat pear shaped but a bit flatter and with a bobbly skin.  No idea if it will work here in the Loire Valley, although the fruit this grew from came from a polytunnel up the road in the Sarthe.

Finally, for those that made it this far and don't really have an interest in growing vegetables, here is a photo of a handsome fellow who walked past the trail camera this week!

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....

 

Proper winter weather

It's January in the Northern Hemisphere, and despite 2022 being the warmest year on record, we are currently enjoying proper winter weather.  Okay so we don't have snow, but actually I don't mind missing out on the white stuff as I have twice weekly physiotherapy sessions at the moment and getting to those would be so much more complicated if there was white stuff on the ground.  But proper frosty weather and for quite a few days - it's good for the soil, the trees, makes parsnips sweeter and (I gather) Brussel sprouts more flavoursome - well, it has to be good.  The downside is that low winter sun on a frosty day makes for too much contrast on photos to be really good - for example:

On the other hand, honing in on fine detail can be a bit easier, with all that contrast:

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That is very nice carved detail over those windows!

The gardens can't really be worked at the moment, although when there is a bit of thaw, it's quite good for getting persistent weeds out.  It is traditional to slaver over seed catalogues at this time of year, but I have a big box with loads of free seed packets, so no need to buy new, just try to work out somewhere with enough warmth and light to get the seeds growing once March is here - anything sown direct is too vulnerable to chickens, cat bottoms, slugs, snails, being trodden on, being bullied by weeds, birds, drought, frost, flood, and heavy clay soil.  Weeds do remarkably well.  We had 5 seeds of giant parsnip we were given before Brexit made such things impossible.  We sowed them late (they don't like being stored) so were lucky two germinated and grew, and benefitted from the water the chickens didn't want in the drought conditions.  Finally this morning, John dug one up for our dinner - yummy!

The biggest we have grown in France (our biggest in the UK weighed over 2 pounds, and was 18 inches long of usable parsnip, but that really was a mutant!).

Last weekend I moved the trail camera as while all I had captured was a hunter's bottom, there was clear evidence that around the ponds, something was lurking!

In addition, the badger trail (which is visible on Google Earth surprisingly), is looking even more obvious than usual.

But at this time of year, the larger animals head for wooded areas, although the deer will likely be back in March or so I think.  While there is a lot of bird activity, unless we have the camera trained on a food station, it is very haphazard and difficult to catch, and frankly I have more than enough video footage of blackbirds and thrushes turning over leaves.  So it is the smaller, shyer, and less flashy animals I am looking for - foxes, badgers, ducks, the pine martin, mice, rats, perhaps even a coypu (although I really hope not).  Well, it paid off this week after the move - a badger bottom and a fox face!  Hopefully they will get a bit more used to the camera and I'll get more.

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I also need to get going on my campaign of attracting tits, particularly blue and great tits, as they are very good at eating pine processionary caterpillars and the pine trees have a few too many nests in for my liking.  The needles shed by the caterpillars are extremely irritating, and the rashes and swelling they cause last a good couple of weeks with no real remedy other than wrapping the affected part in wet towels so you can't scratch.  They can be deadly to animals, and have until recently no natural predators as they are a non-native invasive species.  But the birds are doing their thing, so feeders and nest boxes need to be set up in the next few weeks.  The feeders were very successful last year.

So, another frosty week in prospect for us, stay warm!

 

New year, new promise?

Last blog was all about looking back, today is more about looking forward as the days start to lengthen and we stop thinking about how to celebrate midwinter and concentrate more on what the new year has to offer.

On the last day of the old year, it was unseasonably warm.  Now it is always hard for a gardener to hold back on sowing things and planting things, because that is what it is all about, making things grow.  That challenge is even harder when it is mild and you see buds developing and catkins shedding pollen everywhere (and so the start of the new season allergies).  However I felt justified in doing a bit of sowing, as I hadn't got around to the second patch of broad beans, and I like to do autumn sowing to avoid the worst ravages of blackfly.  So I uncovered a nicely clean bed, raked it over to remove any foolhardy weeds and a bit more of the underlying builders' rubble, made about 88 dents and sowed broad bean Aquadulce Claudia.  I then raked soil back over and added a nice long piece of netting to avoid the worst ravages of cat bottom.  I guess it will be another 3 weeks or so before the shoots show.

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Another major winter occupation is firewood - now is a good time to fell as the trees are quiet, not too much sap around or leaves to encumber the fall, we aren't worried about missing mushrooms and we aren't being attacked by mosquitos.  We've brought down two trees so far this winter and want to bring down another couple to ensure continuity.  We had clearly grown soft this summer as moving the dead/dry pieces up to the top of the One Acre Wood is proving harder work than in previous years and neither of us have really felt that our elbows are in a suitable condition for doing a lot of splitting with an axe, however satisfying it can be.  We borrowed a log splitter which made short work of the existing stash of big logs, which are now ready for use.

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We are still eating the fruits of last year's gardening, and the Brussel Sprouts seem to be nearly ready for John to crunch his way through.  I won't touch them.  Next weekend we will have our first red cabbage, but I fear that the cauliflower plants, that grew so large and lush, won't have the reserves to make good curds in February/March.  I mentioned that it was unseasonably warm?  Today I found them covered once again by caterpillars!

It is good at this time of year to look around and appreciate what we take for granted.  Two examples of this.  Firstly I was in a neighbouring village for a work appointment, and rather than park at the client's house, I parked by the church.  Once the work was done, as I put my stuff back in the car, and changed sweatshirt to one that the cats could and would dribble on, I took a moment to marvel at the magnificent St Médard church in Cheviré le Rouge.  It's not the largest village by any means, but perhaps 800 or 900 years ago it was way more important, and deserved this large and impressive church.

Looking down, once at the Orchard and having a bit of a walk, I marvelled at the intricate patterns of cyclamen leaves and was perhaps a bit concerned at the number and size of orchid rosettes under the big walnut tree.  The cyclamen flowers in the autumn were magnificent.  The orchids are most likely to be lizard orchids - impressive, particularly when there are a lot of them, but not pretty.

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I'm travelling next week, so there may be photos from other places next Sunday!

 

Review of 2022

It has been fun reviewing all the blogs of 2022 to see what were the highlights and what were the determining features of the year.  Weather, local events and wildlife were the standouts for me, as I will explain.

The weather had a major impact on the year, from a sharp late frost affecting certain crops, winds taking down trees, sand storms in the African desert affecting cloud colour to the searingly hot and dry summer, which facilitated the massive forest fire and reduced crop sizes for those things that survived the frost.  Once the rains did start finally, at least we had mushrooms for the end of the year - here are some photographic reminders of all that.

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After two years of Covid restrictions, 2022 had many of the usual events back, including the local trout fishing day, the delayed 600th anniversary of the Battle of Vieil Baugé, a full on Comice, car boot sales and my favourite, the Societé de la Paix Mechoui.

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But perhaps most excitingly, the trail camera lived up to its promise and showed us a wealth of wildlife, plus being more alert to that meant spotting others with a phone camera too, so the real stars of 2022 were the animals!

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Hopefully the animals will all put in appearances during 2023!

Happy New Year!

 

Frosty weather

Last week I welcomed winter and talked of purple risotto and the need for slow cooked and warming food.  The week continued cold, but no frosts until Thursday night, when it was a bit closer to zero, while Saturday morning was a nastily brisk -5.7ºC at 8am - currently the coldest time of the day.  With that harsh frost does come the recompense of sunshine, but also the inconvenience of at least two pairs of socks, wearing gloves when going shopping, not being able to sit for too long without getting cold feet and the chickens' water fountain freezing solid.

Good frost also brings beautiful ice crystals and an edging of white, and is finally knocking out those plants that really shouldn't be growing on still, such as chillies, cannas and rhubarb.  Here is a montage of frosted foliage.

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As predicted, the visit from the hunting dogs last week means I've not spotted boar on the trail camera over the past week, and there isn't much new damage either, so they may have moved on through.  There wasn't really enough for them to eat here anyway, as a marauding extended family group of 15 pigs can eat an awful lot, so it was probably time they moved on elsewhere.  I have seen deer and a hare and a badger on the camera though, so it isn't the totally clean sweep we had earlier this year.

As I said, the advantage of this type of weather are lovely views.  The frost also meant that a number of trees that had been hanging on to their leaves with a steely determination, finally dropped them, very quickly too, on Saturday.  I watched the apples and the quince basically ditch everything in a quarter of an hour - it was strange to watch and made for an eerie sound.  But what is lovely at this time of year, is to see a new view or vista, a new building (actually more like a very old building, but new to us), or an old familiar but in a new way or after a few years.  Our favourite view from the Garden is over to the Chapel at Montplacé, which has been hidden by leaves for many months, but has now been revealed again.

I'm keeping this short this week - I've not had the heater on in my office since Thursday evening, and with it going solidly since this morning, the temperature has crawled up to 16ºC, which is not totally comfortable for sitting in, certainly not around the feet!  Keep warm and keep safe if you have snow!