Rural Life

Autumn Lockdown - Day 39 - a walk in the wood

Today has not been an exciting day to write about.  I've been doing a bit of work with one of my clients, and would heartily recommend the Water, Mills and Marshes LPS website as a place to linger to learn about the Norfolk Broads, the mills there and the work being done to restore land and buildings, and to educate people.  I was there in early March, just before the first lockdown hit, and it is a hauntingly beautiful area.

Less cheery was the news that the staff at the Francois Rabelais Hospital in Chinon have been affected by Covid quite badly.

Yesterday however, after a visit to the Boys in the Country, I took the long way home and visited the One Acre Wood for a walk and contemplation.  The previous Sunday we had both visited and had worked hard to fill the trailer with firewood.  The weather had been perfect - sunny and a hint of warmth.  Yesterday the conditions were less good, and I was on my own, but there were still interesting things to marvel at, including self-seeded cyclamen plants, and the ever changing light and views as more leaves fall. 

The service trees do not make good firewood (although we gather they aren't bad for charcoal), and often just collapse and fall for no obvious reason.  We tend to leave the trunks to rot down or provide food for whatever passes through the wood.  I found evidence of something having a good rummage in one of the logs.

Further round, I found a new mushroom had come up - it is a bit late, as many of the others that were around earlier in the year have rotted away or are looking like something from a horror movie.  I don't know why but pied de mouton (hedgehog mushrooms in English) seem to fruit very late in our woodland, and this is a rather nice example.  They are edible I gather, but I'm never entirely sure about them, and none of the hunters or scrumpers that come through the wood take them, so I leave them as an interesting curiosity and further evidence of the excellent biodiversity there.

In the words of the song, it beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as holly berries are everywhere and haven't been eaten yet by the birds.  In another week or so I might be inclined to cut a few sprigs and make a wreath, or I might just leave them to be enjoyed by nature.  I'll see how I feel.  I won't have them in the house, as the berries might be food for mice, and might be poisonous for cats.

With three cats living in the house, you would think I wouldn't be too worried about mice, but Zola brings them in and then forgets about them.  A couple have been living hidden in a crack between kitchen units and only coming out when we aren't moving, to eat their way through a packet of polenta.  Once we realised what was going on, we kept the packet in place, and caught one, and took it away outside.  Its chum finished the packet on Sunday morning.  On Sunday evening, it was looking for something else and making a noise, and for once Zola followed up, laid in wait for about 10 minutes and caught it.  And ate it - as the only evidence I found was a tail and a bit of "inner mouse".

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 36 - a better day

One of the things that made yesterday so dismal and depressing was the weather - heavy overcast from morning to night and wet and dank and cold.  So it was with huge relief that once the day dawned today, it was with sunshine (and a bit of frost).  That golden luminosity makes even the most challenging day seem better, and while today wasn't hugely challenging, some of yesterday's issues are still lurking.

The morning was devoted to dealing with a backlog of emails and phone calls, after lunch I had to honour my commitment to the Boys in the Country and go and feed them.  They all appeared, were pleased to see me, and most were very hungry too - well cold weather and growing a good layer of thick underfur takes it out of a chap.  Once they had munched their fill, we went and checked the enclosed garden - I had to sit on one of the chairs so they could all have a good love in with me for 10 minutes.  Then washing up cat bowls in cold water, which is always a joy, before I went out to explore the other plots.

I always like to have a look to see what is going on in Badger Mansions, slap in the middle of the wild flower meadow.  The damp soil made it so much easier to see their paw prints, including claw marks.  There seemed to have been a bit of activity since the rain stopped.

I then walked round the edge of the meadow, accompanied by Clause who managed to raise a pheasant, but not catch it.  That was much more interesting than me, so I was able to go the rest of the way without being shouted at in Cat.  When I got to where the old log pile used to be, I found an excellent example of the disgusting Giant Killer Orange Slug that lives around here.  We don't have any in the garden, but we have loads in the One Acre Wood.  This one was about five inches long.

At this point, Clause decided I needed to be defended against the slug, so came back from pheasant bothering and stood around shouting at me.  I felt it was time to leave.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 26 - a few pictures

I'm actually taking part in a Zoom presentation as I type this - the presentation was supposed to start half an hour ago, but there are announcements and introductions and so I thought I would multi-task, although this will be mainly pictures.  Finally the presentation starts, and the speaker seems amusing.  So here is some mistletoe

The sun setting through trees was particularly dramatic this afternoon.  I liked this tree in particular.

The sun setting through the trees was also a satisfying image.

Finally thoughts on cats and boxes, as we got a vast delivery of very senior cat food yesterday.  Any cat cannot resist the lure of a cardboard box.

Autumn Lockdown - Day 21 - a different walk

The weather changed overnight as a cold front went through, and while it was actually quite nice and I got the laundry dry, it was also much colder than of late throughout the day.  This made sitting on hooman much more appealing for Nibbles, and at lunchtime she spread herself up my chest and got up close and personal.  She allowed me to take about 50 photos of her - that's how comfortable she was!  A few were out of focus and she wouldn't look direct at the camera most of the time, but ancient tribal beliefs would say that her soul is now mine (I think she thinks it works the other way round though).

When I managed to extricate myself from cat, I went out for my allowed exercise.  I had to post a letter, and had thought of going on one of the familiar routes, but wanted a change of scene, so I went down to the Pont de Godeau (he still didn't turn up) and then up to the Voie Verte and along that towards the open country.  The Voie Verte used to be a railway line and once decommissioned, was then left to run wild, which made it a great place for wildlife.  When it was reopened as a cycle and pedestrian route, that exposed a couple of large badgers' sets along the line.  Much to my distress, last winter, someone erased one of these.  Either it was overzealous path maintenance or it was a farmer trying to avoid badger tracks over his land.  Either way, my walk this afternoon demonstrated nicely that they failed and Badger Burrows are being extended and improved for the winter!

Further round on my walk, I looked across to the village from where I know to be the 1 kilometre as the crow flies from home limit.  I must admit I was very lucky with the time I chose to go out for my walk as I had sun the whole way, which took the chill off and made everything so much more optimistic.

The final photo from my walk is of the cressonière that is perhaps 200 metres from home and taps into the same groundwater spring as our well.  When we first saw it, we thought it was an old washing point or lavoir, but talking to locals, we now know it was a tank for growing watercress.  The water flow has diminished considerably from what it used to be, and I don't think that is due to residual drought conditions.  There have been groundworks and building further up the hill which are likely to have impacted on the flow.  I'm not sure how clean the water would be anymore either, so I wasn't tempted to grab a handful of greenery - and I don't think it is watercress in there anyway!

By the way, it is Beaujolais Nouveau day today!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 20 - trouble

Wednesday, so market day at la Flèche, and fortunately it is a restricted market at the moment, only food and plants.  Why is this a good thing - normally I am complaining about it?  Well fibre is coming to la Flèche, and with it, the urge to dig up everything everywhere and inconvenience as many people as possible for the longer term greater good.  I've ranted before about laying fibre optic cable.  Today, the whole of the riverside parking was closed off to punters, so we had to park where the frippery stands would normally be.  If they had been there, it would have meant a lot of people having a very long walk!

Within the market, all was as normal, although fewer people than last week - but last week was a bank holiday.  Eggs were 20 cents each for free range - important as our freeloading hens aren't laying at present.  I had planned to get a couple more this autumn, but first laziness and then lockdown have scuppered that plan, and we won't be able to increase the flock until sometime in the spring I fear.

Then on to see the Boys in the Country - and this is where the trouble comes in, as conditions were ideal for spotting the nests of pine processionary caterpillars.  Not so much now, but we have until the end of February to get traps rigged up on two of the pine trees to stop the b@st@rd caterpillars reaching the soil to pupate and fly away.  Before anyone gets righteous about that, they are a non-native invasive species with few predators (blue and long tailed tits are starting to eat them I gather) and poisonous spines that can blind or otherwise mutilate cats and dogs, and cause particularly nasty and long lasting sores on humans (I know, I've been affected twice).  The spines do wash down into the soil, but if you are planting or if (being a cat) you dig a hole for your "needs", you can still be affected by the spines.  No, they just have to go!

It was a glorious morning, indeed it was lovely until about 3pm, then boom, the clouds arrived.  Tant pis!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 17 - details

I have a friend who helped to get herself through the first lockdown (in Denmark) by using her daily exercise period to find something and photograph it in enormous detail.  She looked at flowers, insects, leaves, buds - and each photo was a small miracle and was shared with her chums across the world.  Today I have taken a leaf out of her book and have details of two natural things that have brought me a certain joy.

People go on about lichen being rare, delicate and a sign of good, clean air.  As some of these are scientists, I guess I have to believe them.  Clearly the lichen in our garden is a mutant version, as a large quantity has chosen to colonise one of the plastic chairs in the garden, is growing away strongly and is pretty well impossible to remove, even with a pressure washer and a scouring pad.  Why would I want to remove it?  Well, I'm not so keen on sitting on lichen as it also marks your clothes quite badly (it is purely a nightmare that it would start to colonise my jeans as well, but someone might want to make a Dr Who script out of that).

That's the chair leg, and this is the chair back.

I've shared a couple of photos trying to show the joy of spindle berries, but today I found some that I could get up close and personal to, and these do show the colours and the shapes.  My mother in law remembered seeing great banks of spindle berries on the shrubs by the side of the railway line over the Malverns, taking her and her sister to the school in Herefordshire they were evacuated to.  We tried to buy and plant spindles in her garden in London, but they were never as prolific as the wild ones here around us.

Finally I did promise another racoon photo on a Sunday.  Here is a photo of Rachel the Racoon, another of the critters fed by a friend of a friend in the States.  Isn't she gorgeous?

 

Summer Reflections 6 - harvests and sunsets

We are into September, but these last few days, it hasn't felt like it with hot and sticky conditions and often cloudless skies.  Harvesting has been going on apace, and our garage smells magnificent at the moment as there are 150 kilos of ripe quince in there, waiting for a slot at the juicing plant.  Quince juice isn't something you would happily drink on its own, but add sugar and time and the skills of the distillery and it makes a very delicious eau de vie.  I've also set off a large jar with a shredded quince, a bit of sugar and about 50cls of quince eau de vie to make a very special quince liqueur.  Quince is a good remedy against the winter stomach bug that does the rounds (my excuse, I'm sticking to it).  Tomorrow I will start to make quince jelly.

We have two barrels of fizzing and burping fruit at the moment, even before we get the quince one going.  There is a plum one - deep maroon and brooding; and a pear one - the colour doesn't merit description and it is like the surface of an uneasy volcano.  Both smell sweet and interesting though.

The badgers in the wildflower meadow are clearly bringing in stores for the winter - there is a dusty trail through the dead stems and a lot of sand by the set entrance.

Those days where there has been a bit of cloud in the evening, we have seen some dramatic and colourful sunsets.  Well, I have to walk down a path to the boule de fort car park to see them as the Bungalow of No Merit is now in the way.  In previous years, we have admired from the living room and bedroom windows.  Anyway, new local order, but glorious skies to gaze at in wonderment.  My photos don't do them justice, but enjoy anyway!

Summer ends on 22nd September apparently.

 

Summer Reflections 5 - it's nearly autumn

There are storms in the UK and we are due temperatures below 20ºC at the weekend - summer is definitely on its way out. 

During the summer we had the migrants from the south - swifts, swallows and house martins - who made each day special with their aerobatics and their song, loud and strident for the swifts, soft and bubbling for the swallows and martins.  We also had the migrants from the north - friends with second homes in the area, finally allowed across the Channel to enjoy their other homes and gardens and breathe a bit more freely in our rural paradise.

The UK Government-imposed quarantine on the whole of France (other governments do localised ones, which seems a bit more sane) saw the northern migrants flee home, with no real idea of when they can come back "officially".  There are still a few stragglers for whom quarantine holds limited fear, although insurance might be a bigger issue.  The weather and the seasons mean our other migrants are heading back south.  It is a couple of weeks since I heard the shriek of a swift, and the swallows are grouping up and heading off slowly now: we won't see them again until March or April next year.

This year the drift to autumn feels sadder than usual - normally there is a gentle melancholy once the Comice is over, knowing that days are getting shorter and cooler and wetter.  This year it feels more stark.  There are no Comices due to Covid, and in a normal year, every weekend in September is taken up with some event or other (mechoui, Patrimoine, forum des associations, the Bake Off, the volunteers' picnic), this year events are few and far between.  The forum des associations goes ahead with no demonstrations, food or drink and patrimoine will happen, but rather reduced and with less fanfare.  And then nothing.

We all sit and wait to see what the Second Wave will be like.  It will be important to seek out the small discoveries that make life more joyous - I might have to start a new blog series on that!

In the meantime here are photos of the new windmills at Chigné, not yet commissioned and some nutters are trying to get them removed via judicial review!  Also a photo of an unhappy carp - the oxygen levels in the public lake don't seem quite right for it, and a nice view of the church and a dramatic sunset.

Summer reflections 3 - love and lighting

It's been an interesting week here in rural France.  Holiday makers and second home owners are starting to arrive, as is Covid-19, although Anjou is not as badly affected as Brittany or PACA, we have moved from green to amber on RAG ratings.  The tourism season meant that there was an added attraction at the market last Saturday, as local authors did a book signing session - mostly wearing masks.

While the start and end of the week were hot and sunny, the middle was less impressive, with cloud, some light rain and cool temperatures for July - it's not unknown.  The conditions were clearly right for stag beetles to get it on, and I found a pair at it in the aubergine and pepper bed.  I wouldn't normally comment on beetle sex, but these are seriously big beetles and they made a bit of noise, plus I have chums who are that way about stag beetles.

The photo was after the event...

As the weather improved, so the long evenings were more appealing for late walks after I have watered the potted plants.  This photo shows a pretty novel light on the church spire (yes, it is twisted, just like Chesterfield, well not exactly like Chesterfield, but...), as it is really only at about 9:45pm or later that the sun hits that bit of the tower.

Apologies for the revolting bungalow in the foreground.

The vegetable plot is starting to get into its swing - here is Fergus guarding our swag (hard earned swag).  We have also robbed a couple more potatoes, and the beefsteak tomatoes are ripening.

Finally, it is a good year for my favourite flower.  We have three pots of agapanthus and all are out, but this one is the most dramatic.

Have a nice weekend and wear a face mask in enclosed spaces!

 

 

Day 29 of 30 Days Wild - it's damp in the One Acre Wood

Not today, as I have either been chained to my computer or out at yoga, getting within 4 inches of touching my feet with my forehead, but yesterday, we got to the One Acre Wood for a walk after working on the plot.

Often at this time of year, it is cool and dry in the wood, with the air full of insects.  Sadly, as everywhere else, there are fewer insects in the wood, which is a shame.  Because of the recent rain, it was very damp underfoot and quite humid.  There is a beautiful bit of moss on the rustic bench by the upper seasonal pool (currently empty).

Further down the way, and looking through the trees it felt a bit like a temperate rain forest, although it isn't.

And every good forest has to have its monsters, this is ours.  They really are so unpleasant to look at, these monster orange slugs, but I tolerate them, as if the giant orange slugs are out and about, there is a chance that we will get mushrooms later in the year.  No scientific basis, just observation over the 15 years we have had the wood.

Apologies for this being so late in the evening - I'll bet you have nightmares about our Orange chum!