Rural Life

It's starting to get seriously nice finally

The weather has mostly perked up nicely, but we did have a blip between Wednesday and Friday, first with storms and lots of rain (26mm over three days here, a bit more at The Shack as it was in the path of a big storm) and then a really nasty, cold, wet Friday, before picking up again yesterday.  If Meteo France are to be believed, we now have a clear run of fine and hot weather (over 25ºC apparently is the definition they use for hot) for the next 15 days.  We'll see!

Friday was a day for a bit of private contemplation and a vigil on the way to Chinon and Azay - the weather was "ideal", or at least reflected my mood.  At la Chapelle sur Loire you can get down the river, where there are benches, picnic tables and bike racks, as well as a slipway into the river.  It was peaceful, despite the traffic on the levee road, and I was on my own, but entertained by swallows and sand martins skimming the river for bugs, egrets doing what egrets do, and things that looked like plovers, but probably weren't, out on the sandbanks.  The river took a reed down to the sea with my blessing.

Cats have been relatively disgraceful during the warmer weather (during the cold wet weather, they got wet and smelly).  Zola and Nibbles demonstrate their personal preferences for drink, while if Donald spots anyone in the hammock, he launches himself on them and has a wiggly love-in!  All very cute.

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The vegetable plots are looking more lush, or overgrown, which ever you prefer.  The tomatoes are climbing up their supports, while the shallots are starting to sag as the bulbs start to swell.  I had to resow sweetcorn yesterday, as 7/51 is a pretty poor germination rate.  Checking the seed packets, they recommend sowing 4 or 5 seeds per station and then thinning out any stragglers - well I resowed at 3 per station as I cannot abide the thought that I might be throwing out so many plants.  Although I might have got the maths wrong...  Anyway, once they were all in and the bed tamped down, Clause launched himself onto it, rolled across the whole area and dug two test pits before finding the one that deserved his poo.  The seedbed is now covered in cut branches of leylandii.  Meanwhile I picked more broad beans and dug up another feral garlic for supper.

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While I tended to the plants that will feed us, John struggled with strimmer and mower to cut paths through overly lush grass and brambles to enable us to walk around the Orchard and wildflower meadow and admire wildlife and flowers.  Particularly in the orchard, this makes a lovely walk and provides enticing views that might make you think this was a serious bit of garden design (and of course, you would be right).  Following the paths cleared for me, I admired many bee orchids (but only so many photos of those today), and spotted that the badgers had been doing a bit of spring cleaning.

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At home, we have slightly less tasteful flowers to admire, but the bumble bee I spotted seemed very happy to work her way over the red hot pokers.

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So, have a lovely week, enjoy the weather, and look out for happy bumble bees and discrete bee orchids.

 

Spring proper, or even summer, has arrived!

It was pretty brutal and unsubtle, but at 5:45pm on Thursday afternoon, the fine weather arrived.  It had been announced for that morning, so I had planned to mow on Thursday afternoon, but as the rain didn't stop until perhaps 5am, and there was no wind, there was no way the grass would be dry enough.  Yesterday was therefore mowing day - and annoyingly, although promised that there would be light rain only on the western most tip of Finistere and the top of the Cotentin peninsular, I got remarkably soggy! 

Not much happened during the week - I worked, which is probably a good thing.  I had a tender rejected - not such a good thing, but kind of expected, as I am on an organisation's list for "good for a tender if you need to make up numbers".  I work on the basis that one day they will have to choose me out of sheer embarrassment at having put me through the process so many times!  Not this time it would appear. 

When I went to Aldi yesterday, enough people were generous to their mothers and well prepared (it is mother's day here), so that there were some of their annual batch of cheap small orchids left over.  So I got me one - a different colour to the other two.

As I said, I went mowing yesterday, and the wild irises are out at the lake.  One of ours that hasn't flowered before was out at The Shack, while some that I hadn't noticed before at Chinon were looking nice and blousy, so here are a selection of irises.

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This morning we were working at The Shack in the garden there.  John needed to rotavate a patch that had been covered since last summer before the underlying clay sets hard for the rest of the season, so lifted the weed suppressant mat.  In doing so, he met three of our assistants in keeping slugs and snails under control, although they had to be evicted or they would have become blood and bone fertiliser!!  Meet the slow worm, the adder and Timid Toad!

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It has warmed up enough, and the plants have got so tall, that we could remove the plastic cloches from the tomato plants and tuck them away somewhere away from the sun, so that they are ready to use in the autumn or next spring.  If the peppers and/or chillies are doing well enough, they may need a bit of cover in October to finish ripening fruits, but otherwise it will be next April or so when they come back out.  There is a bit of caterpillar damage on a couple of the cabbages, but they still look good and we are munching our way through the broad beans.  I'd better confess that the sweetcorn has once again been a disappointment with 51 seeds sown and only 7 coming up.  We did a bit of forensic seed seeking and found nothing, absolutely nothing.  Some something has had it away with my seeds, and I need to resow, assuming I can find any more seeds of course!

I also went on a bee orchid hunt, as usual, and while some had disappeared, I found a new patch and got a half way decent photo for once!

All that left me a bit tired, so I had to offer myself a chunk of hammock time to recover - well that's my excuse anyway!  And it is Sunday after all!  Until next week!

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - plotting progress

It's another distinctly March or October day here today, with sharp showers  or prolonged rain (stuck in the chicken run this morning for 10 minutes, building myself up to getting very wet) and nasty, blustery winds.  In a reasonable gap of two hours this morning we went to The Shack to do our Sunday morning work session and feed the cats.  They didn't seem that interested in food, more in cuddles or in being in baskets and watching what the silly humans were up to.

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I managed to get the other 6 tomato plants in, and covered with paraffin canister cloches.  I also planted the four pepper plants and 4/5 aubergine plants I bought on Wednesday.  I tried to split the aubergine that was two plants, but they were too closely intertwined around their roots, and given that the soil isn't the best, I decided not to force the point.  We'll see how they do.  This year's main plot is now looking even more purposeful than previously - see the comparison over three photos!

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We are really quite excited as two of the 51 sweetcorn seeds we sowed a couple of weeks ago have come up!  You can surely see the difference on these photos!

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Anyway, a new week is upon us.  Tomorrow I will be getting my first jab - Pfizer, in case you were wondering - at the vaccination centre in Baugé.  It is a fine place to sit and wait for 15 minutes in case you have a violent reaction, as they are using the Community and Arts Centre, which was a prison until fairly recently.  I'll try for a photo or two of it all.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - all about plants

With Lockdown III coming to a more purposeful conclusion next Wednesday (pub and restaurant terraces and non-essential shops re-open - woohoo), today was the last market at la Flèche under the no fripperies rule.  If I wanted to avoid lugging any plants a quarter of a mile to where I had left my car, I needed to buy today!  Actually it is quite a good time for buying the tender vegetable plants too, as today or tomorrow (tomorrow I think) is the last of the Saintes Glaces or Ice Saints.  From tomorrow, around here at least, you are unlikely to be hit by frost.

As I went round filling my basket with delicious foodstuffs, I also had a good look at the plants on offer, and ended up at the stall I started at, as they had the best looking plants and a queueing area that was covered (it was raining this morning to add to the joy).  I got 5 more tomato plants - this time ones with larger fruits suitable for cooking, Pierre and another that I may remember the name of!  I also got 4 pepper plants - I was a bit flummoxed by the question of what colour I wanted, but apparently while all would produce green peppers, it was down to the colour after that, so red, black, orange or yellow.  I kept it simple and went for red.  Finally I asked for 4 aubergine plants - I'm not that keen on shop bought aubergines, but fresh from the garden they are rather yummy.

Now while I have four pots with aubergine plants in, it looks to me as though I actually have 5 aubergine plants - rather pleased with that!

We've got lots of strawberry plants this year as someone decided he needed to do something useful with his collection of used yoghurt pots (don't ask).  Most are in a couple of giant tubs, but we still have a few in hanging baskets, as this for me is the ideal way to grow them.

And in other plant news, the tantalising bathroom orchid has successfully opened its third flower - I don't think there will be any more now but it looks rather magnificent.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - seedlings and work

Finally - nearly mid-May and my chilli seeds are sprouting, along with some red basil seeds I also sowed.  The cool temperatures, the dry conditions and the really rather unpleasant April have all contributed to making this a challenging growing season.  I hope that these come to some good - they are certainly staying well away from chickens!

As we have rain today off and on, I am really trying hard not to complain about the weather, but it is hard not to.  And that is also the go to conversation topic for the British in any case - I did a phone interview for work this afternoon and we had a good 5 minutes on the difference between the weather here and the weather there.  It creates a sort of empathy.  We didn't do the new conversation starter - have you had your vaccination yet?  It wasn't appropriate, but as part of the interview we did discuss the challenges that Covid has brought to working life.

My correspondent and I compared the conditions in which we were undertaking the interview - he was sitting in his bedroom and still wasn't used to that as a workspace, even after a year.  I was in my "office", which has been my workspace at home for 16 years now, and very much my comfort zone.  What he missed was seeing people around him in the large offices of his organisation - people he didn't work with directly but would see at the water cooler, or walk past their desk and say "hi".  For those used to that volume of human interaction on a daily basis, and who liked it, this last 14 months must have been a nightmare.

For me, there has been little change to the work routine except that I used to travel and visit people and places at least once every three months.  My last such trip was the 2nd to 6th March last year, and was rounded off by visiting family.  My fake filofax (how dated am I?) bookmark is stuck at that point, as I've not needed a roaming diary since.  I can't see me doing a trip before September, which is a little sad.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - bits and bobs

As I've been being a good girl today and working hard, and not getting distracted by "stuff", I've had to resort in the main to photos taken a while ago but not shared yet, but it's a good way of making sure I've not missed anything too important!  Curfew is at 7pm, but sunset isn't until gone 9pm so it is very difficult to get good evening photos due to the monstrous blob built in between us and our views to the west, however this evening sky was good in any direction (this one is due South), and worked well on my phone.

A few years ago, Aldi did a nice line in flower pots that are fixed to down pipes.  I've grown all sorts in them, from bulbs to lobelia (which worked really well), but following an impulse purchase at a car boot sale of a number of house leeks, they have been home to semper vivums for about 4 years now.  I took a whole load of sets off them last year, but clearly will need to do the same again this year.  But they look pretty good I think!

After yesterday's single asparagus as part of lunch (chopped up fine in baked eggs), today I went for a more classic approach as Mac and Jak are laying just the right sort of eggs at the moment.  So today's lunch was poached eggs with asparagus and mayonnaise (just a little) and jolly good it was too.  There is a mix of our home grown asparagus (fat) and the last bits from the market last week (small and weedy or in technical terms, sprue).

Finally, I was reminded yesterday by Mr S Clause that he hasn't been seen on a blog post for a while and really he is totally gorgeous and people will miss him!  So here he is.

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - weather and plants

Apologies for the lack of blog yesterday - I was going to do something about the market and raw milk, but didn't finish work until about 7pm and just couldn't face any longer in front of the computer.  I have a photo so I will do that story, but not today.

Today has also been busy, but winding down a bit now, as I tick off the urgent bits on my to do list (never shorter than 25 things at the moment).  We have finally had some rain - a gentle 8 or 9 millimetres on Tuesday which soaked in nicely but wasn't enough.  It was sufficient to push the red hot pokers into action as yesterday evening, I found these when I went to lock up the chickens!

It also brought on nicely the Dutch irises at The Shack, and helped some of the potatoes to start showing their heads!

We had more rain too today.  It started during the night and a chum said it was like someone running a hose on the roof at 6am.  I got soaked feeding the chickens this morning, by which time we had had another 10mm and more on the way.  It was a nasty run down to the Sous-Prefecture at Saumur to help someone with a Residency Permit interview, and we were pleased when he had trouble with the fingerprint machine, as it meant we could stay indoors during a particularly heavy shower.  By the time I got him home again, the sun was coming out as the depression passed on its way east and south.

It left behind a chaotic sky and a nasty wind - at the Wildflower Meadow, the roaring gusts and the noise of the wind in the poplars was almost deafening and very dramatic.  Interesting for a short while, but it can stop now!

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - brief notes

Yesterday was a glorious day - sunny, hardly a cloud in the sky, and a nice temperature for doing things.  Occasionally there was a cool wind, but not too often.  The change came through overnight with wind, then cloud bringing finally some much needed rain.  Our lawn should not have yellow patches through dryness at this time of year - yellow patches where we left things on the lawn and didn't pick them up for sure, but not due to poor growth.

On Sunday evening, I stopped on the way back from closing up the chicken run to admire the song of this little fellow, serenading the beautiful sunset.  I think he was a nightingale, from the size of the bird, the volume and twiddles of the song and the time of the evening, but I could be wrong.  Whatever, it was very pleasant.

We have hardly left the house at all today, and when we did, it was the signal for rain to start - every time!!  Paranoid?  O yes!  The first time was this morning when I got the paper out of the post box, and stopped to admire the flowers on the red iris.  This year the flowers look more iris like as it has been so dry that the snails that usually munch them have been hiding - that'll stop this evening.  I can almost here them starting to eat their way through the flowers!

We needed to stop off at the One Acre Wood to get a couple of logs from a stash we have there (we shouldn't still need log fires in May for goodness' sake!).  The rain got quite intense then, but as the trees are mostly leafed up now, we were fairly sheltered.  I took the opportunity to look up an oak tree we don't often talk to, but who is really rather magnificent!

And now I am going to find a glass of wine and put supper in the oven.

 

Lockdown III, Day 28 - is my mother a weather god?

Yesterday I signed off in a slightly petulant and disgruntled way, before settling down for the evening with a mojito made with Caribbean rum.  As I sipped, the sky grew darker and the cats came charging in.  Too good an opportunity to miss, we closed the back door, to signal the end of cat external adventures for the day.  Then we heard it - hail stones!  The trusty Meteo France weather app showed us the enormity of what we had to sit through.

OK, so they called it heavy rain, but it was hail and lots of it.  After dinner, I went out to close up the chicken run and see what had happened - I think I have found a way to get the photos to show side by side, so you can see that the tree peony flower got rather slashed about.

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Similarly the snow in summer was now snow in hail!

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It was a veritable winter wonderland outside - and these photos are a good half hour after it all stopped.

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Even before yesterday evening, we knew that we had no plums, no peaches and no pears to look forward to this year.  We are still optimistic that there will be apples and quince, but the quantities remain to be seen.  The apple tree leaves have been damaged by the hail, but there are still nascent apples and a bit of blossom on the trees, so we live in hope!  There are holes in the vine leaves, but there are still bunches of flower buds on the grape vine, so that may have got through too.

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All day there has been a flow of water from the roof drain, as the drifts of hail stones slowly melt in the sheltered gap between our house and next door.  I suspect the moral of this story is to always be respectful of your mother!!

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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!!