Rural Life

Summer miscellany

Yes, summer is firmly installed now, and finally the verges are taking on their straw colour that I normally associate with July.  It arrived in a rush, with last Saturday starting to look promising, and last Sunday was as perfect a summer day as you could ask for.  But it didn't know when to stop, and Monday was hotter, which made visiting a chum in hospital more appealing as they had air conditioning.  Tuesday was deeply unpleasant - up to 39ºC measured in the shade in the garden, but with humidity, feeling a lot worse, and since then things have slowly calmed down to normal high summer.

On Monday, to finally welcome in summer, we got most of the cover on the gazebo in the garden.  First I had to check all the fixings and resew a number of the tapes, as they had been buffeted rather in the winds last autumn.  It is easiest to use my sewing machine outdoors, where the light is good and the table doesn't have a slippery surface.  Poirot, the elderly cat, decided I needed help and supervision - fortunately it didn't make life too difficult!

We have started on the annual mow of the wildflower meadow (royal we).  There is never an ideal time to do it, and currently it is a sea of white umbellifers, mostly wild carrot I think, but there are few butterflies, and the crickets seem to get out of the way OK, and if we leave it too long, the brambles and old man's beard and tiny saplings get more difficult to pulverise.  Seeds of things like orchids and broomrape are now ripe so will be spread around in the mowing process.

A favourite flower is gaura, and this year, after it had been well and truly strimmed down to ground level, it has come back with a glorious display for us.  I guess this could be the answer for how to keep it lovely!

I have been through the files on the trail camera that was overlooking one of the ponds.  It wasn't the best placement, and it overlooked a path going across so you get lots of photos and videos of animal bottoms disappearing out of shot.  This short video of a meandering doe is a rarity, and she doesn't stay around that long either!

Perhaps a day after the camera was set up, a stag took an interest in it, and had a good go and dismantling it, but failed.

The main purpose of the camera placement was to catch the boar having mud baths.  They leave an imprint in the mud that is impressive, so I hoped to capture something interesting.  One night I thought I might be in luck.  A boar arrives.

It gets itself into position, after a bit of preparation.

But is then too far away from the trail camera to set it off again, until bath time is over anyway, at which point I get an image of a muddy boar!  There is evidence of the boar bath place in the mud of the pond of course.

I would show you that, and the boar after its bath, but the internet is so slow and intermittent, I need perhaps 20 goes to get a photo loaded up, so I am calling it a day.  Enjoy your week!

 

 

It's all about weather, and the Olympics

After years of planning and months of the Olympic Torch passing through as much of France as possible, and people trying to get enthused about it all, last week it started!  Opinions are divided over the opening ceremony, ranging from censorship, through moans about it being boring and taking too long, being bitty and strange, to out and out adoration.  It seems to depend on how well you know French history and culture and whether you can be bothered to dredge your memory for interminable teams with flags parading into tight capacity Olympic stadia in previous iterations.

I can see both sides - from my academic and intellectual perspective, it was an interesting take on how to parade sportspeople from over 200 nations into a holding area where they can observe the Olympic oath being taken by representatives.  The logistics are always challenging, so to take to the water adds another dimension and a different way of doing it.  I suspect Los Angeles won't try to imitate that!  On the detail of some of the tableau, well, if you don't know French history or popular culture, many things will go over your head and the always quirky Philippe Katerine may well be a long way outside your comfort zone.

Some have said it was too inclusive - but working to the French moto of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, I don't think you can overdo the inclusiveness, including a 100 year old Olympic Gold medal holder being the third last link in the torch relay.  There were moments that had me teared up (French boat going under the bridge), or held in wonder (the horse charging up the Seine), or just downright proud to live in France (the light show around the Tour Eiffel), but people will never agree.  I liked it, you may not have done, but as always I found something else to do while the teams were on the move.

I've not included a picture - there are many in the public domain.

In the run up to Friday, all the discussion was about the weather - would it stay dry?  Would the front pass through beforehand?  Would it just be a bit of cloud and the odd drop of rain?  At no time did the forecasters say, "It will pee it down like you haven't seen in Paris in July without thunder for years".  O well!  The week was so mixed with hot sun on Wednesday and Thursday, and now again on Sunday.  It just goes to show you can't rely on the weather behaving itself.  But today things are looking lovely.

The sky last evening did actually presage a change in weather, with a wonderful, luminous pink effect across high clouds heading away to the east.  Today is the transition from something akin to October to high summer, which is due to last three or four days I gather!

Yesterday I dug up a load of potatoes for the week - they are looking good, but aren't really interesting to photograph.  While I worked I was whistled at a lot by a golden oriole, so I replied, imitating its call.  We kept up our conversation for a good quarter of an hour - I wonder what we said!

A final item from yesterday, was that the usual Saturday market in Baugé was augmented by the monthly display of classic, vintage and collectable cars and vans.  Some are quite magnificent, while others make me feel old as they were normal when I was growing up.  To add to the display this month, they brought along entertainment - a clarinettist playing jazz standards to a backing track.  He was very good and it was a delight.  I hope he comes back again soon!

Anyway, for a Sunday, we have a very busy end of the day (annoying as I would quite like to vegetate in front of the TV watching the cross country bit of the Olympic 3 day event from Versailles, but they keep cutting away to basketball or table tennis, so I guess I'm not missing much).  I had better go and do "stuff", and wish you a good week!

 

The day after the night before!

Yes, I'm feeling a bit muzzy today, after quite a day or two.  In part it is because the heat ramped up again very quickly, which seems to knock my system a bit.  Jumping up 5 degrees in a day, then dropping back down again a couple of days later means I don't get to acclimatise to the heat.  But in the main, it is because after a few years' gap, the Vieil Baugé Journée Champêtre is back and was yesterday. 

To be honest, I wasn't too involved this year, but John had to be up and away early yesterday morning for setting up the site, so I wasn't able to sleep in.  Then I was on the food line for about 3 and a half hours, not arduous but standing up all the time, which doesn't help my feet or knees.  Then there was getting to eat my meal, drink my drink, see the fireworks and drift home to sort out chickens and cats and wind down from a very French experience (it still mangles my brain, particularly if I am mixing French and English during an event).  So late to bed, and in a house that had got too hot during the day.  Muzzy really does cover it!

Still, it was a success and people enjoyed it and it is good to get village traditions back.  Here are a few photos, but Maryline Margas has posted a slide show of much better ones on Facebook. 

We were threatened with thunderstorms for yesterday - which fortunately for us didn't materialise.  The threat did galvanise me into lifting the yellow onions before they got too wet.  I was pleased with the size of them, but a strange phenomenon was that quite a few sets produced two onions.  I only planted single sets at each point, but about six did this, which I have never seen before.

In my muzzy state this morning, I was in the right frame of mind to sit and watch butterflies on the buddleia.  To be honest I would have liked to have seen more, but it might not have been the best conditions for them, although there were a lot of bees getting nectar for the hives, which has to be good.  There was this rather nice Comma butterfly - you can't see the comma, as that is on the underside of its wings, and he clearly wanted to soak up the sun.

Some of the high summer flowers are now coming into their own.  The crocosmia is rather swamped by surrounding weeds but the flowers are magnificent.  The statement white lily type thing in the garden tubs is starting to look particularly fine.  And then there are the canna lilies - these are all from three bulbs or sets John bought about 15 years ago, and have since gone mad, been removed from places and chucked on heaps or left on top of the soil to be eaten, only to colonise, and get very big indeed.  I love them when they are like this, big, brash and blousy.

So that is it, for this week.  Next week I hope to have sorted out some wildlife photos and video.  For those who watched the snake videos, I think I know where one of them lives, and I found that quite disturbing...

 

Satisfaction?

OK, first up a warning.  This post isn't quite as family friendly as normal, or certainly the second half isn't!

The Rolling Stones sang that they couldn't get no satisfaction - for me that is a double negative.  What does satisfaction look like in the animal world?  Well when I took in the trail camera by the pond, I found a series of videos that implied that piggie heaven was probably a jolly good scratching post!  The poor tree that was used is not the largest or strongest, but somehow survived the onslaught.  It is also popular with birds (presumably nice things get left behind), the pine marten and deer.  Here is a feathered friend who cannot be named for politeness purposes seeing what has been left on the bark.

But now to boar action - when indulging in a jolly good scratch, even other boar are no distraction!

It's the tail on this one that gets me!

And once you have done the back, a good go at ears and neck is also pleasing.

Then a final scratch and what a satisfying evening for a boar!

Now if you are funny about snakes, stop reading around here!

I went to feed The Boys in The Country, and two joined me in their funny kitchen area, demanding food, while we could hear a lot of noise on the rood.  I assumed it was the third cat, so called him a couple of times to come in for food, but the noise kept going.  So once the two were snarfing away at their food, I went outside to see why Donald hadn't come in for his kibble.  I could see a flash of something white or cream, but it didn't look like a cat, so I got a step ladder and set it up and climbed up to see what was going on.  I then got my phone out pretty quickly, because it was unexpected.

First attempt

I settled myself more carefully on the ladder and got two further sequences, firstly here, and then this one.

These are not dangerous, they are Aesculapian snakes and can grow up to two meters long.  They are nonvenomous and while there is a small colony in northern Wales, they are really native to mainland Europe.  They are famed in Greek and Roman mythology for their relationship to the god of healing, Asclepios (Greek version) and are to be seen even today on the symbol for pharmacies in France and other places too I'm sure.  They eat rodents, including rats, so should be welcomed, not least as baby ones will eat large slugs and snails, including the flesh eating orange jelly slug.  Eggs and young are vulnerable to boar, hedgehogs and badgers, so I hope this couple are very careful where they hide their stash.

So there you are - two very different sets of videos but showing that animals enjoy life too!

Have a good week!

 

 

Could it get worse?

Well that was a mostly cool and damp week, but there were some compensations.  A novelty for the village is finally an alternative to the boulangerie that closed back in 2020 - a depot de pain, or bread drop-off, based around the village bar.  They have baguettes and bread, and if you want croissants or similar, you can order the day before.  First we tried the baguette on Monday and found it to be good.  Then we ordered croissants for Thursday morning, and were able to have a coffee and eat our croissants on the terrace in the sun, before it started to rain again.  This has added a whole new dynamic to our week we feel.

We have also had storms this week, including a humdinger on Wednesday, or rather two humdingers.  The first hit while I was in the Comité des Fêtes barn with a couple of chums working on the float for the Comice in August.  There were only three of us, not least as two were working hard on steaming off the last vestiges of last year's decorations from the corner posts, and you can't work with crèpe paper when there is steam in the air. 

I took the opportunity to design most of the missing panels.  Anyway, we were kind of stuck in the barn, as a storm started up at about 3:20pm and didn't leave us alone until about 4:45pm, at which point we scattered off to our different homes, ready for the next one.  That was a long and loud one too, and caused a lot of damage to crops and the roads not so very far away.

We had more rain on Thursday, Friday and early Saturday morning, but now it seems to have stopped for a day or two, to allow us to recover and take stock.  I did some of that yesterday - the shallots had basically collapsed, and I feared the worst - white rot.  Fortunately that doesn't seem to have been the case, just lack of sun and a decision on their part to give up on a bad job and try again next year (except I lift them and plant new stock each year).  I am hoping there are enough for two pots of pickled shallots for Christmas!

This week I was able to vote in a general election.  Not here in France sadly, as I am not a citizen - something I must try to sort out over the winter.  Instead I was able to take advantage of the change to the UK law that used to limit those living abroad to only having a vote for the first 15 years of absence.  Apparently after that we had no links to the UK - well apart from family, pensions, language, friends, potentially investments etc.  It was the one thing the last government changed that was a step in the right direction, so I have voted in the town where I was last registered to vote.  And it was good. 

There are elections due too here in France and the thing they have in common with the UK ones, is all the pundits asking "Why now?".  Of course if an election hadn't been called, they would have spent the summer saying "Why not now?".  In both instances, the rise of the Far (or Nasty) Right is a talking point at the very least.  The French elections seem to be based more on who can get through a day without making a total farce of their campaign.  The UK elections seem to be about whether the Conservatives get more seats than the Lib Dems, or if they can even beat the spoiled ballot papers in some areas.  How utterly depressing!  Much better to focus on nice things, like flowers.

In both elections, nature, the state of the planet and the environment seem to be at the bottom of the agenda.  Perhaps because the TV pundits are all urban types who are more concerned with where to find the best coffee, rather than whether it will be possible to grow coffee in future. 

We have left a few leeks to flower, more by accident that design, but they are very popular with the local insects, so clearly a good thing!

There is an even better photo with a bee in flight, which I am trying to load - one more try!

All of this blether means that intended subjects such as animal satisfaction and more details on the coypu will have to be tales for another day.  However I have loaded up new footage of a deer for you, having a go at a tree:

And another bit of film to show that the boar are still around:

And another with ducks, because ducks are happy fowl:

And there is so much more wildlife entertainment to come in the next few weeks! 

Have a good week!

 

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!

 

There's lots around if you know where to look!

We might have had a log fire going last night, resorted to a local discount warehouse yesterday afternoon due to the rain, and be working on our tax returns today, again because of the weather, but actually nature is out there doing what she does and getting on with Spring.  Beating the bounds today before giving up due to the rain (have I mentioned it is a wet weekend?), we spotted a new orchid plant and location.  Because they have tuber-like roots, for many orchids, once you have seen them flower in a location, you know to look in the same place the following year, particularly if that location isn't subject to local authority or local authority contractor "maintenance".  So spotting this new flower on the opposite side of the meadow to its usual haunts was really pleasing.  I imagine the seed was moved around by badger paw.

Thursday was a rare fine day, although not particularly warm.  I was able to take advantage and plant more of the well chitted seed potatoes, so now there is just a final row of 8 or 9 to go in during the week.  Each time I passed a particular tree where we had put up a nest box, I was aware of a lot of chattering noise, so I decided to pause, lean on my metaphorical spade and watch.  Sure enough, after a couple of minutes a Great Tit went to the nest box opening to be greeted by a lot of squeaking and then silence as goodies were shared out.  Once one parent had gone, there was a short pause, then the other parent turned up and the noises repeated themselves.  Today when I walked past the box, all was silent.  I hope the babies were tucked up warm and safe.

On Thursday, the Meadow was humming with insects: it was so loud, it was hard to distinguish the different birds that were also singing.  I'm sure it made finding food easier for the fraught parents from the birdbox!  At the entrance to the Meadow, I met a slow worm, basking in the sun and trying to warm itself up a bit.  We have quite a lot in the area, but it was nice to see one, although I then had to make sure my accompanying cats ignored it.

It must be nearly a year since I invested in a pond dipping kit, and early in the week, while the ground was still too wet to work, I decided to have a play.  You don't get instructions with a pond dipping kit - I guess they think it is obvious, or if you are getting a kit, you know what you are doing.  My first attempt was therefore marginally successful and with lots of learning points - take a chair and a kneeler and some spare white paper, and only source water from one pond at a time being top of the list.  I needed more time and more stable surfaces and a chair to let sediment settle properly, to focus properly and to have a chance of seeing whether the elongated fast thing had a hook on its tail or not.  A better field guide might be useful too.  I was cheered to see that there are a lot of water fleas around, as they are at the bottom of the food chain and if they are there, then other things can be too.  I don't have a clue as to what the elongated fast thing was, other than fast and about a centimetre long.

There is a parasitic plant that can be confused with a bird's nest orchid, but isn't one of those.  It grows off tree and shrub roots but at quite a distance and has no leaves.  We found a lot of them on the eastern side of the Meadow this weekend, just starting to come up, and about 2 to 3 metres away from the row of fruit trees.  I've not seen them there before, so am not sure if it is a weather related thing or a problem for the trees.  Anyway, here is a photo.

While not totally unusual, the past few Mays have been warm and sunny, so this year's wet and cold version is not going down well with humans or cats.  So far this month we have had over an inch of rain and a bit of thunder and hail, and more rain is forecast for the next couple of days before a 5 day window of warm and nice - or that is what we are promised.  I hope "they" are right, as while the rain is keeping the water level in the ponds at a useful level for wildlife, everything else is getting a bit miserable.

Have a good week!

 

This late April is weird

Each of the last 7 months in France have been the warmest ever recorded for that month.  It is highly likely that April will continue that dismal record, and yet it doesn't feel like it.  While the first half of April was warm, extremely warm at times, it continued the wet theme from March, but then it went cold.  There have been frosts, although we've not noticed much (up too late to catch the signs I guess), but very limited rain and temperatures rarely over 12 or 13ºC have halted or limited growth for some things, while others have carried on regardless.  In 3 day's time it will be May, yet the canopy at the One Acre Wood is quite sparse - chestnut is always a bit slow and one of the oaks in the picture is dead, but it doesn't feel right.

The lower growth is coming on nicely and we have a crazy oak lawn situation in places, so there is a nice green haze at ground level however.

We are into orchid season, and while it is too early for the lizard orchids, the lady orchid is looking better this year that it has for quite a few seasons.  There are also magnificent early purple orchids if you know where to look (mostly road side verges unless they have been mown).  One garden we know also has what are variously called spider orchids or fly orchids - not as pretty as bee orchids but similar to look at.  These seem to be out earlier than usual this year.

Over the next thee weeks I will no doubt drive myself mad trying to get the best possible photo of a bee orchid!

John likes the unexpected, so he was quite happy when I looked out of the bathroom window on Thursday morning and went downstairs to tell him that there was a ****ing great duck wandering around outside.  Too large and too stupid to be allowed on the public highway on its own, Quackers the Doose (too large for a duck, too small for a goose) was herded into next door's garden and a suitable notice put on the community Facebook page for the owner to come and remove their livestock.  Someone clearly took notice as by Friday morning, Quackers was gone, leaving just a few photos and an intriguing memory behind.

In unrelated poultry news, the Economic Migrant shuffled off her mortal coil this week - we think she was about 4 years old and hadn't laid an egg in about 12 months.  I feel guilty we don't have a photo of her!

So I have been through the videos from the trail camera that came in last weekend prior to being re-sited.  I messed up in that when checking things were working in mid-March, I managed to turn off the video function, so there weren't as many files as I would have expected, and about half of them were of me walking past in one direction or another.  There were a small number where something had clearly run past quickly so that while there was a photo, there was no accompanying interesting video to enjoy.  Then there is a rather dull video of a badger walking away - once you have seen one badger's bottom wiggling as it wanders off, you have seen all you need!  The main antics of interest were the deer, so here are two daytime videos of a couple of does and a nightime video of a stag being a bit boy-like.

 

 

 

During the coming week I hope to do a pond dip in the upper pond to see what might be living in there, so next week there are bound to be fuzzy photos of disgusting small water things.  I will also have finished and analysed the April bird recordings, and hopefully I will have planted more potatoes!

Have a good week!

 

A day out and lots of garden work

We've had a busy and a social week, meeting up with people over to see their second homes, as well as getting a bunch of stuff done ourselves.  We declared Tuesday a Holiday, and once we had done the very important job of choosing a new mattress and ordering its delivery (we've had the current one for 25 years, a change is allowed!), we set out on a jaunt of frivolity.

Our first job was to find somewhere for lunch, and clearly in the tourist areas, Tuesday lunch is not a popular meal.  It took us a while to find the Quatre Saisons opposite Langlois Chateau in St Hilaire/St Florent on the south bank of la Loire.  It was worth the search.  While the menu on the board looked delicious and may have had too many choices to make life easy, the menu du jour was cheaper and excellent.  Pan fried sander fillet with salad, chicken supreme with rice and beans and a nice wine jus and the most amazing vanilla pudding that I still fantasise about.  All served in a nice room overlooking the Thouet and served by the chap doing the cooking.  We were very pleased.

After a brief retail therapy stop at Decathlon, we drove on to Turquant.  This really is a tourist village, but again the out of season Tuesday effect meant that people were few and far between, although I can imagine it is the seventh circle of hell on a sunny Sunday in July or August.  It is an arts and crafts centre, and while the gallery was nice enough, the shop set of caves were a better display of the talents around.  Even so, the delicacy and chichi-ness of it all were not really to our taste, so while we could appreciate the talent, we were not tempted to put paws in pockets.  Not least as there were no ants for sale - they are big on ants in Turquant!

From there, our final stop was with a friend and wine producer in Restigné to buy red and rosé wines and hear about the challenges of selling a nice little vineyard as a going concern.

Now we are trying to catch up on all the gardening work we need to do but the weather has not been helping us with.  On Friday I topped out the broad beans, as there were enough small beans set to make me feel the time was right.  I guess there are something over 100 plants and only one had blackfly on already, so I feel my timing was impeccable.  I had some assistance with this slightly back breaking task, as Monsieur Clause supervised while squashing a number of sprouting onion sets.

Getting the potatoes in is slow work.  Through all of March and the first week of April the ground was too wet to work.  Then John got the cultivator out and cleared some space, but also pulled muscles nearly everywhere, so had to rest up for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday he felt up to giving it another go and I was able to plant another 18 chitted potatoes.  We now have half the available spuds planted, although I think we might not get them all in this year.

After some 6 weeks in place looking along a much frequented path, I brought in one of the trail cameras to see who is around.  After some quick copying and editing of the SD card, it is now back out again, in a different location, with the aim of admiring boar having mud baths.  Anyway, a trundle through the files reveals that we have just as many boar and deer in the zone as ever.  That the badgers are still knocking around, as is the fox and a hare and a probably pine martin.  It also revealed that images and videos of us walking away from the camera are beyond unflattering, and that goes for the boar and the deer too!  I have deleted all evidence for us, but the animals don't have those editorial controls.  Here are some of our neighbours.

The new cameras are less intrusive but still need to be checked out closely!

Have a good week!

 

Nature presses on regardless

The headline floods of last weekend are subsiding slowly, despite the continued rain through the week, but it hasn't been as intense or as much - just 18.5mm through the week. The rivers and streams are getting back to normal while the ponds remain well charged.  One evening I went to look at the sunset view, and heard the water oozing and sinking in a field nearby, which was rather unpleasant, but notable.

Nature is doing her thing now, and with every day, the veil of green and white spreads through the hedgerows and woods as new leaves are unfurled and cherry, plum, crab apple and quince blossom all open.  Some orchards are also full of blossom, but most commercial apple varieties will be a bit later.  it is the quince blossom I love the most - it is simple, but the flowers are large and generally tinged with pink.

At a distance, the wild cherry blossom is magnificent, but close to, the flowers are small and meagre, nothing to compare with the cultivated varieties, which have more and bigger flowers.  But when you get a run of wild cherry down a hedge line, it is magnificent.

Irrespective of how we might feel about working in this weather, the kitchen garden plots need to be sorted out and planted up or any crops will be too small or too late to be of much use.  I pulled up the matting that has been suppressing weeds  on this year's potato bed, so that John could get the rotavator on to it, and met a small helper.  They are very good at keeping slugs under control among other pests, so I am always pleased to see slow worms, and particularly baby ones.  This one can't have been more than five inches long or so.

Less welcome visitors are the Asian Hornets, and for a number of years, I have been part of a local observatory group, that catches and records the numbers of Asian hornet queens captured in Baugé en Anjou, with the aim of reducing the damage they do to local and native insect life.  It isn't only their predilection for eating the heads of honeybees like candy, they have also been found to reduce all insect life by 40% around their nests.  In addition, they have a really nasty sting.  Yesterday's warm weather had them out and looking for food, and my trap caught 3 of the brutes, and I am very happy about that.

Finally I managed to get the onion sets planted, while the shallots that went in a couple of weeks ago are now starting to show.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the wet weather though.  Back in Worcester, we couldn't really grow any alliums as onion white rot is endemic through the Vale of Evesham and into Worcester, and there is no real cure other than not growing any of the onion family for at least 5 years.  I get very twitchy and hope that we can stay free of it!

During the week I moved the trail camera that had been in the One Acre Wood back to the Orchard, and put it where I got film of the water rail.  The new and unsophisticated cameras don't use much battery power, so in theory I can now leave that one in place for the whole of the summer and will only run into problems if the memory card gets full.  During the time it was in the Wood, the camera got 54 files, and when I reviewed them, they were all of John and/or I moving about the wood, nothing else.  Given it was by a clearly used wildlife track, it was disappointing, as in 24 hours it captured 26 files of wildlife at the bottom of the Orchard. 

But that is the wonder of our land in the country - the mix of habitats means it provides a marvellous corridor for things to move along, as well as the food sources and shelter for a huge range of birds and animals.  My Merlin bird song app tells me that there is a skylark or two in the zone, and a nightingale has just arrived too.  Very few of the bird species convincingly identified are considered particularly endangered (mostly in the Least Concern category), but it is the wealth of species and the density of the birdsong that tells me it is a rich area in the best sense of that term.

So I finish with a photo of some tulips that I bought cheap at a discount supermarket, planted late as I had other concerns, and that have rewarded me with a magnificent show of flowers that I hope will be repeated in future years.

Have a good week!