A focus on animals

But if you thought that would be wild animals, you would be wrong.  Our domestic friends are in the spotlight this week and one has been the focus of attention for much of it.  Having said that, today's headline animal is Legend Race.

Last time we went to see him run, at the relatively swanky, I now see, Angers Hippodrome, he disgraced himself and shed his rider at the second fence.  This was annoying as he looked in magnificent form, had grown and developed nicely, but was too keen and didn't spot the water.  Saumur Hippodrome is much smaller, tucked away in the countryside to the south of the town, and full of rustic charm.  Legend came out of his box looking magnificent, having recovered from a bout of 'flu he caught at Angers.

Once tacked up and in the collecting ring, he was on his toes and very spicey, so much so, his poor groom had her arms wrenched this way and that, and was complaining to me once he was out on the course.  Fortunately the spiciness did not detract from his performance, and he was much better behaved once his jockey, Keylian, was up and he was on the course.  So well, in fact, that he won the race.  Not by a long distance but easily good enough.

Yes, for those in the know, he runs in Aldernity colours.  While not the sort of place where you get a flashy presentation, there was an official photo taken with two of the owners, the groom, and horse, and the jockey.  I prefer my cooling down photo with his proud groom and him looking like he knows he has done well.

So well done Legend Race.

The other animal in the news this week was my lovely Poirot cat, 19 on the first of April.  For the past 18 months she has had an issue with one eye.  She has had multitudes of antibiotics, stem cell treatment, eye pressure drops and moisturising drops, but about 6 weeks ago the drops stopped having an effect and we had to make the decision to have the eye removed.  How much she could see out of it was probably a moot point, but it was still a bit of a thing to decide.  We have spent the past couple of weeks feeding her up as much as possible to ensure she was in the best possible condition for the operation for her age.

Friday was a tricky day as we waited for news, but the call came through that it went well and she could be collected that evening.  Her heart was fine, her kidneys were in perfect condition, the operation went well and she looks a fright at the moment while time does its thing, but she is eating and doing what cats do.  The first night she tried to drown herself in her water bowl by falling asleep in it - that was a bit dramatic, but the anaesthetic has now worn off, so that danger is past.

For the moment, the sunflower donut is working well, rather than the harsh cone of shame, which would not sit well with a lady of her age I think.

On a lighter note, one of the ferals we had spayed late last year is practicing for a career as a possum.  I wasn't sure she would get down, but she did.

Anyway, after a day at the Races, I'm running late and need to set dinner off.  Perhaps next week I will be able to offer up nice photos of wildlife - I really do want to, but time gets away from me!

Have a good week!

  

Travel and home

Last week's blog was very brief as i ran out of time to say anything interesting or find any nice photos and videos.  This time last week, I was on a ferry from Dieppe to Newhaven to visit pastures old and take some contributions for an upcoming exhibition.

The drive from here to Dieppe seems a long and boring slog - in reality it is probably only about three and three quarter hours, but it seems like more.  Then the ferry journey itself is four hours - not long enough for a cabin and sleep, but too long if you are on your own and the food is pretty boring and the weather is bouncy.  Now I like a rough crossing, but I get annoyed at having to hold onto a table to stay in my chair, and when they said they had to turn the stabilisers off to get into harbour, I was surprised they had stabilisers on in the first place!

Then there is driving in East Sussex.  I swear they are preparing for a Russian or Iranian invasion - most roads are being dug up and it is impossible to know what diversion signs relate to the route you want to travel.  Those that aren't being dug up, should be, given their condition.  In France a pothole is called a nid de poule - a chicken nest - but I'll swear that the East Sussex potholes would house not just a chicken, but several turkeys, an ostrich and probably a large flock of velociraptors!  But then if you go to the seaside, it is beautiful!

I'd not been to Seaford for over 45 years, so it was nice to spend time sitting on a bench, watching the sea and eating high quality ice cream.  There were some lovely benches - presumably a Heritage Lottery or Millennium project - really in keeping with the area.

And the artistic benches were in keeping with my main mission for the visit - handing over materials for a forthcoming exhibition at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.  It is an impressive building and the standing exhibition is a homage to Eric Ravillious and his chums.  He was actually a contemporary of my father's, which was interesting if a bit tantalising at times.

The exhibition opens in May, and if you are interested, follow this link - Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism — Towner Eastbourne .  From my discussions with one of the curators, I think it is going to be a pretty special exhibition and I will brave the journey later in the year to go and see it.

I got home on Thursday and did not miss out on the fine weather here in France.  It is stunning and warm and bright, and the air is poor quality and full of pollen, so I am on antihistamines a whole month before I would expect.  Having said that - look at this cherry tree, seemingly in full blossom, and you can see why!

Actually, only half the tree is in blossom, the other half is burgeoning, getting ready to go.  The half that is in flower produces miserable little fruits, with a lot of colour but just a skin of red over the stone - it is a wild cherry, and looks to have come from below the graft point on the tree.  The other side, which isn't out yet, has lovely lush fruits that the birds get before we have a chance to try them.  Cultivated cherries are rather behind, as can be seen in this photo.

However in both cases, it is too early for this sort of thing, but that seems to be the way of it this year.

Other things are happening in the productive gardens - the first asparagus spears are starting to show!  Telling them apart from new shoots of mare's tail can be a bit challenging at a distance and without glasses, but all becomes clear close to.

And as we are getting to that time of year, I was able to harvest the first of our 6 cauliflowers - bijou and compact - for our dinner tonight.  This has been in the ground since August last year - if anyone chunters about the price of caulis, this is the reason, they take ages to develop!

So there we have it - an exciting week with lots going on at home and away.  Next week I will talk local elections perhaps, but can't this week as the polls are still open in some places.  

Have a good week!

I ran out of time!

Where does time go?  I thought it would be a quiet week and I could get a blog written and primed for publication with lots of lovely photos and videos, but here we are - about 3 hours left to pack and do stuff and not time to do anything much.

So how about pondering on the wonder of nature?  With just the nutrients in the bulb, a bit of meagre soil, water and sunlight, what can be achieved in 6 weeks?  Well 6 weeks ago, I bought this rather faded looking amaryllis bulb at Aldi (other discount supermarkets are available), that was clearly left over from Christmas.  It was half price - so perhaps 2 euros at most.  I thought why not?

This is what we have this morning!  Three flower spikes, one all out pretty well, one developing nicely and one half and half.  And what an amazing colour red!  Totally unnatural in my view, but very pleasing.  The next challenge will be to feed and maintain the bulb well enough that it flowers again next year.

So there we have it, and now I am off on my travels for a few days and will tell you all about it on my return.

Have a good week!

 

Plants and bugs

It has been a mostly sunny and dry week so the floods have receded, the ground is slightly drying out (I found my first crack in the clay soil today, for goodness sake), and spring is definitely springing.  I have a couple of crocus planted out, I never remember where, but this year I did buy a cheap packet of bulbs and put them in a pot to be a pretty display.  That didn't work as they sulked, so after a couple of months, when I bought a sorrel plant, I put it in that pot, while I continue to decide where I will have a bed of sorrel that won't be a slug or chicken magnet.  Being crowded by a posh plant annoyed the sulking crocuses even more, so now they are coming up and flowering in a very small way, but rather pretty.

Other flowers and blossom are going great guns, which is sad, as it is too early!  Our froufrou narcissi are up and at their best about two weeks too soon.  The wild plums are nearly over and the mirabelles and small plums are coming out, the Victoria plum is rather later.  While the trees have quite a lot of bees buzzing around, they are mainly solitary bees and bumble bees, so the local honey bees are missing out.

We are waiting for the soil to dry out a bit and become faintly manageable, but there are still some overwintering crops in there, and yesterday I dug up a fine bunch of multicoloured carrots.  The packet always shows a lovely range of colours from white through to deep purple or black, but I always end up with cream, yellow and orange!

While there is still enough water in the ponds for me to be able to scoop some out without falling in or needing waders, I finally got round to doing a pond dip in the upper pond.  There are no fish that we are aware of, and I've (sadly) not spotted and spawn this year, be it frog, toad or newt, so I wasn't really sure what, if anything, would be living in it.  I managed to scoop out about a litre and a half of water at the edge of the pond and went for a walk while the debris and suspended mud particles settled.  When I got back and started to review my catch, I remembered why I needed to take a couple of chairs with me for this exercise - it is harsh on thighs, calves and bum!  I spotted 6 different species to my untrained eye, so there would likely have been more.  I managed to photograph a few adequately.  

There was this rather active water bug thing, which moved around a lot.

Then there was a water snail that moved around a bit too.

And there were lots of fine worms, that acted like snakes and travelled around the white tray a lot in the half hour they were in captivity.

There was also something that looked like a shrimp and very small oblong things that moved around pretty quickly too.  I might have another go in a couple of weeks, remember to take a couple of chairs with me and perhaps also my field guide to icky things in ponds.

We went for a walk around the One Acre Wood yesterday afternoon and met a very fine beetle - while we hear birds and occasionally see a hare, the Wood seems much more sparse in terms of wildlife that the Orchard and Meadow.  So meeting a beetle was something that was noteworthy, although I'm sure he had a lot of colleagues that we haven't met!

What the Wood lacks in visible wildlife, it makes up for in plant life.  A few years ago - well that's what it seems like to us, but actually it's more like 15 years ago - we transplanted some woodland cyclamen into the Wood from another wood we managed.  These lovely white, delicate flowers are slowly spreading along the paths we have made in the Wood, and every year there are more flowers.  Trying to spot where the next outcrop of flowers will appear should be easy, except that cyclamen leaves and ivy leaves get mixed together and aren't always easy to tell apart!

Anyway, that's it for today, as we have emergency apple and pear pruning to be done, but I hope that next week I will have some animal videos and photos to share with you, rather than bug pictures.

Have a good week!

Sunshine and Success!

After a truly frustrating and damp period, things started to work and the sun came out.  I had scoffed about a wine order from down near Nimes arriving chez nous without any issues, but they said they would deliver on Monday in the morning, and at 10:30 while I read the local paper, the daylight was blotted out by a lorry parking up outside, with our (modest) wine order inside.  How could I doubt them?  Also on Monday, there was a flurry of messages from the passport office as my photo was accepted by the bots sometime on Sunday evening, and by Monday morning the document was printed, packed and on it's way to France.  Again, it arrived when expected on Thursday morning, after it had been on a trip to Germany on its way to France.  I can travel again!

I'm not sharing a photo of the passport, but I will share a photo of the daffodils that came out on Tuesday to celebrate sunshine and good will to all men.

The big news of the week locally is that with a scant 5mm of rain during the whole week, rivers have mostly returned to their beds, although still flowing full and fast, and people can get down to clearing up and waiting for things to dry out.  We dug up the remaining potatoes during the week - a heavy, depressing venture, as the fork became as one with the heavy clay soil, while the potatoes were generally rather small and nibbled by slugs.  The bottom allotment plot is really rather unpleasant, although good for brassicas.  Otherwise the ground is too wet to do anything yet, although I did resort to sowing some seeds in modules just to cheer myself up.

The enduring damp, combined with nice weather, did mean that yesterday we finally had to make a start on making safe the dead walnut tree near the ponds, as we had no more excuses.  While good for insects and birds, the tree is highly dangerous, with "widow maker" branches all over the place and low branches that threaten to block access to the ponds.

Using a generator, an electric pole saw and a lot of elbow grease, we got down the most dangerous bits, and created access for getting at the bits that are blocking the hidden path between the Orchard and the Meadow.  The wood is quite light, but even so, there is a bit of firewood there for us in due course.  The area is now rather lighter which might encourage the brambles a bit too much, so as well as carrying on with the tree, we need to get in there with brush cutters of different sizes and power to push those back too.

Looking at one of the large, dead and partly broken branches, we did spot an amazing large fungus.  Not edible and not conducive to plant function or keeping qualities of wood, it is an impressive size.

Our fun was cut short yesterday by an unnecessary shower of rain, very localised but very wet.  It did create a rather nice rainbow though, which is just about visible on this photo.

As getting to the ponds is now rather easier and safer, with the walnut a bit curtailed, I was able to get to the ponds and decided to check on the trail camera based down there.  The camera is fine, although I think I need to bring it in soon, if only to watch the boar doing their best to dig a new channel between the second pond and the larger area of bog and pond to the east.  What a mess!

Spring is clearly on its' way now - if there were no other clues, the bird song has a distinctive character to it, and the mix of birds is slowly changing.  The Cetti's Warblers are strident, and the chiffchaffs are back.  I think there must be food sources appearing too, as the various tits are spending less time on the fat balls and bird feeder.  With grey skies and rain, I haven't paid attention to the wild plum growing by the chicken run, but this morning I could not miss the blossom!

The forecast is set fair for the week, and there is so much to do outside, I feel I must get going now and do something useful.  I hope the weather is kind to you too!  Have a good week!

Wet and bother

What a frustrating week!  There has been so much rain and the ground is so saturated, we have spent too much time watching forecasts, traffic alerts, flood warnings, scary videos of how the rivers are rising, and amusing videos as people try to make the best of things.  It is worth seeking out the video of someone canoeing through the underground car park of the E LeClerc superstore in Saumur, and of the prize (edible) chip makers of Angers dealing with a flood closure.  We have stayed away as best we can, as we remember flood tourism in Worcester, and it is a challenge for the locals.  We did go up to la Fleche on Wednesday for the market and saw floods, an ambulance and the emergency services.  Since then, as I wouldn't use the photos of that, I have stolen this image from Facebook to give an idea.

Locally, we don't have issues with big rivers, or even small rivers, but just down from The Shack, the side of the hill, with tree attached, gave way due to all the rain.  While there is a row of trees along the bottom edge of the farmer's field to hold the bank in, that only works if you don't relentlessly plough through the roots uphill four times a year, and if you don't cut off all the uphill branches, so the tree is weighted to the downhill or road side.  Anyway, another tree and chunk of hillside lost the battle with gravity - it has been tidied up a bit, but I'm not convinced.

The weather drives you to comfort food (not so good for the waistline) and after years of avoiding it, I finally made John a steak and kidney pie like wot my Mum used to make for him.  I had to make a very large batch of filling as the butcher would only sell me a whole kidney, so we have filling for a smaller pie in the future.  I was quite pleased with it anyway, and it did taste good.

The bother comes from the hassle of trying to get a photo accepted by the Passport Office.  I feel like I am on my 20th attempt, though it may not be that bad.  I even resorted to one of those awful booths, as I was assured that a photo from that with a code would work.  Sadly it wouldn't - the code was no good for the UK, so that was 7 Euros down the drain and a set of really nasty ID photos that won't be useful for anything.  While the latest photo was accepted as good, I don't believe them.  I had a good one rejected during the week for not having enough contrast.  As the booth clearly doesn't work, there could be more annoying photo sessions, leaning against John's van as the only untextured, white surface we have available to us!

However, on the upside, there are signs of spring!  My adorable mini narcissus are flowering away.

The hyacinths that I used to buy for my Mum when she was in the nursing home, then planted out in the garden, are doing their thing.

There are also orchid rosettes turning up everywhere - this image includes both lizard and bee orchid rosettes and the rather posh lady orchid is also visible elsewhere.  It will be a while before they flower, but good to know that they are still there.

For the moment, we just have to live with the wet and the positives that come with that.  Our two ephemeral ponds in the One Acre Wood have water in, and watching the pool surface, we can see that newts or salamanders have been getting it on, so it's not all bad!

The weather promises a bit better this coming week, so I might find some seed compost and be positive about the growing season to come, while waiting for the waters to recede.  I hope you are staying dry wherever you are, and have a good week!

 

Time for an Ark?

January and February always seem like long months - the endless nights, and the cold (sometimes), and the dark.  This year has also been marked by the Wet, with record floods further south and rumours of a possible breach in the levee of la Loire towards Angers.  In this week alone, we have recorded 87.5mm of rain - for those who do Imperial measurements, that is 3 and a half inches.  No wonder there is a pond in the chicken run!  Earlier in the week, when it was too wet to leave the nominal shelter of The Shack, I spent a happy while trying to photograph what I used to call rain fairies when I was a small child.  This was my best effort.

It wasn't as though it rained all day every day either!  Thursday was slated to be vile, but there was sunshine at first, and the rain held off where we happened to be, which was really good news.  Thursday was special as we had a day at the Races, at Angers Hippodrome.  A nice course tucked behind housing estates and just off the motorway, but with a good sized circuit, stabling for over 100 horses and three different tracks, including the obligatory (for France) all weather trotting track.

We were there to see Legend Race do his thing, for the first time since we last saw him a year ago.  His trainer, Louisa Carberry, said he was looking good, but that she didn't think he would win, but should get round.  He had grown and filled out since we saw him first this time last year.

Like I said, the facilities are excellent and there is a nice big screen so you can watch the action all the way round the track.

In the end, we didn't need that to admire Legend Race's progress.  He was way too keen and over-confident, misjudged the water jump and dropped his jockey at the second obstacle!  He then carried on to do a good three to four circuits of the track before he could be persuaded he had had enough fun and that his hay net called.  Both he and the jockey were fine, but we gave him a bit of a talking to when he was back in his stable!

Louisa had two other horses running that day, and we were able to stand on the owners' mound in the parade ring for a different race to admire the horses again.

Here the horse of interest was number 8 or the one in the middle.  He had a replacement jockey (the one that Legend Race ditched), as his intended jockey had fallen earlier, won his next race but was feeling a bit off.  The replacement jockey had to be called back as he had started to go home, but was back in time for the ride, which was a good thing, as he won!

Yesterday was also not actively rainy, so we were able to do a bit of work in the One Acre Wood.  The lower of the two clay ponds now has water in it - hopefully the local newts and salamanders will enjoy that.  I suspect that after today, which has been totally wet, the upper pond may also start to fill up.  Broken branches are providing a good ecosystem for fungus - this example was rather beautiful, if difficult to photograph well in February murk.

Hopefully next week will not be quite so outstandingly wet, but the weather forecast holds little promise of a day when I can dry the laundry outside.  At least I have exercise classes twice a week or I would be feeling like Jabba the Hutt!  Anyway, for now, I am going to do battle with a kidney, to see if I can recreate one of John's favourite dishes - steak and kidney pie!

Have a good week!