Getting active

The long, hot summer period had an odd effect on us (and not just us either), in that it has been very hard to get the energy and inclination together to do anything.  It's not that there isn't tonnes to do - the garden, The Shack and its attendant land, the One Acre Wood, the chaos that is the rooms we don't use much, the mess that is the rooms we do use - each of these has a To Do list as long as the landing carpet (another to do list in its own right).  It was the oomph to do anything about any of them that we lacked.  The sapping, continuing heat and the chores that had to be done irrespective (watering, dealing with cat needs, plus eating and washing, and anything to do with the Comice) distracted us from things that could also have done with being looked at urgently.

It is true, we did get the wood burner insert changed, and completed a dossier to get a subsidy - now I just need to sort out the evidence that all is done correctly for the money to be paid to us.  Indeed we are now thinking that actually using the fire might be a good idea as temperatures finally drop!

We are now taking a bit more interest in the garden, not least as the seeds for winter greens I sowed back in early September are now getting to the stage where meals can be planned rather than robbing a few tender leaves while wandering around the plot.  Yesterday I thinned the Bright Lights chard and we had this lovely salad to go with our prawns and baguette for dinner.  They tasted as good as they look.

We have had bits knocking around the garden and the woodstore for a while to make a greenhouse or polytunnel, and last week we got the base sorted.  This weekend we have put up three walls and a roof, and put in the potting table that has been taking up centre stage in the woodstore.  Now we just need that last wall with the door and the pot of chillies will have a nice place to spend the winter to see if it is true you can keep them going.  The gap on the back wall has been fixed by the way.

Cooler weather and a bit of moisture has reinvigorated the cristophine vine.  We thought that the two or three fruits we spotted a couple of weeks ago would be the limit, but closer inspection reveals that the brute is making up for lost time and reviewing its plans for world domination!  I mean really, where did this lot come from all of a sudden?

The news is full of the riots across France, giving the impression that life is impossible and that civilised activity has stopped.  This is not the case.  Yes, there were riots yesterday: yes, a lot of damage was caused by mindless idiots who have completely stolen the news headlines from the legitimate and almost legitimate concerns of the demonstrators. BUT the damage was limited to specific areas, while life continues away from those areas and people shake their heads sadly and mull over who pays for the repairs (spoiler alert - everyone through their taxes and insurance premiums).  It was a beautiful and peaceful evening yesterday on the terrace of our village pub.

Some demonstrators were chuntering about the horrors of living in rural France, where you need your own transport, and where taxe foncière (the equivalent of council tax) goes up and up but you get nothing for it.  Well, leaving aside schools, roads, street lights, meals on wheels, subsidies for new wood burning fires, rubbish collections, sewage services and all that sort of invisible good, one thing that small towns get is a subsidy to support a local cinema, generally run as a not for profit club, and staffed by volunteers.  

Thus you don't have to trek for half an hour into a big town or city multiplex, as your local cinema club will ensure that many of the big releases come to you.  Okay, you don't get Pearl and Dean advertising and all the trailers, but our two local village cinemas each have a varied programme of about 20 or 25 films a month, at very affordable prices and sometimes in VO (version originale).  If the volunteers are a bit pretentious, that VO can be Turkish or Outer Mongolian, but on Friday night we treated ourselves to an evening out to watch Pressure, and it was great.  The seats were comfortable, the sound was excellent and it is a brilliant film.

 And finally, I was inspecting The Meadow today and listening to my favourite winter bird song (the wood lark - and today it was really giving it some), so I thought I would check how the badger set is getting on.  Earlier in the year I spotted that it was being used as a den by a bunch of fox cubs, so I was interested to see if the badgers had done their usual preparation for winter.  It was encouraging to see that the entrance is well used and expanded - it has moved a bit further up the field, by perhaps two foot in all, and there was a clear paw print in the damp soil at the entrance.

Next week there is more quince jelly to be made, and those long, long To Do lists to be attacked if I can continue to channel a bit of the enthusiasm I felt this last week.  Dealing with cristophines is on that list as well as waging war on spiders - I don't mind a few as they capture any last remaining mosquitoes, but it has got beyond a joke.  They can play outside, but not so much in the house I think.

Have a good week!

Seasonal activities

I'm slowly getting through the autumnal stuff that comes with October.  Now even in the One Acre Wood, we have cyclamen coming up, which says that things are becoming more normal, although our chestnut forage proved that the impact of the summer heat and drought will be felt for a while yet - the nuts are tiny.  Also there was no hint of mushrooms in the wood, so we have to content ourselves with enjoying the flowers.

I have had to get to grips with the quince issue this week and found time to make a massive batch of 9 hour poached spiced quince, which now need to be turned into crumbles for the freezer.  I have also made (finally) the first batch of quince jelly for this year - 10 and a bit pots are cooling downstairs as I type.

Last week I had to dash off to see the photo competition exhibition and watch the winners be announced.  The theme was spiders' webs and heritage, and hadn't inspired me to participate.  The winning photo was nice enough, but many of those that had been printed up were pretty samey and with only 91 entries, clearly I wasn't the only one to lack enthusiasm.  Next year's theme is Ruins, here and elsewhere - now that is something to get our teeth into!

This week was also the second week of the Challenge Communale in boule de forte.  The Comité des Fetes Girl Power team did fine the week before, but we were beaten 10 - 4 in the next round, so didn't make it to the finals this year.  Bizarrely, none of us were too upset!!

The week brought rain, and fairly decent quantities too, although it has now stopped again.  It does concentrate the mind rather on garden activities and also doing something with the quince that decorate part of the lawn and the outdoor dining table.

That nudge meant we did actually get round to making a weed proof base for the nascent polytunnel, and during the week, we may even get around to putting the plastic sheeting up too.  We need somewhere weather proof for the big pot of jalapeño chillies and a table someone gave us for potting things up on, which is currently blocking the wood store.

The autumn weather has brought on yucca flowers on our rather rampant plant - there are these spikes doing nicely and another 4 which will take over in a week or two assuming no frost.  I find these flowers wonderfully alien and opulent among the weeds and dying vegetation of the deciduous bushes.

Things are starting to quieten down now after a manic spurt of making up for not doing stuff as it was too hot.  The nights are drawing in, as are the mornings, so we have to make the best of less than 12 hours of daylight - dawn doesn't arrive here until after 8am which can make getting up challenging.  For the moment, it is warm enough to not require any heating but that will change as the days get ever shorter and the stones of the house don't have a chance to absorb as much heat from the sun.

All the more time really for making more quince jelly!!  Have a good week!

Phew - that was a week!

And yet but Friday, all seemed relatively calm!

Monday was the start of the work on removing the old wood burner and getting the new one in.  The taking out was a bit traumatic for us, not for the work that needed doing but from the ominous crashes and bangs that punctuated the morning.  By the time the guys left for their lunch, there was a pile of debris outside in the courtyard that stank of soot and old smoke.  We looked at the tubing aghast as it had cost us a few thousand to have it installed, admittedly about 15 years ago, but even so!

Monday night we could only see a few holes and some bits that were keeping the fire space clear of cats and their explorations - clearly we put the wind up the salesman when we said there were elements to prevent cat intrusion in the chimney area!  But by Tuesday lunchtime, there was a beautiful, new, shiny wood burning insert, with no chance of cats getting into the area above the insert.  On Thursday, the boss turned up to check his team's work, light a fire, and get us to sign lots of paperwork.  It is very effective and efficient, and when the temperature outside is about 25 degrees C, that is exactly when you want a nice hot fire going!!

 Another excitement for the week was the start of the Challenge Communale in boule de forte.  Each club, plus the council is invited to put forward a couple of teams to play this uniquely Angevine sport.  The Comité des Fetes puts in two teams, this year again we came up with an all women team and an all men team.  I play on the women's team (Girl Power) and last year we got to the finals.  This year we were pitted against one of two teams from the Council (elected members, not staff), and won by an embarrassing margin (10 - 0).  I was busy, so no photos!  The men's team played the following night against one of two teams for Heritage Preservation, taking it all very seriously ... and lost.  If they had won, it would have been an all Comité des Fetes second round, so perhaps good?

Today I was able to harvest a few autumnal crops - a handful of potatoes and a small pumpkin.  The potatoes were rather small - this is due to the lack of rain during the summer and not being allowed to do much watering because of the drought.  Crisps and chips will be smaller this year and baking potatoes at a premium I think.  Still this collection will do us nicely for the week.  I am not sure if it is unusual to be harvesting cucumbers in October and it's the first year we have grown them.

The bed of autumn and winter greens is coming on very nicely.  The chard will need to be thinned soon, which will give us a nice salad to eat.  I've already been snacking on baby spinach leaves and they will also need thinning soon.  The lamb's lettuce, or mâche, will grow slowly and some may be ready for Christmas.

Something else that may be ready to eat during the week is our first cristophine!  Normally by this stage we would be fed up with them, having been picking them since mid-September.  This one snuck up on us rather, as we only spotted the first female flowers about a week ago, but then it is well hidden in the canopy.  It has been a bad year for this tropical perennial, as it has been far too dry and too hot as well - it likes temperatures between 20 and 33 degrees and either side of that, it is out of its comfort zone.

Another weird one are the jalapeño chillies, which would normally be searingly hot to eat.  This year they are full of flavour, but very tame.  We do still have some cayenne chillies in the freezer to add heat when required, but we had high hopes of these and are slightly disappointed.  I guess they would have preferred cooler temperatures too.

Anyway, the nights are drawing in, and we are told there will be a sharp drop in temperatures after Wednesday, so we take advantage of the light and outdoor events while we can.  Today there is the exhibition of the village Heritage Preservation Society's annual photo competition up at the church, with prize giving in about three quarters of an hour, so I had better round this off and put on some shoes and go and be seen to participate.

Have a good week!

A manic drift into Autumn

Apologies - I totally failed to post last Sunday and last Monday and today nearly didn't happen either.  After 4 months of either very wet weather (first half of May), or really hot weather (the rest of the time), people finally decided in September that things had to start to happen.  That's fair I guess, as climate change indicates that this last summer will soon become the norm rather than an exception and we will have to learn to live with it.

Mixed in with the fun of visitors, rock concerts and European Heritage Weekend have been preparing for having our fire insert changed, getting a house sale through for someone, helping someone to move into a residential home, helping someone else with various issues to do with life in general, failing to deal with the quince harvest, and finally getting some movement on our plan to buy (rather than rent/squat) the Meadow and Orchard.  It has been hard to find a moment to stand back and look at the bigger picture!

It was lovely to catch up with old friends, and fun that it coincided with a rather loud but jolly night of Rory Gallagher music, courtesy of Tribute Bourbon - a local rock combo, at the village pub.

As part of the visits with chums, we went over to Chinon for lunch, the antiques fair along the river bank and a look at the Collégiale Sainte Meme.  While I have been into the auditorium bit of this repurposed church, Heritage Open Days gave us a chance to go up the tower and look in painted rooms that are not normally open to the public - fascinating and very beautiful.

 The Romanesque ceiling with beams and spiders' webs was also very impressive.

The last time I wrote, I commented on my rather meagre and disappointing sweetcorn crop - at least those cobs were disease free.  When I went to get the last 8, two of them were infested with smuts.  While the Mexicans regard kernels like this as a real delicacy and strive to grow them, I find them disgusting to look at and touch, but the chickens are happy to sort them out for me!

We planted our quince tree in the garden not long after we bought the house and now it is a mature specimen.  It always produces large fruits - I'm not sure how, as we never water it.  This year we have had a bumper crop - earlier in the year I lost count at spotting about 60 on the tree, but I think there were many more than that.  One fruit seems to have damaged one of the chickens when it fell, and as the larger one in this photo weighs just under 3 pounds (well over a kilo), you can see how it might hurt if it falls on you.  Newton wouldn't have found gravity, he would have found a hospital if he had been sitting under our quince tree!  The smaller specimen is about the size of a large orange for scale.

While this autumn is extraordinary in its warmth and dryness, it is also living up to the usual promise of beautiful skies and sunsets.  We watch cloud formations come and go, but to date bringing no rain worth speaking of - perhaps this week, when we could do with dry weather, that will change.  Here is one good sunset, even if the photo doesn't quite match it in quality.

This week sees the new fire installed, my friend moves into her residential home, and I am back playing boule de fort for the honour of the ladies of the Comité des Fetes of Vieil Bauge.  I'm hoping that somewhere in the week I will also finally get a bit of time to start dealing with the quince mountain, assuming I can find enough jam jars!

Have a good week!

Getting back in the swing of things

September in France is all about new beginnings as well as profiting from the hard work of earlier in the year.  With a lull in the hot weather, we were able to turn the soil in the old broad bean bed and get in the first of the winter crops, so that there should be something available in February or March in the garden.  We have one bed where we can (normally) grow cauliflowers, so once the rotavator had done its job, we added a bag of well rotted horse manure and I planted 10 cauliflower plants.  They will now be in the ground and carefully nurtured for about 7 months, so if you complain about the price of caulis, remember how long they take to grow and how much space each plant takes, and only produces one head of curds!

As the medium term forecast for the autumn is quite benign, I have also planted a load of salad/leafy crops to make October and November a bit more interesting.  The seeds went in last Sunday, so it was encouraging to see that the Bright Lights chard and the spinach were well up and some signs of the mâche (lamb's lettuce) coming through as well.  If I am watchful and we are lucky, we should be eating baby leaves in October.

But what of the existing crops?  Well today I picked the best of our sweetcorn, as a snack to accompany lunch.  Disappointing puts it rather mildly - as these were very short cobs at about 3 to 4 inches long, sparsely populated too, but very sweet and tasty.  It just wasn't a good year for them, and I did sow about 2 weeks too late.

The cucumbers seem to remember now what their purpose in life is and have about 4 fruits set on them.  Reading the packet details, the variety is a slim version, and hails from Poland.  I have to hope that they do fatten up a little bit more than this, as it isn't totally appealing at the moment.

My fight against Asian hornets continues - this is the time of year when workers are on a feeding frenzy of finding sugar, while young queens need to really stock up on sugars to get themselves through the winter.  The exceptionally hot summer hasn't been good for them, as once the temperature inside the nests exceeds 40 degrees, they die off.  As we have had four periods when that has happened, we hope that they have taken a big hit.  The other noticeable thing is that as food has been more scarce and conditions not to their liking, any specimens that have been spotted are a bit smaller than usual.  On the one hand this is good, implying a weaker set of insects that may find it difficult to get through the winter.  On the other hand, there have been instances where they are able to escape from the selective traps that are set for them, as they can squeeze out of the holes designed to let bees and flies escape.  I have topped up the bait in my number 1 trap and have caught at least three of the beasties.

The star plant of September is the cyclamen and they are cropping up all over the place now, including random spots on the side of the road.  These clumps are at the entrance to the Orchard, and always cheer me up.

Yesterday was the annual Mechoui of our local boule de fort club - a lovely Saturday given over to gluttony and fellowship.  This year was a little subdued - the long, hot summer has taken its toll on people, and indeed the menu for the meal couldn't be finalised for a while until they got permission for the fire needed to spit roast the pig.  Our glorious Leader hasn't been in the best of health so he was less lively and couldn't make his usual general toast.  But having said that, the punch kicked above its weight, the wine was delicious, the starters were excellent, and the spit roast pig was all you could desire.  Once we got home at 6pm, we lolled, trying to digest and rehydrate after a decidedly warm afternoon among friends.

That is lunch and here are the happy punters.

Another feature of September is a rush of arrivals who didn't want to come over during school holidays.  The week ahead looks extremely busy with people, concerts, meals out, antiques fairs and the like and the blog will probably not be published until Monday.

Have a good week!

Vindicated on the Rentree!

Last week I said that things would start to happen as the Rentrée came into effect, and I wasn't wrong!  The water bills arrived - one of which looks seriously wrong, so will need me to rant at someone in the coming week.  The gym classes restarted and by the end of the week I was physically broken, although pleasantly surprised that I hadn't totally lost it over the summer.  An issue I have been working on for the past 6 to 8 weeks got broadly resolved, and when I was given the final confirmation by phone on Thursday, I actually cried with relief, much to the concern of the person on the other end of the line, who thought I was nuts.  And then Poirot decided to add her own brand of grumpy old lady cat troubles into the mix, which I won't go into for the moment.  Rebus is channelling my physical and mental exhaustion for you!

In amongst all that, I found time to harvest some food from the garden to create a nice healthy supper.  We only have 3 tomato plants, but Coeur de Boeuf are pretty reliable and excellent in the kitchen as there aren't many seeds in the lovely large fruits.

It has been a very mixed year for fruit, with many things cooked on the tree, but I have managed to make a few jars of peach jam, and could make more, if I can find the time.  The quince are likely to be outstanding this year, although I have yet to dissect one of the fallers to assess the quality of the flesh.  This is one of many huge examples, which weigh in at about 750 grammes a piece.

My raised bed for "soft" herbs has worked to my satisfaction.  The parsley and dill protected the rather fleshier sorrel from the worst of the sun, and both shop bought and seed grown chives are doing well, while the tarragon is quietly doing its thing.  The dill is now over and I hope spreading seed to sprout in the spring.  The parsley will keep going until the middle of next year.

Rather belatedly we have put out a small tank of water for wildlife in The Meadow - our consciences were slightly needled by the thought that at least 3 baby coypu hadn't made it and while I don't mind predators getting them, I didn't like the thought of them dehydrating to death.  Keeping the water relatively sweet and without mosquito larva is of course the challenge, and before the French government put an end to John's occasional spending binges on Temu (rule - never more than 20 euros total including postage), he found a small solar fountain to do the job.  It's not the most powerful piece of kit, but is doing what we need, and will be put away at the end of September along with the tank - assuming it rains before then of course...

In a real rush of Rentrée activity, there is so much going on this weekend, it has been a struggle to choose.  Yesterday there was all the usual Saturday stuff, plus the Forum of Associations where you sign up for sports and other activities, and the Boziacus festival at Boce.  Today there are two vide greniers, the classic car exhibition and spare parts sale, a walk and run in support of cancer charities and the Comice at Lasse.  In the end the last one won for us, as it was near something else we needed to do and had Tractorcross - so like motocross for bikes, but with tractors.  Not small tractors either, not the totally huge ones, but decent sized road going tractors racing round a muddy and sinuous track - excellent fun!

I'm hoping for a gentler week before the Méchoui of the Boule de Fort society on Saturday, but I suspect it is a vain hope.  We'll see.  Have a good one!

It's the Rentrée

It's that time of the year when the days are getting noticeably shorter, traffic becomes more dense at around 4:30pm, and people start to look busy and important - the Rentrée!  

News programmes are full of it - the challenges of finding the right, new school bag for Emile or Clotilde, all the choices of pens, exercise books and gym shoes, and how to budget if you don't earn much and have 6 children to equip (actually the State is pretty generous in those circumstances).  Services that have been moribund as everyone is on holiday suddenly come to life and expect you to jump because they are back from leave.  And the bills start to arrive - tax, council tax (taxe foncière), water, while you wait for the heating bills to kick in from October.

This late period of August has also finally brought rain and a relief from eternally blue skies with a frying sun.  While the cyclamen have started to bloom from late July over the past five or more years, this year they have only started to come out in the last 10 days.  Some corms have shown quite how pent up the urge to flower has been, putting on a ridiculous display.

In fact, in the last two weeks we have had the same amount of rain as in the whole of June and July!  This is making a huge difference in the potager.  We finally have female flowers on the cucumber plants!

I doubt they will do anything, as now we have no male flowers, but at least there is the potential for fruit, which there wasn't before.  The rain has altered my careful rationing of water for the tomatoes, so that with all the extra moisture, they have grown bigger and split their skins.

Some things cannot be helped.  The apples are falling, the pears are nearly over, and some of the walnuts, while healthy, are looking ready to fall a good month before they are due.  Size of nut may be an issue, but we shall see.

On the bright side with fruit, the quince are having the weather they were bred for some 2,000 years ago in Persia and are looking huge and relatively bug free.  Now we have to hope for some autumn sun to turn them sweet and yellow before autumn gales blow them off the tree.

The increased cloud also makes for beautiful sunsets, something we have been missing these last few months, but for me are a feature of Anjou.  I caught a couple of fine ones this week, first this one looking West.

Then this one, looking East.

So, back to school, back to work, back to gym classes twice a week - whatever your Rentrée, I hope it is a good one.  

While holiday is good, it is nice to get a bit of routine back into life (although not too much), and to be able to talk to services about things that are needed, without being told that the person concerned is on leave and won't be back for 3 weeks!