Rural Life

August festivities and harvests

Normally I find that things quieten down in the first couple of weeks of August, before exploding into action again after Assumption (15th August) as we go into Comice season and preparations for the Rentrée.  This hasn't been the case this year, with Convivial'été having its last hurrah of the season on the 1st August in Vieil Baugé.  The Comité des Fêtes was on war footing, despite a number of key players being away on holiday.  We were supported by the Baugé en Anjou technical services and tourism teams, but everything food and drink was down to us.  By 7pm we were girded and ready for the off.

And that was about the last moment of peace until 10pm!  I was taking dinner orders, not payments, just orders.  The first was at 7:30pm and the queue didn't stop until we had sold out of sausages and chips and andouillettes (rather unpleasant to my mind tripe sausages) and chips at about 10pm.  I stopped the queue at one stage for 30 seconds to put a sweatshirt on as the evening was cool, but that was it!  A chum took a picture of the clouds and caught the queue.

There were two bands.  I totally missed the exotic Bulgarian folk music, complete with strange machine - this is an official photo.

The second band, Pet't J Bus, were a lot of fun.  A punk ska combo who delighted in taking French classics and turning them into ska anthems, with the occasional own creation thrown in (although that might just have been the sound test), which seemed a bit more "basic", if you see what I mean, and less suitable for a family audience.  I did do a couple of videos but there is no chance of loading them on YouTube today, so here is a photo for ambiance.

We weren't the only ones having fun and frolics.  Chinon had its mediaeval market weekend, with lots of people dressed up in fun costumes, lashings of food and drink and music.  I imagine it was impossible to park too!  Anyway, another robbed photo, this time of our favourite brewer, Simon, without his glasses, but looking suitably of the period!

And if that wasn't enough fun, the Comice season kicked off early this year, with Beauvau (tiny village, but gave it's name to Place Beauvau in Paris, which is rather important) trying to rekindle the Comice spirit in its area.  We remember fondly an amazing Comice there perhaps 12 or 14 years ago with 4x4 demonstrations, a chainsaw wood carver, a competition for the biggest pumpkin among other delights, and close to the centre of the village.  This year was all about tractors and ploughing.  We had a lovely ice-cream each from a local farm and admired the range of tractors, but only stayed 20 minutes.

All the preparation work John did on the kitchen garden beds, with rotovating and adding loads of quality compost is paying off.  We are now up to about 150 courgettes harvested, and for the past couple of weeks have also been picking large quantities of small yellow pear-shaped tomatoes which are wonderfully sweet.  Today's haul also included two cayenne chilli peppers, and a green pepper, as well as some yellow carrots and an onion.  We will eat well and healthily tonight I think!

Earlier in the week I was able to pick the first Coeur de Boeuf tomatoes.  While not the largest on the plant, this one demonstrates the heart shaped form of the tomato and deep colour that gives it its name.  It was also delicious with a good dressing as an accompaniment to whatever we had for dinner that night.  There are many more of these to come, and they make a very good tomato sauce.

We've also been picking loads of blackberries - I will be making bramble jelly tomorrow for the first time in ages (I hope I can remember how!) as a real treat for the winter.  Today John was attacked by, or possibly flirted with, by a huge bumble bee.  Once removed from his shirt and placed on a plant, I was able to get a good look - what a marvellous specimen, and well over a centimetre long.

Next week the heatwave returns, but that might also ripen up more plums and tomatoes, so it could be a very red and purple post next week!  Have a good week!

 

Respite!

This photo was taken (not by me) in our garden on Tuesday afternoon at about 4:30pm.  This was the height of the latest heatwave and I have to confess to being slumped on a sofa, in front of a fan blowing air over 3 5 litre cannisters of ice.  The weather was uncomfortable, the Heath Robinson air con worked!

I finally went outside at about 10pm to lock the chickens away and do a bit of watering, as well as my regular stroll to the top of the hill in front of the house.  I was rewarded by a lovely sunset.

Today that all seems like a distant memory, with rain, soft, gentle, wet rain, and much cooler temperatures.  It won't last but today we are enjoying the change!

Yesterday we were in Chinon for dinner.  Next Sunday morning, the town will be the focus of the cycling world as the Tour de France sets off from there, for its ninth stage, heading south towards Chateauroux.  Naturally we will go along and see the spectacle, although how much there is to really see will be interesting.  We saw a stage finish once in Tours, and it was 2 to 3 hours of standing around for 10 seconds of whoosh!  The town is festooned with yellow bunting, flags and other decorations, and a line painted on the road for the official start line when the four jerseys line up behind the lead car.  The real start is about 10 kilometres out of town, but it is all about the spectacle in town.  One of the pharmacies had a suitable window display.

On Thursday morning, a bunch of us braved the metal convection oven that is the Comité des Fêtes storage barn to crack on with the float for the Comice.  My illness and successive heatwaves had slowed progress considerably, but we are on a deadline and fortunately a strong team of 7 were able to do all the panels that were prepared.  I have checked the photo and I'm not giving away any secrets when I show our admirable team at work.

One more session is all we need to get the panels finished!

A combination of heatwaves and the arrival of a new computer have encouraged me to deal with a trail camera - down in the corner where the Meadow meets the Plantation.  I was delighted to see that the hare uses this corner quite a bit, or was using it in March anyway!

It is very much an area where deer like to hang out - it provides cover and food and yet also allows a good view in the "vulnerable" directions.  This stag had a pretty impressive rack of horn in April and used his antlers to trash the trees and greenery a bit.  They are a menace when you have young or vulnerable trees, it has to be said!

By June, the results of a previous rutting season were around.  When very tiny, the fauns are stashed in long grass or cereal crops, but as they grow, they follow Mum around learning to feed themselves, and being left in slightly more interesting places, like among the trees that edge the Meadow.  These were learning to feed.

There is a water source nearby, which is also an attraction for the deer at the moment.  Some of the ponds are looking very dry, but two are fed by tiny springs that don't seem to fail, and keep the local wildlife going.

Next week may be all about the Tour, depending on the next bout of heatwaves and the speed of my internet connection (we will soon go over to fibre, but there are Things to be Done before that can happen), so may be a day late.  All very conditional I know!  Anyway, have a good week!

 

 

As spring ends, the summer triffid appears

We thought it had died, it took so long to appear.  Mind you, my Facebook memories hadn't featured it, so I probably shouldn't have doubted it.  The cristophine vine has shown its first shoots during the last week.  It is quite dry here at the moment, so we aren't seeing the rapid and lush growth we associate with this thug ... yet.  All we need is a good rain shower and it will be off.  Fortunately we have never bothered to dismantle its frame, so it has space to grow.  We are trying the companion planting experiment again, and there are 5 tomato plants around it.  Here we go again!

There has been little to photograph and little energy for taking photos this week - we were tired after the vide grenier and then the weather got seriously hot very quickly, and of course we have been tending to the needs of the poorly cat.  Spooky is now back up to fighting weight and regularly downing a small tin of gourmet food as well as most of a cheaper brand of sachet cat food.  Goodness knows whether he is blagging food off the neighbours as well - I sort of doubt it. 

The best photo of the week otherwise, is of the bright orange memorial rose (Orange King, in case you were wondering) that we bought to mark the demise of the resident ginger cat some four years ago.

However earlier in the month, I brought in one of the trail cameras for a check over.  Probably a good thing, as the batteries had failed, and it was also clear that there is an issue with the on/off switch - it is annoying that it is this, the cheapest relay in the whole unit, that is most likely to fail!  I hope I have found a work around, but won't know until I bring the camera back in soon.

This camera had been in place for a few months, and initially had been beaten up a couple of times, until we tied it in to a post very securely.  It was positioned to catch goings on near the badger set, and the route the badgers take to do their marauding elsewhere.  There is a small breach in the wire fence nearby and a small path through the grass that can be seen on Google Earth!  For at least the first few weeks, the plan worked well, as they didn't venture far from the set to look for tasty morsels and do their business.  Later they are just glimpses of a shape dashing one way or another, heading off to or coming back from, much more promising areas.

First, there is one badger nosing around for something interesting.

Then there are two badgers pottering around together.

There is one with a badger spotting the camera and running away.

Then there is the up close and personal.

Then the closer still.

And then a real good investigation before knocking the camera over!

The two trail cameras I've had that have had broken switches are those that have been attacked by animals, a badger in this case, and a boar in the other.  They are supposed to be robust, so I'm hoping it is just a coincidence.

Finally, because no sequence of videos is complete without the wild pigs, here is a family using the badger gap in the fence.

There are some nice stills in that batch of files, which I will dig out another day, when I am at a loss as to what to write about.  I have had the second trail camera in this week for a similar check up - I have to say that the contents were rather disappointing, with rather too much rat and mouse action, pine martens moving too quickly to be anything other than fuzzy and no ducks.  I'll see what is worth sharing though.

Have a good week!

 

More mundane activity than recently

The unseasonably hot weather has gone, leaving us with mild spring conditions, much more conducive to the French resident's annual May bugbear task of sorting out the tax return.  It is an existential grey cloud that hovers over you, with panics about declaring non-French fiscal instruments of all sorts, trying to decide which pensions are classed as private or public (not as obvious as it sounds), where to put that charity donation and have you got the paperwork to back it up if audited, and as a special for this year, how to do a tax return on 19 days pre-decease for my Mum. 

Actually that last one was so much easier than I had feared it would be, as naturally, the state was already aware of when she died and kept telling me it was just a 19 day tax return.  The only problem was the bit about "do you still live at the address we have for you" - I don't think the lawyer's office counts as heaven, hell or purgatory in the eyes of the French state.

The cooler, but still quite warm, conditions make it easier to get moving on the gardening tasks that are becoming urgent - mowing, planting, sowing, pruning.  We've done a lot of all that!

All bar one of the potatoes we planted are now up and the first ones are starting to think about flowering.  I am hopeful that we will have some new potatoes in June.

[photo of growing potatoes] - This photo just will not load - somewhere an AI bot has decided that it really is too dull, but the others are now there!

Last weekend I bought tomato and pepper plants and I have been able to get those planted now all fear of frosts has gone.  I regard tomato plants as the ultimate heart breakers, as I put them in so full of hope, and quite often by mid-July I am prepared to burn the wretched things as they are full of blight or broken and twisted.

While watering the peas, I noticed a bit of movement around my feet - a rather unsteady Red Admiral.  My Dad used to tell me lovely stories about a Red Admiral and a Painted Lady - I think they were very much stories on two levels as my Mum used to like to listen too.  Sadly he never wrote any of them down.

Once all the hard work had been done today, I walked round the grounds listening to birds and met a rather pretty damsel fly - it would be nice if this photo worked, as the only one to go on so far is of a boring vegetable bed!

So there she is!  I'm pleased that one worked, and perhaps tomorrow I can get more uploaded and the blog republished, but clearly the internet is clogged up with French people doing their tax returns on a Sunday afternoon and I guess I have to respect that.  Alternatively, I need to get signed up for fibre and then I won't have this problem (in theory).

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!

 

Blossom, videos and mystery packages

The week before last, the weather yo-yoed a bit between fabulous sun and dull and a bit moist, but this last week, the weather has settled into a sunny, dry and mainly warm pattern, although an occasional and rather vicious wind from the east blew part of the chicken run roof off.  That would have been the opening photo, but I just could not resist this cherry tree in full bloom.  It was humming with bees and the scent of the blossom was heady and gorgeous.  It's a pity that the resulting fruit, when not stolen by birds, is pretty well inedible as it is just a wafer thin coating of red on a pip.  Still, if the birds like it, and the bees like it, who are we to complain?

Most of the plum blossom is over, there is still some peach blossom around, but that is also mostly over.  The pears and cherries have taken over, with early apples ready to ping, and more apple and quince blossom for later in the month.  It is a beautiful time of the year and the leaves are unfurling almost as you watch, so each day the scenery changes a little bit.  The daffs are pretty well over but the tulips are coming into their own.  Next week i should be able to show off my whimsical wellies, but today the frizzy edged tulips we planted 6 years ago are putting on a display.

Before we get into Spring videos, I thought I'd better share the videos I took off a trail camera that had been put on a crossing point between two ponds.  I thought I would get some interesting coypu footage and perhaps a few ducks.  The coypu footage was really very dull - generally a tail disappearing in one direction or another, or a coypu sitting in the dark, thinking.  In some animals, that might be visually appealing, but in coypu, it isn't.  There were a few ducks towards the end of the two month installation.

I hadn't expected to see any badger activity down there, but they were around, including this bit from January.

These two deer were around in February.  The one closer to the camera looks like it might be pregnant with a couple of lumps around the belly area, but the other one looks like a fawn from last year.  I welcome thoughts.

Naturally there were boar doing the rounds in February - after dark so moving between areas of cover, I think.

They were back again in March and in force - they didn't leave much of a mark in the pond they were heading for bottom right of the screen.

The final segment is of the fox, living as it should and not raiding dustbins.  The pine martens were around too but didn't stay still enough in that area to give anything more than a quick sight of a fluffy tail disappearing in any direction.

There is a phenomenon over here in France for selling off undelivered and misdirected packages - I'm sure it is the same anywhere where there is a flourishing home delivery service and drivers who aren't given enough time to do their rounds.  They are "blind" sales in that you can generally have a good feel of the packages, but you can't open before you buy - it's a grown up lucky dip, but instead of a fishing rod with a hook on it and a bucket of parcels, you have a number of tables heaped with all sizes and shapes of packages.  In general, you pay by weight - today it was 3.50€ per 100 grammes.  It is important to remain sensible and not spend more than you can afford to lose, and we steered clear of anything that could have been clothes or shoes as they would have been unlikely to fit, but we came away with 3 mystery packages each as a sort of Christmas stocking (many months late I know) for the princely sum of 18 Euros.

These were my three packages.  The flat one bottom right, which I thought might be a lipstick, was in fact some jollop for thickening eyelashes - not really me.  The cylindrical one to the left was some highly concentrated car wash liquid - might be useful at some stage.  The box style one at the top was a no blue light click light, presumably for use in a bedroom or office setting, which might actually be useful, if it works, and is rechargeable too.  It was a lot of fun, but I have to emphasise, a complete lucky (or unlucky) dip and never pay out more than you can afford to lose.

Next week is set to be lovely again, so I must work in the garden, getting the other half of the potatoes planted and weeding and pruning and cutting back and preparing beds and sowing seeds and all that good stuff.  Have a good week too!

 

Spring, birds and horses

It's now officially spring!  Days are longer than nights, the weather is capricious and mostly warmer, and birds are singing.

The bird song is now getting pretty intense.  The all year round residents of the land in the Country (Garden, Orchard and Meadow) are getting pretty frisky and pairing up or even sorting out nests.  All year round we have a loud chorus of chaffinches, great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds and carrion crows.  During the winter, the woodpeckers (greater spotted and green in the main), dunnocks and long tailed tits are also very audible, with a core of about 10 species all year round.  We get a few interesting things passing through such as hawfinch and redwing as well.

Now the first of the summer visitors are coming back, with chiffchaffs, blackcaps and Cetti's warblers making a real racket, drowning out my beloved skylarks much of the time.  It is still too early for my summer favourites - nightingales, melodious warblers (even the name is fabulous) and golden orioles, but by the end of April they may be here.  I am astounded at the variety of birds we get, few of which are in the "concerns" categories of endangered species, but the sheer variety must mean something good.  Most months we have at least 30 to 35 species spotted using the Merlin birdsong analysis app - I have to stress that visual sightings are generally pretty limited, due to the quality and quantity of hiding places!

We spent Saturday in a very different way to normal, with a day at the races, courtesy of my brother who part owns a couple of horses and one was racing at Angers hippodrome yesterday.  I have been to the races at Worcester as a guest of an owner, and the dress code was formal, so heels, frock, posh jacket, a bit of bling and lippy.  No such codes were applied at Angers - clean, comfortable and suitable for the weather was the order of the day, even in the panoramic restaurant, where we had lunch with the trainer.

Even in the stable area, where we went to see the boy being walked around to warm him up, everything was very informal and open.

We were allowed in the parade ring, which I didn't photograph as we were listening to the discussion between trainer and jockey and then working out whether to bet (we didn't) and where best to watch the race.  We found a very good spot, on the advice of the trainer, right by the finish line and quite well sheltered from the typically moist and dank weather, that has plagued us these last 6 months.  I was well placed to see them jump the water fence.

For the bits of the race that weren't close by, we were also well placed to watch the big screen with the action from cameras around the course, and naturally there was the usual, unintelligible commentary over the loudspeakers.

Given the excellent position, I was able to capture him going over the finish line (navy blue shirt with a yellow V), not first, but not last and he made it all the way round, which 3 of his competitors didn't.

We then spent a lot of time with him, both in the ring and at the stables, as he cooled off after his exertions over 3,700 metres and a bunch of fences (I didn't count how many).  The initiated and eagle eyed will spot that he is missing a shoe, which he shed somewhere down the back straight - the jockey knows where!  You will also note the rather lovely heart shaped mark on his forehead - he is called Legend Race, which seems a silly name to me.

That was his first run for my brother and his colleagues, and his first race over fences; he has had a couple of outings over hurdles before this.  Overall, everyone was very happy, and it was certainly a fun day out.  Racing in France - much more egalitarian than the UK, and cheaper too!

I'll finish this week with a couple more flower photos, because it is that time of year when every new bloom is a source of joy.  Firstly there is a flower that isn't a cow slip and isn't a polyanthus and isn't a primrose, but probably a hybrid of all three.

And then there are my tiny anemones that each year I fear will have died off, but which appear again every spring over the space of a few weeks, and contrast nicely with the shoots of peonies that are springing up.

Soon there may be tulips!  Have a good week!

 

And we're back!

Apologies - there really is nothing that can be done when the main provider server is down.

Spring is so close now - the official start date is Thursday 20th March in France anyway - and we have been having more and more tasters of (hopefully) better days to come.  As you drive around the countryside now, the hedges are dominated by the bright, white blossom of blackthorn and wild plums.  It is a sight that always fills me with hope and anticipation for the longer days and better weather to come.  The blossom should also provide a lovely rich feed for the insects that will be starting to get the countryside humming, although up to now, the only place I have heard that buzz has been in a garden with japonica in full bloom.  The plum tree blossom that I have been tracking for the past few weeks is now out - but if you look at the photo, there are no bees to be seen.

Other flowers are also coming out - parts of the Meadow and Garden are turning into cowslip lawns.  I use the term cowslip probably to generously, as I gather there are lots of variants, but the number of these and the colour variations that we will get in due course (red and orange) are a very happy sight for me.  They are so prolific that mowing even paths can be a challenge if one is obsessed with not taking a few out!  Whatever, they are a sign that I need to get out in the garden more.

A sure sign that spring is on its way is the start of the car boot season, or vide grenier as they are called over here - literally empty attic.  Jarzé has the first major one, and it is big!  Despite foul weather with warnings of sleet and snow, between 150 and 200 brave souls turned out to set up their stands from about 6:00am and most would have to wait until about 5:00pm to be able to get away again.  In response to the terror attack years ago in Nice, events like this mean that roads are blocked off with large vans and huge slabs of concrete if held on public roads (fields are a bit different).  I would guess something between 10,000 and 20,000 people will have traipsed the length of Jarzé on Sunday in search of that essential item or elusive bargain.  We bought nothing but saw lots of people we knew.

As well as the outside plants starting to put on a show, my special Mediterranean corner of the Country Kitchen (or cat feeding room) is doing well.  The lemon "tree" is looking healthy and the leaves are a better colour than they were at the start of the winter.  The tiny olive "tree" seems taller and glossier now, while the big plant that we inherited from Francois the Drunk, and split into three, is preparing to flower.  The other two bits are in pots outside, and while they survived last winter, this one doesn't seem to have been as easy on them.  We will see if they revive and then I will bring them indoors in the autumn!

I am very fortunate to have a chum who used to grow flowers for a living and still has a large number of cutting flower plants.  If you pop round to see her for any reason, it is hard to get away without a bunch of something.  My latest gift was a bunch of large and lovely anemones - wow, they are spectacular!

Now that the birds have found the fat balls that I put out for them over the winter, they can't get enough of them.  This is a shame as I stop feeding the birds on the 1st April, as there might be babies hatching and they don't need the somewhat artificial foods in commercial fat balls, or peanuts.  This fuzzy image shows two well fed great tits stuffing their beaks - I would prefer it if they were ripping the pine processionary nests apart, but they are lovely to watch.

So that's it for this week's late epistle, and I hope to be back on Sunday as usual.  Have a good rest of the week!

 

Such variety!

All of a sudden, the weather has changed and the fog has lifted.  Spring flowers are starting to show, and I am particularly pleased with these miniature narcissi, that are flowering in the Fergus Memorial Flowerbed.  I would buy pots with sprouting bulbs from the market at la Flèche a couple of years ago, as pressies for my mother when she was in her nursing home.  The heat of her room brought them on quickly, so she enjoyed watching them develop and bloom, and once the flowers started to fade, I would swap them out for something else and plant the pot of bulbs somewhere in the gardens.  Today I found a clump of hyacinth leaves, but they won't be out for a while yet.

The sunshine inspires us to activity - today I ache, having been taunted by brambles into doing some strimming yesterday.  We got another trailer of compost on Friday and have started to move that down to the potato bed, ready for John to do some rotavating soon.  I have potted up freesia bulbs and small strawberry plants for treats later in the year, and have started to tackle the pile of things I put to one side to wash when the weather meant they could be dried outside.  Our solitary crocus also chose this week to bloom and fade away again.

An evening job is to close up the chicken run.  We don't lock them in a coop, they prefer to roost on a high perch and it is probably safer and certainly more hygienic that they do so, avoiding too much red mite infestation.  Bridie the Freeloading Bantam spends her days with the flock but at night prefers her own company on the roof of the chicken run, even when it rains.  As she is pretty feral, we can't insist on putting her in the run.  When we close up at night, we give them a ration of corn (not maize) to peck at so they sleep with a full crop and have something to mull over during the long evenings (no TV for them!).  Bridie takes her ration on the chicken run roof, so one walks back to the house with a percussive accompaniment as she taps at the grains.

Which brings me nicely to the main topic this week.  Last week I brought in the trail camera that sits at the crossroads of two animal tracks.  I love this location, as the camera is high enough to get a good view and avoid eye contact with the animals. there is next to no human traffic, so it is all about the wildlife, and as time goes by, the activity is more and more natural.  As it is by water, there is also a good variety.  Ignoring the small birds (blackbirds, thrushes, great tits) and rodents (mice and rats), as well as cats, there are 9 reels that follow, each with a different species captured over the past 2 months.

In December, there was this nice footage of a badger - not a species I had noted there before.

There were also pheasants knocking around, having escaped the seasonal dinner table I guess.  This was a male that hadn't been tagged - some have plastic neck collars, indicating they have been released I believe.

In January, the fox was knocking around, presumably looking for a nice, tasty mouse or rat to nibble on.

The coypu was also out and about - I've not seen him taking much interest in plants before, although they are vegetarian I gather.

Of course there is a chance that the coypu was checking out markings left by other species.  You can see here that the same twig got marked by the pine marten that lives around there.

The deer wander through here but can't get out at the far end as they are too tall and not strong enough to force their way through the undergrowth either.  When it is dry I think they pop down into the pond, but not at the moment as it is pretty full.

I was delighted to pick up images of the hare - I had been afraid that the poacher who brazenly mooches through our land had picked them off, so this film was delightful.

Then there are the boar!  This is rare to see, as it is a video in daylight, but count them and know that one or possibly two went through before the video started and there are still two or three to come at the end of the footage!  I find the piglets delightful, with their striped coats, but there really are too many and with up to three litters of up to 10 piglets per year, they could yet take over Western France!

And finally, video sets from this point would not be complete without the mallards.  This seemingly bonded couple have appeared in the last fortnight, and I imagine there will be ducklings in due course, once the male has gone off again! 

The forecast for the coming week is excellent, so I expect to be doing a lot of gardening, and then moaning about how much I ache.  I have a trail camera focussed on another crossroads by ponds which needs to come in for checking and then repositioned, as the point where it is gets far too much human traffic.  I can't promise that for next week I'm afraid.

Have a good week!

 

A more positive outlook

Finally bugs are behind me for the moment and I can look more positively at the coming weeks and think about what needs doing.  Last week we dug up the very last potatoes from the 2024 crop - a bit sprouted but eating nicely!  The potato bed is now getting ready for other, more interesting crops, having received most of the 400 kilos of top quality compost.  The first strip has been sown (too late in my view, but nothing I can do) with broad beans, with wire cages over the top to defend the seed bed from cat bottoms.  The next block will have onions and shallots when I am a bit more convinced about the weather, while the final block should have the aubergines, chillies and courgettes, assuming I get round to sourcing plants or sowing my own.

On Friday I picked up what I thought would be refurbished Asian hornet traps, but turned out to be brand new ones, with my old trap numbers painted on them.  They will go out in the next couple of days, as I have seen a bumble bee, so things are starting to stir in insect world.  The plum blossom on the mirabelle style trees is starting to look very close to exploding so that will attract other things, and therefore also overwintered Asian hornet queens looking for nourishment.

The fog is less omnipresent at the moment and that means we are getting more interesting sunsets of an evening.  It is also lovely that those sunsets are ever later into the evening - just 4 weeks now until the clocks go forward, although the mornings are still too dark to be inspiring.

In theory this is the last weekend of the big game hunting season - I'm sure they will find a good reason to carry on but Sunday walks may be safer from next weekend onwards!  Looking around the plot, there is evidence of a lot of animals on the move, and I've just scanned through some trail camera footage which shows that nothing has stopped the wild boar in their inexorable fight to conquer the French countryside, as a group of 15 passed through!  For today you will have to do with print evidence though.

This week I had to resort to ordering a load of t-shirts - we've not indulged for perhaps 5 years and it is showing, so I gave in to cheap fashion and ordered 7 (3 for me, 4 for John).  Home delivery didn't seem to be possible without a huge additional cost, while leaving the parcel at a local shop didn't seem to be an option any more - I had to choose between three different ranges of deposit boxes.  Now I have to say it all worked really nicely and from placing the order on Wednesday, it was pretty amazing to collect the goods on Friday, but...  I liked going to a shop to pick up the parcel, sometimes I was tempted to buy something from them too, and certainly they got paid a bit for being the deposit point.  So while these boxes work very nicely, I think I preferred the human touch!

Now I need to go and watch the last half hour of an exciting rugby match!  Have a good week!