Rural Life

November Travels

As mentioned last week, I made my first trip to Plague Island since March 9th 2020 this week.  The skies were dramatic as I packed the car to leave home, but it was an uneventful drive to the port and a boring wait to be loaded and a flat crossing.  The boat wasn't really that full, so I do query why it took an hour and a half to get off the ferry and onto the M27 - in part it could be explained by a lorry driver that overslept and had clearly forgotten that his vehicle was blocking everyone else, but even so!  I think I was the second last person out of the port not driving a lorry, but then it was all behind me and the adventure could begin!

My first real stop (not including caffeine and comfort) was at Whixall Marina in Shropshire where I met a representative of the Restoring the Marches Mosses BogLIFE project for a walk out to the Mammoth Tower and to see how the Mosses are being restored and rewetted.  For a couple of old crocks, we made good time and covered a few kilometres!  The best photos (I hope) have yet to be downloaded from the proper camera, but I was truly impressed with the change at the former Scrapyard, which is slowly reverting to nature, rather than piles of old tyres, stacks of twisted metal and everything with a slightly oil stained sheen.

The following day, I took a couple of hours out to walk into the centre of Shrewsbury - quite my favourite place in England!  It was sad to see many empty shop fronts, but even so, they still have lots of small independent outlets there.  I also had a quick visit to Smethwick High Street - no photos of that, and smello vision is not a thing yet.  The spices that were on the air as I got out of my car, the enticing shop fronts and the cosmopolitan nature of the area are a total joy, though different to Shrewsbury.

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Thursday was devoted to all things Birmingham, so given HS2 and preparations for the Commonwealth Games, it was easier, but unsettling, to use public transport.  It did all pan out well, until I got back to Tamworth and had to wait for 20 minutes for a taxi, and I wore a mask more than anyone else I saw!  I visited the two Victorian Cemeteries in the Jewellery Quarter - well worth it, if you have the time.  Warstone Lane is more accessible, and I was privileged to be allowed to participate in a Remembrance Day ceremony with cadets from a local school.  It was very special for many reasons.  After a spot of eco-friendly lunch at a local café, I then visited Key Hill Cemetery, including a private view of the catacombs.  This site is more private and is home to nearly 100 London Planes - it is very beautiful.

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My final day was focussed on the River Cole, where Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and the Tame Valley Wetlands Partnership are leading work to improve a number of sites and equip local people and organisations with the skills to maintain then and do more once this funding pot is all spent.  Again the best photos are on the main camera, but the lake at Tamworth was improved with the previous funding, and the work at Meriden Park was at an exciting stage, where for once they are seeking to speed up the flow of water in a river.  I didn't film the way the ground wobbled around us as the digger went past as I was in fight or flight mode!

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The crossing on Friday night was much bumpier, so much more to my liking, and I was home by 10:30am yesterday, as it only took a quarter of an hour to get off the ship and out of the port (not least as I was nearly pole position on the car deck and I know where I've left my car!!).  But after walking 25km in 4 days, and losing a lot of sleep with the ferry crossing, much of yesterday wafted past in a dream-like trance.  Today I feel more normal and we spent time at the Garden, mowing, mulching and for me clearing and forking over a seedbed and sowing 52 broad bean seeds (must wear my glasses next time I buy seeds - 80g not 80 graines!).  I also had a good mooch round, looking at how things had changed, including my radishes sown in leaf mould, and lifted a winter radish for lunch... for the next two days!  At the One Acre Wood we found a single interesting mushroom, but left it there.

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Looking in the flower border, I saw hopeful signs.  I left the annual flowers to set seed and die back, before pulling away the old stalks a couple of weeks ago.  Looking at the seedlings that are coming up, I can see signs that the frilly purple stuff and cornflowers have indeed set seed and are now sprouting to put on an earlier display next year.  I'll not do any more weeding there now, but let things over-winter, and then see if they need a helping hand in the spring.

Mellow fruitfulness, sort of

Last week I was in mid-pudding steaming when I wrote, so I won't leave you in suspense any longer - here are the puddings, cooled after 10 hours of steaming and ready to be wrapped up and left for 2/14 months depending which gets eaten first.  The smaller one is pretty good looking all round, the larger one I clearly didn't wodge down enough, so is a bit crumbly.

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There are still quite a lot of flowers around.  The rudbeckia on the flower border are still going, while the cosmos is just starting to flower - they are always so late for me, other people have dug theirs up already but mine is covered in buds!  In the One Acre Wood, there are small white cyclamen that we transplanted from another woodland about 10 years ago, and they are really coming into their own now.  The ones in the garden around the birch tree have been going since July and show no signs of stopping yet.  They always lift the spirits.

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In terms of fruitfulness, well we have a couple of walnut trees that have produced good looking nuts and we now have two big drying racks well stocked with drying nuts.  Sweet chestnuts are just starting to fall now - the ones that are worth eating, others have been dropping for a while - so we enjoy the guilty pleasure of roasted chestnuts with our aperos.  I also have some interesting savoury crumble ideas tucked away, including leek and red peppers with a savoury chestnut crumble topping... 

The last fruit of the year are always the medlars - still not ripe, but getting there.  They aren't edible raw unless they have been bletted, or left to rot for a bit, but in their unbletted state, I believe you can make a jelly from them.  There is a tree that we know that is coated in them.  Some people also have olive trees in their garden and they are also a very late fruit, and I gather making them edible is quite a process.  I regard them as a pretty curiosity this far north.

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Wildlife is getting more scarce and preparing for winter.  I met this young toad in the Garden, and encouraged it to steer clear of the cats, who miss all the mice in the now harvested and empty maize fields.  The badger preparations for winter continue and as the meadow has been mown now, ready for winter, the entrance to Badger Delvings is pretty obvious.

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It wouldn't be autumn without a few leaves turning colour - this is a Wild Service tree in the One Acre Wood, one of the earliest to turn there and also the species that is likely to produce the best colours for us.

Until next week!

 

Culture and critters

It was 31 years and 5 days ago that John and I had a bit of a party at Tynemouth Sailing Club.  We try to do something nice each year to remember the day - this year we chose to visit the newly opened Museum of Modern Art at Fontevraud l'Abbaye.  After I visited the market at la Flèche for urgent milk and butter supplies, plus the where with all for a picnic, we headed down to la Loire, and stopped at Cunault to eat and admire the river.  In a normal year, it should be very sparse at this time, and it was pretty empty, but even a couple of weeks ago, it would have been higher than this, due to the torrential rains down in the Massif Centrale.

I think Museum of Modern Art is a bit of a misnomer - it is actually a museum to house the donated collection of a couple of magpie art collectors, including items from 3,000 BC to 1960s.  It was eclectic and interestingly mixed up.  Of the sculptures, most of the modern pieces were awful apart from some rather whacky chess pieces.  There were some nice 19th and 20th century paintings, some good drawings and an awful lot of rubbish.  Photography without flash was allowed, so here are two pieces I liked.

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We hadn't been to Fontevraud since about 2005 or 2006, and it was clear that restoration and renovation have continued since our last visit.  The Abbey Church itself is always gorgeous and impactful.  It shouldn't be white inside really, it was designed to be bright and painted and with vivid stained glass, but after the Revolution it was used as part of a prison, so the decoration was removed.  I think it is more awesome in its whiteness, but who am I to judge?

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Chaumont sur Loire has an annual garden festival and keeps the best bits and sculptures in the park.  It would appear that Fontevraud wants to do the same.  The art installation in a disused stairwell was rather disturbing, and moved with the breeze.  The wooden fort in the gardens was totally bizarre - I mean, it looks like a really good fort for kids to play in, but you aren't allowed within 3 meters of it as it is delicate.  Pointless more like!

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As Autumn is theoretically now here, we have to be ready for the major harvests (still digging up spuds but should be only one more week of that I hope).  In the orchard, those major harvests are walnuts and (surprisingly) apples.  They aren't particularly nice to eat and they don't look particularly appetising either, but they do make really nice, single variety apple juice.  I need to get a slot at the press and then we can get picking!

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As I admired the relatively clear areas under the trees, I spotted movement in the grass by my feet.  Sure enough, it was an example of my favourite bug of the Autumn, so here are a couple of close ups to admire (probably) him.

I hope no one is squeamish!

 

Chickens and sun worshipping

Apologies for the delay and also, in advance, for the somewhat light nature of this update.  They are related I guess, as yesterday there was a Birthday Event, which took some managing and also most of yesterday.  When you are 90/91, a year makes a huge difference, plus Covid makes everything so much more special.  In August 2020, you could have 10 round a dining table at a restaurant, while the Birthday Girl was also able to walk a bit.  Not a vast distance, so she was driven down to the restaurant 250m away from her front door, but she could make it the 30m to the dining table, and remembered to wear a mask on the way in (not so much on the way out).  Then it was warm and sunny enough to sit in the garden, partake of more fizz and cake and carry on having fun.

This year we have Pass Sanitaire, and I think restaurant tables are still limited to 6 places.  More importantly, home has changed and the rules around entering a nursing home are strict and include the Passe Sanitaire.  Mobility has decreased, while the capacity of my car has not increased, so a restaurant or a picnic was not possible (the latter also as it was rather cool and windy).  Instead there were four of us round a bed, slurping the finest fizzy rosé Saumur (Ackermann) can produce, while scoffing a range of patisseries and talking about old times. 

Anyway, what else has been going on?  Two different forms of sun worshipping were spotted during the week.  The pears at Chinon really are not nice, they don't cook well, they don't make good eau de vie (the distiller spotted their overtones one year and told us not to do that again), they really aren't nice raw either.  I'm guessing they might have made good pig food at one stage, as the tree is very old, and the house has outbuildings.  Their only fans this year seem to be bees - I think possibly ground dwelling solitary bees, but I may well be wrong - who love sucking out the sweet juices from where they split when they fall.

The other sun worshipper is my feral sunflower - we didn't sow it, it just started growing out of the bin of compost we had some strawberries in.  It has grown to nearly 6 foot tall, and because it is on a plinth, I can't look it in the face.  It is very well placed to worship the rising sun in the morning, while the less open faces, follow the sun during the day (tournesol or tourne au sol - clever, huh?).  I take a photo or two each day to keep a ray of sunshine for winter.

On the chicken front, Auntie Mo is settling in quite well, although we still get some aggression from Mac and Jak.  She went up in the pecking order a bit when Bridie the Freeloading Bantam started to moult.

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Sometimes I spot things out of the corner of my eye and they are interesting.  Two examples to end with.  I was at The Garden, watering some things and carrying on with the potato harvest.  As I went to get the fork from the store, I spotted some movement in the grass and closer inspection showed it to be a small frog or toad - not warty enough for a toad, but too far from water to be a frog.  Whatever, he/she is very useful and welcome.  Yesterday evening, sitting in the garden, recovering from an overdose of patisseries (helped with a gin and tonic) I spotted another crop in the overgrown border - hops!  And quite a lot of them too, some looking really beautiful at the moment.  I'm not sure there are enough for beer making, and we don't do that sort of home brew anyway, but good for hop pillows perhaps.  I'll think on it!

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I promise I will try for Sunday next week!

 

 

A whole week of Summer!

Yes, It's true, a whole week that could be considered summery - assuming we gloss over the early morning fog that blotted out the church spire on Wednesday!  It hasn't always been particularly hot, that has only built up over the past four days or so, but the plants are certainly showing their appreciation with set fruits on the chilli plants, female flowers on the butternuts and flowers and tassels on all the sweetcorn now.  Whisper it softly, but we might actually eat some sweetcorn on Thursday if this keeps up!

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We worry about the lack of insects, other than flies, but have been entertained this week by the rather undignified arrival of a baby grasshopper and the antics of a drunken butterfly, gorging on semi-rotten pear. 

There is a particular type of fly round here, smaller than a bluebottle, not as dangerous as a horsefly and not buzzy, but unpleasant for all that.  It sits on you, then if you don't knock it off quickly, it starts to chew on you.  Evil wee so and so's!

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The cats have different ways of coping with summer.  Donald the Love Bug thinks that sharing our hammock with us is the best thing ever, until he gets it to himself and that is just paradise!  I can take it down gently and start rolling it up and only get rid of him by prodding him with the rolled chunk.  Even then he is reluctant to move.  Poirot may be older (we aren't sure), but her thing is sprawling on steps, either indoors to keep cool, or in full sun for the sheer joy of it.

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Anyway, that is enough sitting with a computer on a lovely sunny, summer afternoon/evening.  I'm off to enjoy sitting out under the gazebo with a glass of something chilled.

Next weekend is the Comice, so things might be delayed a day.

 

Apologies for the delay

Yesterday was a birthday - not mine - and meant a bit of celebrating, a bit of exercise, and by the time we were done with that, I could not face being near the computer (actually I was tied to the juice pot, as we had 4 pounds of elderberries doing their thing).

The weather has not been inspiring once again, which has resulted in two cats finding their inner kitten/getting stir crazy and needing to run around like crazy.  Normally the lizard population provides summer entertainment, but this year we have needed the help of the mouse on a long string, a piece of rolled up newspaper and the Red Dot.  "They say" that summer will restart this week, but first it was today, then tomorrow, now Wednesday seems to be Summer - we'll see!

There have been two flower events this week worthy of note.  During the week the final bud opened on the large red orchid I bought from Aldi - this is much bigger than my other orchids, so is having to live on the kitchen window sill for the moment.  I have bought another like this one, but it was half price as the flowers had finished and the shop (not Aldi) didn't want the ugly thing sitting around.  We'll see what happens with that one too.  The other flower event is the first flower on one of the many chilli plants we have knocking around the garden out of the range of chicken beaks.  What these plants really need is heat and sun, so fingers crossed from Wednesday (bit of a theme developing here).

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The potato harvest is in full swing at the plot, and as I moved the weed suppressant matting that makes potato crops possible, I found another of my little garden helpers - a rather fine baby slow worm (less scary than the sloughed snake skin I found last week).  The first sweetcorn - the six or so that came from the first sowing of 51 seeds - are starting to look promising.  I think they may be ready before the end of the month.  The second sowing are starting to show their male flowers and there are hints of the female flowers (the tassels and the cobs).  They won't be ready until September, unless the weather really bucks its ideas up.

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We have been joined by yet another chicken this week.  Following our purchase of Mac and Jak in the Spring, and being invaded by the Economic Migrant in July, we have been prevailed upon to provide shelter to an old girl who was left on her own when her chums died off (after a suitable quarantine period).  She needs company, we were told, she is pining for the company of other chickens we were told.  Meet Auntie Mo, the chicken that walks by herself.

The Birthday Weekend started with a tasting at a craft brewery in Chinon on Friday night, on Saturday we went shoe shopping and won (well, found two pairs that were considered acceptable), and Sunday was lunch at Buffalo Grill.  They are formulaic, but the meat is good quality, the chips are very nice, they have a full range of steak sauces, and the puddings are magnificent.  Of course after that lot, you then need exercise, so we walked round the wildlife sanctuary lake at la Monnerai, which was new to us.  Using the free telescopes, we could admire egrets and cormorants on an island in the middle of the lake.  The wildlife lake is also less visited, and there were mobs of people around the leisure lake, as you would expect on a Sunday afternoon in August!

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So apologies for the delay, and until next Sunday, which should be Summer!

 

 

A beano and evidence of a visitor

Now I don't mean the comic, quality as that is, I use beano in the sense of a day's outing, such as used to be taken by workers from the East End of London, because I took a rare day off - needless to say the weather was not propitious but as a couple of things had been booked, Tuesday it was. 

I went with a chum, and first of all we stopped at the lac de Rillé, an artificial lake (supposedly the largest in Touraine) which is normally about two thirds empty at this time of year.  Not in 2021!  The trees around had been damaged by the storms with strong winds in June and July and there was still some tidying up going on.  It looks a lovely place for walks later in the year and over winter, with a bird hide.  We then went to Langais for lunch and a mooch around, admiring the outside of the Chateau, the inside of the Church and a very lovely bronze sculpture on the outside of the Church.  I couldn't photograph it, but the Church had the dodgiest ever crucifix above the altar, made by a local art group.  The pose on the Cross was actually more #paintmelikethosefrenchgirls, while the back was decorated with Nespresso capsules.

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Last week I was worrying about blight.  The potatoes escaped it seems as they were second earlies and therefore pretty well over before it hit.  I've resorted to the French trick of removing leaves, growing tips and anything that displeases me, and at the moment we are under control.  Evidence that the potatoes are looking good below, as well as a view of ripening tomatoes as proof!

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The Garden and the Meadow are good for wildlife and we find lots of evidence and see lots of things.  This week's interesting finds were a large and beautiful red admiral sunning himself on a log pile, a comma butterfly (I think) gorging itself on the buddleia, and the sloughed skin of a reasonably sized grass snake under the matting that we cover the potato plot with.

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Some know of my challenges with chilli plants - the fact that chickens eat them is a particular annoyance.  The fact that my brother has a couple in a pot on his terrace and despite being planted in the same soil at the same time as mine, his always do better, is even more irritating.  So it is with great pride that I announce the first flower bud on my chilli plants this year.  Of course they need sun and heat, which is lacking this year, but it is a start!

Incidentally, if you are reading this on a computer rather than a phone, if you click/double click on the photos you get a bigger, better view of them.

Until next week!

 

 

A promise of things to come

Before we get onto that, a word on chickens.  Muck left us for the chicken run in the sky - brown chickens never seem as robust as other types, so we watch Brass with a certain concern.  Currently we are home to 7 fowl - Delenn the Doyenne shown below, demonstrating that you don't have to be young and agile to get to roost on the high perch, old, creaky and fat can do it too.  Then there is Brass, and Mac and Jak the newbies for this year, Bridie the freeloading bantam, and The Asylum Seeker from next door.  I was a bit concerned to find another of next door's marching around the garden just now when I popped out for some bay leaves - we are not going to be a sanctuary for discontented chickens!

British visitors are starting to turn up in the Pays de la Loire, as restrictions ease and a pent up need to visit their properties becomes overwhelming.  It is lovely to see them, although we panic about getting gardens just so in the days before they arrive.  I was doing one garden, and had time to stop to admire a bank of some sort of pea flower along the side of a lake, and a yellow wagtail marching up and down the landing stage (believe me, that is what it is, the photo is just fuzzy).  Monday night the President will make announcements and that may stop the tide again - and not exactly a tide, just a few more faces in the area!

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We've found evidence of very welcome visitors to The Garden in the past week.  I do not see them when I visit, well I make a noise and am generally accompanied by cats, so have to find other ways to know they are there.  In the photos below are two different thrush anvils and the shells of the snails they have beaten out of them.  It is so great to see that, as I've not seen a real live thrush for ages, and they are such beautiful and useful birds.

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The promise of good things to come includes something else I've never seen before.  The sweet chestnuts are in flower and normally the flowers are high up so you see the long tails of essentially male flowers with their fluffy petals, and if you are a hayfever sufferer with a problem with tree pollen, you tend to suffer too.  But get up close and personal, and you can also see the female flowers, miniature spiny cocoons where the nuts will form during the next three months.  The first sweetcorn are also starting to produce male flowers (round here castrating maize is a thing, but I'm not going to bother), and signs of where the cobs will start forming very soon - that makes me hungry and yearn for them to get on with it!!  Finally the sweet peppers (or bell peppers) are in flower and I've spotted some tiny fruits too, so that will be something else yummy soon.  Ideally a bit of sun and the tomatoes will start to ripen too!

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We've been working on a flower border in the garden, filling it mainly with things we have rescued from compost heaps or have been sitting in pots for ages or packets of seeds that seemed like a good idea at the time, with the honourable exception of the Fergus Memorial Rose.  On the left is an early shot, on the right, how it is looking today - full of flowers for bees and insects and full and blousy.

Finally a gratuitous photo of one man and his favourite machine making a noise this morning during the window of opportunity for using loud machines.  Useless scrub has been pushed back for a day or two.

Still a chunk of weather out there!

I wouldn't want to be considered one who rubbernecks, but I did feel that if it was from a suitable distance, getting sight of what had happened at St Nicholas de Bourgeuil a couple of weeks ago would be interesting.  It didn't disappoint, and on Friday, as I took a different route to Chinon, I was able to stop just below the buildings of la Jarnoterie (many may know this grower) and look across the vineyards to something that might be compared to what Godzilla would do if she visited the area.  The village is still blocked off, and quite rightly.

The weather is really not right for this time of year, with sweatshirts not banished to the back of the cupboard, jeans de rigeur much of the time and mushrooms!  Further south, friends have found cèpes.  Yesterday we found three different varieties in the Garden - none of them convincing for eating purposes, but wrong at the beginning of July.

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There are also the things that you would expect from this time of year - lovely banks of lavender humming with bees and hawkmoths, peacock butterflies on the buddleia and marbled whites on the wild scabious.  Our nascent herbaceous border has lots of bee friendly flowers out now as well as hidden shrubs and rampant weeds - actually it is hard to distinguish it from the surrounding weeds as it has been too wet to get a mower in there to define the edges.

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Of course July in France is all about la grande boucle - the Tour de France - and today they are up in the mountains with an uphill finish at Tignes.  I downloaded the Tour de France app this lunchtime and am impressed by it.  But now I must go and watch the utter pain and ultimate glory of an uphill finish!

Until next week!

 

 

Brutal weather and projects

I stupidly mentioned kindly weather last time round - well that will teach me!  Last Sunday was hot and the temperatures just kept rising on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I was on mowing duty on Monday and had to do that in the morning to keep it reasonable.  Tuesday evening aperos were in the garden and 31ºC at 7pm, so of course when it broke on Wednesday, it went with a bang!  There were reports of tornados, hours of sheet lightening and heavy rain Wednesday to Thursday, and I saw the damage as I drove the roads round Rillé on Friday.  It was still hot and sticky though, so more showers, more storms, more humidity.  Yesterday that culminated in a storm front that went across France causing havoc.  We were lucky, but St Nicholas de Bourgeuil lost its church spire to a tornado, while the floods in Saumur and towns near Paris and Reims were extraordinary.

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Yesterday was market day, and as I had company and the terraces are open, we took the opportunity to stop at one of the cafés around the market to have a drink and watch the world go by.  I am used to watching sparrows scavenge around under tables, but it was the first time I've seen a chaffinch do that.  If you are reading this on a computer or tablet, it is worth looking closely at the third photo - I'm rather proud of that one!

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This morning, after paying homage to the Cats in the Country, we went to the open day at l'Or de la Ruche - a professional bee keeper and purveyor of honey, where there was also an exhibition on Asian hornets and how to trap them, and a bit of a producers' market too.  It was a lovely little event, no face masks as there was plenty of space to spread out, and yet enough people to let you think life might return to normal one day.

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This afternoon we went out to a Brocante - O, how daring and how wonderful!  We were on a mission as the Chinon One would like a footstool for his birthday next week, and this seemed a likely place - a huge warehouse at Beaufort en Vallée.  Bizarrely, footstools were not plentiful.  There were bar stools, milking stools, coffee tables and a camel saddle, but just one footstool - rather modern and with a not very nice cover, but at 10€, something of a bargain, even if we are going to recover it.  It seems to do what was required anyway.  We did find another option as well - an old barley twist chair that has certainly seen better days, and the back struts are badly split.  But take off the back, cover the sawn off bits with a bit of foam and new fabric, add the missing stretcher, give it a good polish, and the chair will make a rather fine and unique foot stool as well.

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Until next week!