Rural Life

Between two events - apologies for the delay!

Last week I was a few hours early posting, before heading off to tend bar at the village Trout Fishing Day.  This week I am a day late after being one of a handful of stall holders at the village PTA car boot sale.  In between there have been all sorts of excitements with a poorly cat, a septic tank issue and wild orchids - it's hard to know where to start and what to include!  Perhaps at the beginning, with a picture of a lovely sunny day for trout fishing?

Yesterday was rather a contrast, dull skies, rain in the night, a third of the booked places not taken up due to the weather and few punters for all the goodies spread out for their delight.  We did alright during the day in terms of large and/or heavy items sold, as well as a lot of smaller stuff, but the heavy rain at lunchtime scared off buyers, and while we hung in to the end, we did little business in the afternoon, despite lovely sunshine.

There is nothing exciting about septic tank inspections, so I will gloss over that, other than to praise highly the integrity and helpfulness of the local inspector, who tried her best to approve things, but where they couldn't be approved, is helping us to find cost effective solutions for my client.  

Much more exciting is that the bee orchids are finally putting in an appearance, possibly stirred into action by a very small amount of rain at the start of the week.  They have mostly cropped up in or very close to the recently mown path through the orchard.  This kind of confirms my view that bee orchids need either grazing animals to keep the grass down or a simulation of that (mowing) in order to push up their flower spikes.  They don't much like competition and it seems long grass and tall weeds are not their friends.

Another orchid related excitement was the discovery of a new (to us and to the location) type of orchid, this time relatively happy in the long grass.  I've not had a chance to look it up yet, but it is some form of pink pyramidal orchid.  I've not seen any like it in the area, so I'm not sure how it arrived, and John says it is nothing to do with his mowers!

Early in the week I met the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen in the rough grass in the country - large, and on some level rather disturbing.  Way back in the 70s there was a Dr Who episode called something like the Green Death, which involved giant maggots, and I have been iffy about maggots and caterpillars every since, particularly that size!  The Peugeot key fob gives an idea of scale.  I hope it grows up into something nice!

As we head towards the end of no-mow May - something I rather disapprove of in general - I thought I would highlight how you can do it sensibly.  Make nice wide paths that are kept mown through the area you are interested in.  This has been particularly a thing with us this last week, as it is a bumper year for tics and we are picking off a good number each week from the Country Cats.  One of the cats has developed anaemia and the vet thought it was entirely possible that this was due to the number of tics he has picked up.  The blood tests to diagnose the problem were costly, although not as much as if we lived in the UK (expensive is relative I guess), and there is a prolonged course of medication and a long way to go until he is back to full Spooky Power.  

And here is the anaemic patient in his cat carrier at the vet's - Spooky the indomitable.

So keep checking for tics - you and all your loved ones! 

Well, that is it for this week, and it promises to be a quiet week so I should be back to the normal schedule next week.  Have a good one!

 

Flower Power

There is a rather lovely song by the French singer/song writer Laurent Voulzy called Le Pouvoir des Fleurs - basically it is an appeal to improve the world with flowers.  it dates from the late 70s or the 80s and while perhaps a bit naïve, it sums up my feeling for today as I went through the week's photos, to see what to put in today's entry.  At this time of year, it is all about the flowers, from the carefully bred black iris that has just snuck under the fence from our neighbour...

to the equally intriguing but absolutely wild and uncultivated spider orchid that crops up in a friend's garden in huge numbers.  I've not seen so many anywhere else!

Bees are having an absolute orgy with all the blooms - our rather trashy red hot pokers provide a smorgasbord for insects of all sorts.

The peonies, although I only have one in flower, but more generally, are the favourite source of sugar for ants I am told.

On Friday, and in perfect weather, I had a trip over to Chinon, and while wandering around the mediaeval centre, found Rabelais directing people to one of his wine caves!

And now I must sort myself out to start my shift at the bar (behind the bar) for the village trout fishing day.  Next week's blog could be full of photos of happy punters pulling trout out of a rather lovely lake on a magnificent sunny day, and hoary peasants supping beer and rosé at the bar, or I could be too busy to take any photos at all!  We'll see!

Have a good week!

 

An aestival interlude

Actually I would spell it estival rather than aestival, but I think the American spell checker objects!  Whatever, April and the first couple of days of May have been a wonderful foretaste of what summer should be like, but wasn't last year.  We wait to see how this summer pans out - I have little faith in the long term forecasts peddled by the tabloids. 

We started the week with aperos in the garden with our elderly cat, and on Friday had a book signing on the pub terrace with a renowned Anglophone historian and writer (click on the Eighty Years Ago this Week link on the right of the screen when you have finished reading this for more information about Adrian Phillips, author of, among other titles, Winston's Bandits, the book being signed here).  What a week!

In between, there have been markets, a bank holiday with picnic, a final afternoon at the Mairie making paper flowers, and an extremely hot and sticky session in the Comité des Fêtes's hangar, taking down last year's cabin structure and building the new frame for this year's tableau - very hush, hush for the moment. 

The natural flowers are an absolute joy this year.  At the bottom of one of our downpipes we always have a good display of campanula growing out of the wall and a bit of tarmac, but this year is the best ever I think.  They should keep going for another week or so.

The peas I sowed in pots to keep them away from marauding mice all came up and those have now been planted into the vegetable beds, with columns of sheep netting to climb up.  The last three days have seen all of them pull away gratifyingly and I am hoping for tasty snacks of extremely fresh peas in early June.

Down among the ponds, there is one place where there is a large bank of wild marsh iris, and we have the best ever display we've seen of flowers on them at the moment.  Soon the other foliage will completely block the view of them for the rest of the summer season.

The unseasonably hot weather brought on the flowers on the false acacia rather more quickly than usual - I hope this doesn't adversely affect the honey harvest.  The trees themselves are awful - covered in sharp thorns, they spread by suckering and are a non-native invasive species, practically impossible to get rid of.  But for a couple of weeks in May or June they are coated in tumbling white flowers with a heady, honey scent, which makes them borderline tolerable.

The favourite orchid featured last week continues to flower beautifully despite being mugged by surrounding oxeye daisies, linseed and various meadow grasses.  While I tried to bash my way through to my favourite cultivated irises, I found a second example of the orchid, possibly more spectacular than the first.  Well, see what you think!

The weather has changed in time for the UK bank holiday.  We have another ourselves on Thursday, with Victory in Europe day, which will be full of reminders of the end of the Second World War.  Sadly it seems we are gearing up for the Third World War, but I will not pursue that line of thinking, this week anyway. 

Have a good week!

 

In praise of weeds

Of course pedants would say that a weed is only a plant in the wrong place, so perhaps this should be called a rather less provocative "in praise of wild flowers"?  Whatever, looking through the photos of the week, many of them are of flowers, not all in the right place, not deliberately sown or planted in most cases, but all looking too gorgeous at the moment.  Suddenly the weather has gone spectacularly nice, even those days forecast to be wet and horrid were only grey and mildly disappointing.  The forecast for the week to come is spectacular, so as soon as this is written and launched, we are getting the abri cover out so that sitting in the garden is a real thing and a pleasure.

Anyway, here is the first of this week's pin ups - probably a lady orchid, and the best it has looked for perhaps 6 years, as in 2020 it was deformed and lopsided and hasn't really done well since then.

An unsung hero of pretty weeds is the speedwell, often overlooked, but the intensity of this patch in the Orchard is really rather pleasing.

On Easter Monday, we made a pilgrimage to the One Acre Wood to admire the new leaves on the trees and see how the ponds were doing.  The upper one was alive with "things", probably baby newts, the lower one was quiet and neither had much water.  Up at the top, where we leave our car, there were lots of wood violets.

Further down in the Wood, the lily of the valley were up and in flower.  It is traditional to give sprigs of these lovely flowers to friends on the first of May, but I think most will be over by then, given the weather conditions.

There are some cultivated areas, with this bed full of non-flowering broad beans, young peas, onions and some rather slug damaged pumpkin plants.  I hope we will have food from some of them, but I am starting to despair with the broad beans.

That bed is overlooked by one of our bird boxes.  It is inhabited - I have spent a lot of time this last week watching two great tits flying a relay between any good sources of grubs and yucky things and the box, and today the babies were definitely screaming to be fed a lot of the time.  If all goes well, I guess they will fledge in a couple of weeks and perhaps then there will be a second use of the box.

We had a visitor in the courtyard yesterday - damaged, so probably dropped there by a cat or a bird, but still able to wriggle around and look threatening.  John got his litter picker out and took it over the road to the long grass, in theory so that our cats did not find it and play with it.  Rare and protected, but not from other wildlife or cats!!

So that is it for this week.  It has been challenging getting the photos to load up, I think all part of a cunning plan to get us to change our broadband line for a fibre one.  It isn't helped by the age of my computer or running a version of Windows that Microsoft would prefer I didn't, either.  A project for another month I think!

Have a good week!

 

January blues

This week saw the (admittedly commercial) unhappiest day of the year - the third Monday in January, when your pay packet has nearly run out, the weather is pants, the days aren't really noticeably longer and your waistline hasn't recovered from the Christmas and New Year festivities. 

Bizarrely it didn't really affect us as being worse than any other day in January, even if it had been decreed Red for electricity purposes.  Instead, it is the sameness of the days at this time of year that gets to me.  In general (this year anyway), days are either cold, foggy, and uninspiring; bitingly cold and bright and faintly inspiring until I get too cold; or wet, muddy, mild, and annoying.  Each type does have it's beauty however, and the wet weather on Friday lead to this rather arty shot, as I stood by the second pond, in the rain, listening for birds.

The foggy day before the rain started, we were in the One Acre Wood, felling future firewood, and I spotted this rather dramatic fungus on old, decaying wood.

As as a point of optimism, one of us trod on this cowslip that was attempting to flower today, so spring will happen in due course.

With the wet and warmer weather, the electricity spot prices are falling, so Red days are behind us.  That means I can have the heater on in my office and work through the files from the trail cameras and start to load things on YouTube.

This week I focussed on the camera pointing up a well trodden path at the edge of the Meadow, lined by fruit trees on one side and a bank of brambles on the other.  Some of that is being removed, but not all, as it is a good shelter (when contained) for birds and small mammals.  There is a path we have punched through the bank of brambles on the left as you look up the hill.  Many of the photos are limited, not least as it was in place during the shortest, darkest months, but it is always nice to see a pine marten posing!

The path is used from time to time by boar passing through on their way to do damage somewhere else.  They may spend the day down in the marsh behind the plantation trees, or somewhere further afield.  The big poplar plantation along the valley has now been felled, so they aren't there, but there are pockets of woodland not too far away.  Family groups will roam quite long distances.

The deer find this point rather appealing as it gives them a few good exit routes and opportunities to keep an ear or an eye out for any predators (hunters in the main) that might be in the zone.

 If you watch this next video closely, you will see there is a deer in the field next door as well!

 

There are birds, as you can see above, in this corner of the Meadow, and not just small brown types, but you do find larger things too. like this flock of female pheasants out for a stroll.

There will be more from the pheasants when I put up the videos from the next camera I brought in, which was placed in the new path to see if anything was using it, other than us.  And I guess that means Spoiler Alert, the pheasants use it!

One of the benefits and comforts of mid-winter is a good log fire.  We have an insert with heat exchangers to the upper rooms in the house, so when it gets going, it helps take the edge off the first floor.  There is a nice fire downstairs now, so I think I will go and sit with it, rather than gazing at a computer screen!

Have a good week!

 

2024 in review

As complaining about Dunkelflaute is probably getting rather boring, I thought I would take the opportunity, in this first blog of 2025, to look back at the year just ended to see if it really was that grey and sad.

It didn't start well in January, with my new found status of orphan, when the world stopped for a while and bureaucracy took over.  I would love to say that all is sorted but French Red Tape and notaires take forever to deal with very simple things and it will be another wee while before I can close the books.

But life does go on and with February, we had our annual truffle fest, a bit later than normal as it took a while for prices to stabilise and for me to be able to concentrate on all things culinary!  I now have some really good truffle staple recipes, so that the failures and the "why did I bother?" moments are reduced.

In March we were harvesting the last of the vegetables sown or planted in 2023, which really was a rather good year for gardening.  The multicoloured carrots were a revelation, although for some reason there were no black ones, even though the seed packet firmly showed that there should be a full spectrum of colours.  The leeks were excellent too, but perhaps a bit too prolific!

It was a spectacularly wet year, and at Easter, there was the added excitement of potentially excessive and damaging floods in Chinon.  The Vienne rose inexorably, and as la Loire was also in flood, there was nowhere for the water to go.  While there were calls for evacuations, the floods peaked perhaps 40 centimetres below the danger level, but were still very impressive.

May is the peak season for wild orchids and I go mad trying to spot and photograph each bee orchid that flowers on our land.  The challenge is to get the best photo, in focus, nicely framed, and ideally with a gleam of sunshine.  It was quite a long season for them this year and there were some very lovely examples.

The trail cameras were in permanent use during 2024 and there are a few very rich locations for them to capture the wildlife that share the space with us.  Summer months also bring babies, and this year the coypu (sadly) did very well, bringing up four cubs, or whatever you call a baby coypu.  Ugly, that's for sure, even if most baby animals are cute.

While much of the gardening in 2024 was disappointing at best, we did get a very good harvest of onions for the first time ever.  We are still eating them indeed, which is pretty impressive.  I don't know why they did so well - the shallots and the garlic were complete disasters, but that is how it turned out.

August is Comice time, and 2024 was Vaulandry's turn.  I ended up spending a lot of time on the village float.  As part of an overall theme of "the call of the forest", we went for the story of Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house in the forest, complete with witch.  The weather wasn't helpful, with rain on the Saturday and overcast conditions on the Sunday, but the final product was pleasing.

September is the annual pig roast for our boule de forte society, and is something we always look forward to.  Once again, we were lucky with the weather - I do remember one year when rain took over and made things a bit odd, but for once 2024 played ball and it was a lovely day.

The year has been wet and there have been quite a few named storms.  Kirk was a particularly unpleasant one, mainly for the volume of water it dumped on us.  In order to attempt to get a sensible reading of the amount of rain, one of us had to empty the rain gauge when it got to 35 millimetres as it clearly wasn't stopping anytime soon!  A field above the land we rent had been harvested but not resown, and there was nothing to hold back the rain water so it took the roadside down.

Gardening was difficult in 2024, with heavy and waterlogged soil, lack of sunshine, lack of decent summer temperatures apart from a week in July, and therefore all manner of challenges to deal with.  The number and size of slugs was incredible and they got everywhere!  This one was trying to get to the last remains of the mango seed I managed to germinate before I evicted it - roughly 4 inches or 10 centimetres long and too big to interest any bird, other than perhaps a buzzard.

The figures are in for sunshine in 2024, and the local press talk about a deficit of 400 hours of sunshine across the year.  I did count at one stage towards the end of the year and got to 17 days without a glimmer of sun.  It's not healthy and we keep checking ourselves for rickets!  December ended the year in murk, but we have seen the sun in January, so let's hope for a brighter 2025!

Happy New Year!

 

Welcome to Autumn

Meteorological autumn started on the 1st September and autumness is being embraced by fauna, flora and weather with unseemly eagerness.  Temperatures are dropping, and the weather lurches from dismal to awful, with quick hints of sun in between.  Yesterday we were due storms in the afternoon, but needed to spend a few money off vouchers, so didn't get to the place in the country until the rain had started, while thunder rumbled around.  We were lucky, actually, to be there and not at home, where there were strong wind squalls, nearly three times the amount of rain, and hail.  While the barn cats munched their way through their feed, oblivious to the weather, I watched the rain and then checked the lightning strike web page.

There's not much by way of mellow fruitfulness about either.  The berries are rotting on the canes almost before they ripen and the pears are over - not enough for a burping barrel either!  There are apples - the Reine de Reinettes are falling and are quite tasty.  I need to burrow into the Bel de Boskoop to find any there, while the Granny Smiths will hold for ages.  The Canada juicing apples are rotting, then falling, so I fear for the trees if the marauding boar decide they like cider.  We had hoped for a single variety juice pressing this year, but if we do one at all, I think it will be mixed.  The quince are also a disappointment, as they have missed out on the heat and sunshine they need to develop to their full size and become fragrant.  They are falling!  I will have to try to make jelly, but I don't think they will be up to tagine or slow cooked quince standard sadly.  

Also in stark contrast to last year, we can only spot 5 fruits on the cristophine vine, despite it being even bigger than last year!  It also misses the heat and sunshine though it does enjoy a good deluge.

The cyclamen in the lawn have been later to flower than normal - about 3 weeks later if I recall correctly.  I had hoped that the delay might at least mean a full carpet of them around the birch tree.  I may be jaded and depressed with this year, but it seems to me that they too are less bountiful, although new corms have started to produce flowers in far flung areas of the garden.

We are hoping for a decent year for mushrooms, with all the water that there is around.  A walk around the One Acre Wood today showed that there are things popping up, but not interesting edible things so far.

We have found a first bolete, but not where it should be.  There was one growing in the lettuce bed, which I picked, but as there is no oak or chestnut in the Garden area, just a rather large birch tree, I did not risk cooking it.  It could well have been fine, but when picking wild mushrooms, any doubt at all and it goes on the compost heap.

The Marx Sisters have settled in well, and at least two of them have started to lay rather cute small eggs.  Groucho is a greedy so and so and likes to climb into trees and onto tables.  This can be disconcerting.  Harpo bumbles on in her own happy way, and seems to have been the one to come into lay first.  Chico is a bit more of a loner and likes to fly.  Specifically, she likes to fly at my back when I am walking away from her, which is a bit worrying.  Perhaps in a former life, she was an eagle.

I have had another major session with my new strimmer, using the brushcutter head this time, and have a number of projects with that.  More to follow in the coming weeks.  I also probably ought to shuffle the trail cameras around, so again something for another week.

Until next time!

 

Junevember - it's a thing apparently!

It's raining today, and cold.  It rained yesterday too, and during the week, and it hasn't been at all warm.  It is a totally new month apparently - Junevember - and it's got to be real as someone did a cartoon about it, which I have shamelessly nicked!

The weather has meant that gardening is limited to dashing out when at all possible to attack things that are growing too well and shouldn't be allowed to continue (grass, weeds, the grape vine), sighing over the things that should be pushing away with rare vigour currently and aren't (sweet peppers, courgettes, butternut squashes, chillies) and taking solace in flowers that are happy and having a longer season than we would expect (wild orchids are a good example).  Today I spotted a new one at the Orchard, hiding in plain sight among a bunch of pink clover that has now gone over.

One couple we know were delighted to see me as they had two gluts, white asparagus and alstromeria - I couldn't leave without an armful of each.  So very kind and the flowers, assuming a cat doesn't eat them or smash the vase, will last for ages!

The lack of heat, and more importantly the lack of sunshine, have an effect on the morale, but yesterday I rescued a trail camera that I had left in place for a couple of months as a way of doing something productive with the day.  My initial assessment, without wearing glasses, was that I had messed up and that there was going to be nothing on the memory card, so it was a pleasant surprise to find 599 files, when I looked at the card via the computer and wearing glasses.  Just a random sample of files showed that while I had yet again managed to turn off the video recordings, that wasn't until after about 6 weeks in situ, and there was a lot of activity including film of the blasted coypu.

Today I have been through all the files having a first look through - there is some juicy stuff in there for future blogs.  There is also a hunt chasing a deer and a boar two months after the season for "big game" closed - and from the noises off, I think they caught up with the boar.  As we have had other footage of a boar with a damaged leg, it would appear they didn't kill it, and the corpse by the main road is probably it - or was as it is now just a smelly black patch.  The audio didn't include a gun shot, but if it was a fox hunt, they wouldn't have had the right ammunition to deal with a boar with them.  It's all very complicated.  Anyway, I think this is who they were really after!

The little crossroads that the camera was by is very tight - the path across is mainly for ducks and coypu and the water rail to go from one pond to another, while the path up to the tree is fine for me, but peters out a little way further on, at least for me, because boar, deer and badgers use it.

The tree is popular with birds - there is more than one picture of a woodpecker on it, although this is my favourite.

It is a favourite with the boar, but that needs film and I haven't got the will to battle uploads to YouTube today.  The deer like it, not just the doe but also a rather nice stag.

Best of all, it is a fun place for the pine marten to climb up!  How I love these fellows!

I need to spend more time with the files - there is a whole article about boar to be written, and another about coypu, with lots of photos and video to accompany them.  So I will leave you this week with a slightly unhelpful photo of one of the common visitors to the crossroads - the Lady Mallard.

Have a good week!

 

Spring into Summer

The first of June brought meteorological summer - it's just an arbitrary date, but it works for me and my filing for photos.  It is true that it also stopped raining on the 1st June and hasn't started again since for us, but that won't last much longer I think.  But the evening of 1st June was very cool - I know this as we walked the 3km from our front door to the Centre René d'Anjou in Baugé for the final hurrah of the Comice 2023.  This was the party to say thank you to the volunteers who put in so many hours of hard work all through 2023 (although for those on the Drinks Committee, initially it didn't look like hard work!).  We were warned to be there for 7:30pm, as speeches needed to start at 7:45pm - well both of those had the Anjou 15 minutes added to them!

What a night!  Aperos, a four course dinner with relevant different wines, two cabaret singers and three dancers, speeches (but not too many) and dancing until dawn for those who could manage it.  Light weights that we are, we left after pudding at 00:45am for the 3km walk home in the dark.  My chum Brigitte ran away at 4:00am as she knew she had tidying up to do the following morning.  Our President locked up at about 6:00am but didn't go to bed, as he had to be back to let in the cleaning party at 9:00am!

And that is why I had pre-prepared last week's blog!!

Once the rain stopped, we did start getting sunny weather, so that by Tuesday, my legs were timidly being shown the open air from time to time and I am now sitting in shorts, doing my typing.  I wouldn't say that summer has settled in by any means, but we are now having to water things, so we are sort of in the ball park.

Last summer, the highlight of our growing season was the mighty cristophine vine, which John nurtured and which fed us well during autumn.  My chum Stéphane the Estate Agent said we should watch out as they are actually perennials, and it would come back.  "What does he know? Pfff!" were some of our comments to that.  But we didn't have much by way of frost over winter, and John strimming the area to prepare to plant his new cristophine plants just seemed to annoy it, and it is Back and it is Angry!  The weather isn't really warm enough yet for it to get truly rampant, but the phrase "Feed me Seymour" is back!

No Mow May is a real thing nowadays, and some people get very tetchy if you don't buy into it wholeheartedly.  I think you have to be careful, and you need to look at your land to see where you can do this, and where you can't.  Some bits of our plots have had a No Mow May more due to the weather and machines falling apart trying to deal with overly luxurious growth.  My nice clear path down the side of the fruit trees to the plantation area and the mud pools has only been kept open by the passage of deer and boar, which now makes it Tic Alley!

It will take us a long time to get this passable again not least as this sort of luxurious growth takes its toll on machines.  Our first trusty ride on lawnmower, who has gone miles round various different gardens, has had to be given a retirement plan of being a small towing tractor, as the mowing pan has rotted away in too many places, and can't be patched any more.  It is fair to say that Maurice has worked hard over the 18 years we have had him, so we can't really complain too much.  The 6 month wait for a new cutting deck is too long to wait however, so we are looking at Plan B.

I will leave you with a display of lovely flowers - where things are happy with the weather conditions, they are thriving, and the climbing rose on the front of the house, the small fragrant rose I bought at Aldi (other cheap supermarkets are available) and was disappointed with last year, bee orchids and lizard orchids are all very happy with life.  And that makes me happy.

I'm planning on bringing in one of the trail cameras during the week, so there could be wildlife pictures and videos next week, you never know!

Have a good week!

 

Boring weather

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

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

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

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

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

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