Rural Life

Location, location, location

After three very good weeks with the trail camera, I sadly have to announce a complete failure this week.  We chose a location that was away from the road and surrounded by dense undergrowth, near a water source and with tracks in many directions, seemingly used by animals large and small.  When we collected the camera yesterday, there were 6 files on it, with the least awful photo below.  The others included mainly my bottom retreating from the camera or me getting up close to turn it off.  Clearly that area is not in use at the moment, possibly as the hunt were through last weekend, possibly as it isn't an interesting area at this time of year.  I'll try again there in the spring or summer, but for now the camera has moved on.

So what else has been going on this week?  The gastronomy fest continues, with more truffle influenced meals.  We are using up the last bit of the truffle tonight and that is it until early 2023.  We also had lunch out at our favourite restaurant, and honestly it was hard to move after our 12,55 Euros a head blow out.  I've not had that good a bavette steak for years, while the chocolate mousse was positively intoxicating in its chocolatiness.  

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In order to recover from all the rich food, and to keep warm, we have had to spend time in the One Acre Wood, taking down and chopping up a long dead chestnut tree.  Yesterday we did the felling and sectioning.  There was freezing fog and everywhere was covered in white tendrils as the fog froze onto spider web.  When all was still you could actually hear the ice crystals falling off.  Today we went back with the trailer and a splitting axe (or merlin) and tidied up the largesse, splitting much of it to make it usable.  Reading back over past memories, ten years ago I was able to split a stère of wood almost single handed, but this year I managed about 8 logs.  Mind you, that is an improvement on last year, when I could do almost nothing with a dodgy elbow.

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We support a cat charity locally called Cat's Garfield - they catch, sterilise and rehome, as far as possible, feral and stray cats in the area.  This weekend they were trying to educate people and raise a bit of cash through an exhibition of photos taken by one of their members, a half-English lady who has just started up as a photographer in the area.  The pictures were lovely and it is also nice to hear the good news stories of adoptions.  What impressed us most was the venue - a converted chapel.  The downstairs was pleasant with nice features, the upstairs was breath-taking.

To close, a final picture of the frost in the wild clematis Old Man's Beard, which surrounds the wildflower meadow and strangles all the fruit trees, and much else besides.  The birds don't seem to be interested in the seed heads, but when the freezing fog does its thing, they are rather pretty.  Fingers crossed for some interesting footage from the trail camera next week!

 

Happy New Year - 2022, the Year of the Pheasant?

Happy New Year to chums near and far.  And a healthy one too, which is on my mind as others have been "pinged" in our close circle and it's a worry.

The period between Christmas and New Year is always an odd one, and this year is no exception.  The weather has been unseasonably mild, and the last couple of days have been gloriously sunny too.  Yesterday morning there was a hint of mist, which made going up the garden to feed the chickens a slightly spooky affair, as can be seen.

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The mist burnt off very quickly though, and both yesterday and today we have sat out with cats, watched birds, done some gardening and enjoyed nature.  It was lovely to get the hammocks out again today and sit in The Garden watching the tits and a robin working their way through a coconut filled with fat and seeds.  I was surprised to see the robin doing that in fact, as I thought it really was a trick of blue tits and great tits.  We do actively encourage great tits in The Garden as they are the only bird to have decided to eat pine processionary caterpillars, and with nests in a couple of the pine trees round the garden, encouraging them seems like a good idea.  A friend did happily point out that great tits also predate bats, but if my bats live where I think they do, no great tit could get into the space!

The weather is also conducive to good, dramatic sunsets - this was yesterday's.

The French make a big deal of the Reveillon as they tend to call it and New Year, although this year the festivities were more muted due to the charm free Omicron.  In previous years, we have gorged on foie gras, smoked salmon, steak, oysters (occasionally done as Angels on horseback with bacon and prunes), but this year we went for tartiflette, a delicious mix of potatoes (home grown of course), smoked bacon, onion, garlic and Reblouchon cheese.  We didn't eat all this pan, we did save some to go with sausages today!

Wandering around the grounds today, we spotted this rather dramatic and interesting fungus - I might work out what it is by next week!  So bright that I wondered if it was a piece of plastic brought in by one of the foxes in the Orchard, it stood out among the detritus under one of the walnut trees.

And so to the Year of the Pheasant.  The trail camera has been in a very tucked away part of the Orchard this week, and I managed to control myself and not visit it every day to see what it had caught.  We have dodgy photos of a fat pigeon, a rat, a hedgehog, and a possible ragondin, or coypu.  The fox was also nosing around and a blackbird did his thing in front of the camera too.  A duck walked past.  But the most prolific visitors to the area, and yet not the ones that make the paths, were the pheasants.  Here are three girls doing what they do.

The warm weather means that the male pheasants are getting frisky, so clearly my three girls are interesting prey.  There are sounds off too!

But I don't think male pheasants are that bright, and this one has also been tagged by someone, so is also at a bit of a disadvantage.  Doesn't stop him thinking he is pretty fab though!

The trail camera is on the move now, to keep an eye on what is causing damage elsewhere, and hopefully will have some good footage again for next week, when I will be back to Sunday updates.

 

 

Short, wintery days

Still no images from the trail camera, after a week at what I thought would be an interesting spot.  What I actually captured was a still and a video of a cat following my trail around the meadow, a still of a blackbird, and numerous images of my legs as I went to check the camera.  Ho hum.  It has been moved and now to see what crops up at a different site - annoyingly, after I'd moved the camera, I found evidence of something having been in the area, which I think is jolly unfair.

So back to more classic ways of capturing images - and during the week we caught first sight of the new moon over the roof of the house.  It was a classic clear, cold evening and a tiny slip of moon like a toe nail clipping!

Of course if it is like that in the evening, you wake up to a winter wonderland of ice the following day, but frost crystals on leaves do make for interesting images.

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Cold mornings also mean that the small birds are keen on the fat balls I put out for them.  As well as remarkably critical tits of various sorts, there is a flock of sparrows that haunts the feeder.  At one stage I reckon there were a dozen on or by it, until Zola the cat trotted around the corner from annoying the chickens and they scattered.  That was also the time when I was trying to get a photo of them on and around the feeder, so typically I have a number of photos of nothing much.  But greed got the better of them and before I had put the phone away, a couple were back.  Not the best photo, but you get the idea.

We were in the One Acre Wood this morning, so I spent some time planning where the trail camera might go, looking at where the leaves have been disturbed or where there are clear trails that aren't us.  I have some ideas!  I was also able to spot the other beech trees in the parcels next to ours, as at the moment, their leaves are mightily conspicuous.

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Checking out the Meadow, after it has had its annual mow, and looking for evidence of wildlife as a target for the trail camera, I took some time to notice the new growth coming up.  It strikes me it would be interesting to do a quadrant test to see how many species there are in half a square meter, as looking at the photo below I can make out two types of orchid, clovers, plantains, moss, grass and others that I am not familiar with.  And therein lies the problem - I am not enough of a botanist to distinguish between clover types, or different trefoils, or different plantains.  Perhaps I need to buy a student for a week!  Anyway - here is a photo - how many can you spot?

I can see at least 9 different things in there.

 

The challenge of wildlife photography

Last week I had little to say and felt very sorry for myself, as a victim of The Cold.  But if the week to 28 November was dull, the week to 5 December was even more so.  I have had to resort to photographs from the archives to explain why I have little new to share.

Photographing plants is relatively straightforward.  They are mostly pretty photogenic in any case, and they don't move particularly far or fast (in most cases), so the main challenges are getting a good angle, focus and lighting.  Almost anything can look quite good!

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Animals aren't so easy, not least as the blighters move around a bit.  You can catch a dragonfly at rest, but it is a bit dull, and can be lucky with a calculating lizard too.

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In Guadeloupe I did get lucky with basking terrapins and a high resolution photo that could be cut down, and that is more than I have ever achieved with Nessie the errant terrapin at the Lake!

Sea birds can be helpful, although a pelican at rest looks more like a badly placed cowpat than anything else to my mind.

Flying pelicans can be dramatic - again with high definition to be able to hone in - and frigate birds are very easily recognised.

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My biggest frustration is trying to capture humming birds - so beautiful and jewel-like, and so damn fast!

All of which is an excuse to say that as yet, I have had no luck with the trail camera and the badgers, foxes and deer it is supposed to be capturing.  Perhaps next week!

 

 

Seasonal ailments

Much of this last week has been an uncomfortable blur, courtesy of that old familiar of autumn, the common cold.  I've not had one for two or three years - perhaps one thing that Covid has done for us, is improve hygiene to the extent that we are not in contact with every germ and bug that is doing the rounds.  Incessant hand washing, social distancing, and fear of the big C has kept us free from the annual round of sniffles, snuffles and squits.  On the other hand, when you do come into contact with one of the little darlings, there is no residual resistance in your body and you are a veritable smorgasbord for germs, mucus, infection and all the misery that goes with it.  It hasn't helped that I was in general very run down as well, but from late last Sunday night until sometime last night, I was the victim of "that nasty cold doing the rounds" and I wasn't happy.  This morning was the first time I felt life might return to normal!  A sleeping/roosting bantam is a good metaphor for how I felt!

Yesterday we had our own small backlash from Storm Arwen - nothing like across the UK, where wind, snow and rain have been doing their worst, but dull dark skies, an evil wind and sleet was bad enough.  So it was a surprise and a good example of pathetic fallacy that when I got up feeling a bit more lively this morning, the sun was shining and the sky was blue.  True there was a strong and evil wind from the North West, but so much better than we could have hoped for.  And what do you do on a bright Sunday in late Autumn?  Go looking for firewood.

It was a good excuse to go to the One Acre Wood, bring down a dead tree that had been worrying us, and generally look around and admire.  I found a mushroom, non-edible, and one of a type that I refer to as Grey Slimy.

The One Acre Wood, like much woodland around here is chestnut coppice with oak stands, the odd pine tree, and then anything else that can set seed.  There is a good reason for this - oak is a strategic crop and many woods around here were designated by Napoleon to make up for those trees felled to make warships.  There is a good clay substrate round here and terracotta floor tiles are a local product of renown.  To make the tiles, you need clay, chestnut for the firing and pine sap for the glaze/finish of the tile.  Growing them all together near clay pits makes sense. 

In among all of those sensible trees, we have chequers or common service - the berries can be used to make beer (hence so many British pubs being called The Chequers), which propagate by runners, like elm, as well as by seed.  We have holly (again expand by runners).  We had a couple of rowan, but both are now dead, one felled when Enedis were clearing the lines for no obvious reason other than it was in their way and they didn't care.  We also had one beech tree, which met the same fate - it was in the way of the people felling trees near the line, so was felled as well even though it was 10 meters from the line and in good nick.  I was gutted.  Until today, when I found a 2 year old beech sapling pulling away nicely.

In amidst the awfulness of the cold, I had a birthday, but not a classic one.  However I am now the proud owner of a trail camera, which has proved very good at catching short videos of feet, and cats turning round on sofas overnight.  I am hoping that by next week I might have mastered the technology well enough to have a short video or photos of something more interesting.  Well a girl can dream!

 
 

November and it's dull, dull, so very dull

It's been a bit of a trial finding things to talk about this week and also to find any nice photos to share to illustrate that with.  The dullness is more as it is same old, same old, as actually the weather has been fairly kind, so I have done a couple of walks (brown leaves, brown fields, brown woods) and seen a couple of fungi that were faintly photogenic, but otherwise of little interest to me.  No cèpes at all this year, so I have to keep going with my stash of dried from last year.

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There was an amusing moment during the week when I was wandering around the Orchard, and Donald decided he didn't want to walk so spent his time circling my head by standing on my shoulders (I really am stretching the point here).  The shadow we made on the ground was amusing - I'm either wearing a Davey Crocket hat or a saucepan!

Other things are preparing/being prepared for winter.  After the first significant frost of the year, I thought it was time to bring the avocado tree into shelter - they aren't known for being frost hardy!!  This is its third year, and it was grown from an avocado stone we brought back from Guadeloupe - the fruit was huge (family sized really), as was the pit, so we thought it was worth a try.  The tree actually has branches, and has done better than any other avocado stone I've grown, so I want to keep it going, but it will have to stay small enough to bring indoors each winter!

Following on from last week's pride in a first new flower on the little orchid, I can now present flower number 2, and looking closely at the buds, next week there might even be a third flower.  This small and frankly rather abused orchid has been with us now for three years and I am amazed by it.  I would like it to be an example to the bigger orchids that have since seduced me, but I don't know that they talk that much!

One thing that has made the week dull from a blogging perspective is the fact that I am preparing for a voyage to Plague Island next week.  I have had to get to grips with expensive lateral flow tests, passenger locator forms and Engagement sur l'Honneur form letters, do laundry so I have enough clean underwear, find the small rucksack for carrying my camera around, charge up the battery for the big camera, and look into the exotic subject of public transport into and around Birmingham.  All this should mean that I have lots of exciting photos for next week's blog, but make today's effort a major snooze fest.  

As even the cat is a critic, I'll leave it at that for now!

 

Scary things

Happy Halloween!  And to keep to the theme, I will draw out the scary side of everything today.  For a start, I went to a different Super U (local supermarket chain), as I was fed up with the one in Baugé and it's slapdash attitude to restocking things like Chicken Whiskas cat food, rose scented shower gel and its boycott of Duracell batteries.  So I went to the big one at Mazé - it's further away so I won't do it that often, but I felt like a complete hick when I went round it as it was so fresh, sparkling, well stocked and (dare I say it?) a bit exciting!  However, among the condiments I spotted Worcestershire sauce, which as you can see, flaunts that it has been matured for 18 months.  I would argue that it is still nearly raw, and therefore pretty inedible - it needs at least 30 months to mellow!  And as I lived opposite the trade entrance to the factory for over 10 years, I think I am well qualified to point this out!

The classic autumn sunsets continue - yesterday's was rather good, and I just managed to catch it over the top of the charming bungalow opposite.  Autumn leaf colour is also getting good.  We spotted a couple of sumac saplings showing off their best colours - the horror of that?  There are sumac roots encroaching into the Wildflower Meadow - as the nearest tree is over the road, the roots have made it under a tarmacked road, a 2 foot deep ditch and a leylandii hedge to get to where they are!

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Our spring time obsessions are cowslips and orchids, but wandering around the garden I find that they are already coming up.  Now I was well aware of the range of the cowslips, or so I thought, but the sheer density of them this autumn is a bit concerning - although something to look forward to when they flower in the spring.  The orchids on the other hand - there were no orchids there this year or last, where these two have been found.  That means that they have hitched a ride on one or more of the mowers or brush cutters, and are now colonising a new area.  They're coming to get us!

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And then there was last night - a hint of a social life again.  We went to the village bar to meet some friends and were faced with The Demented Bride, complete with knife through her head and glass shards in her heart, while the food offering wand handburgers!  For the first time in ages, I actually felt a bit festive, although as we arrived at 7pm and didn't get home until gone 10pm, I suspect I actually felt a bit tiddly!

Bring on November!

 

 

Orchids, roses and vegetables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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!