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!

 

Comice 2026 at Bauge

I said I would be a day late with this, and so I am - no apologies.  It takes time to sort out the images and a video for publication in this space!  For a weekend for us, the focus is away from daily concerns and all about the fruition of plans and work of many months.  Our biggest concerns were the weather and how well 135 fish (painted paper, plastic or material) would survive the travel to the staging point and then the actual procession of floats.  It makes a change!

The theme this year was Bauge en Fete, and instead of mildly incomprehensible games between dodgy teams, each village was invited to present a 5 minute entertainment of some sort.  Only 6 out of 15 rose to the challenge, with a rather splendid kick off by our hosts of a Spanish song accompanied by flamenco dancers.

I'll say right now that the placing of the stage might be magnificent if you are on it, but if you are watching, with the sun directly behind it, it was uncomfortable at best and nearly impossible to photograph.  Le Vieil Bauge produced a tableau with acting and singing about the trials of a fisherman (our beloved President), and if you are so inclined, you can watch the video here.

The chap heckling the fisherman blithely confessed to losing his place in the script and having to wing it a bit.  Apologies for the poor quality of the video.

Sunday is all about old tractors, amateur ploughing competitions and the procession of decorated floats.  This is something I devote a lot of time to during the year, helping with design, making flowers, drawing up the cardboard templates and sticking on flowers, then attaching everything to the float.  The trout bunting was a novelty this year too.

Anyway, as ever, the procession is lead by the local Fanfare, the Cadets de Baugeois - an award winning team in their own field.  I have known one or two of them since they were babies...

The first float is always the host village, so no surprises, here is Bauge itself.

The host can also get bits of their community to do floats too, if they are so inclined and this year, the Fleurs d'Argent, the club that organises activities for senior citizens, put in a contribution.

I can't really remember the order of most of the floats (although it is a very serious thing), so I will go mainly alphabetically.  Boce hosts a festival called Bosiacus, which has a very Viking and savage theme to it, hence the float.

Chevire le Rouge is a village of poetry - honestly there appears to be an association of poetry villages across the country.  They do also celebrate St Medard, so this is their village festival - there was a song attached to this too.

Clefs have not been participating much in Comices recently, so it was great to see them back in the procession of floats.

Cuon will be holding their annual and much respected Vide Grenier next weekend, but the float does not reflect this.  Instead they went with a pig roast - yummy!

Next is Echimire, and not quite so political a float as they did last year - I hope the scars are healing over there!  They were very much in a dance theme.

Fougere has in the past run bicycle and moped races, so their float reflected that.  They have also recovered the float body that has a hidden motor and the head of the driver appears at "floor" level.  They had a team to help with hill starts, of which there were a number!

Next up Pontigne, who next weekend have their open air cinema and family fun day.  I'm not sure the float reflects that but it is awfully jolly.

St Martin d'Arce annoyed me a bit because they don't actually have a trout fishing festival, just a lake in an area that was forest until the big fire 4 years ago.  But they still had to have the biggest trout!

Vaulandry were also in the mix with a village get together and a very dashing flashy wig for their tractor driver!

Le Vieil Bauge had as our theme Peche a la Truite, for our trout fishing day each May.  The paper fish were painted in part by the kids in the after school childcare and partly by mature volunteers who just loved showing their creative side! We do  have the nicest tractor I think!

 
And a bit more detail, because I can.

The final float is always that of next year's hosts, so le Guedenieu brought up the rear and we are all off over there in 2027.

After that there was a demonstration of acrobatic basketball, before the tombola was drawn and the feast began.  We never got to see the ranks of spit roasting pigs - I think they were somewhere where the fire brigade could keep an eye on them as we are on high alert for wildfire still.  But we did enjoy our portion of the feast!  We were able to eat on long, long tables under a vast array of marquees.

And after dinner, there was a band playing cover versions - not bad at all - but we were weary, so went home and saw some of the laser light show from the bathroom window before bedtime!

So that's it for another year - always fun, but always very tiring!

Have a good week!

Wildfire and eclipse - it's all go!

What a week we've had!  In many ways, it has been very quiet, not least as we have been "enjoying" our fifth chronic heatwave of the season.  While "only" about 39 degrees for much of the week, it saps the strength and any determination to do something useful.  The best I could find was to carry on sorting through photos and videos from the trail cameras, to delete the rubbish.  Occasionally I got a nice surprise such as this shot of an arriving blue tit, which makes sifting through the dross worth the trouble.

In other ways, it has not been quiet.  On Monday afternoon I drove up north of la Fleche to see a friend who is in hospital up there.  On the way back, and once past la Fleche, I noticed a column of smoke off to the south east.  My heart sank - the fires four years ago destroyed a large tract of woodland and were very scary - I did not relish going through that again.  At first I feared it was in the same patch of woodland, but as I drove further south, it became obvious it was in a different area.  For those that know our bit of France, it was behind the cemetery in le Guedenieu.  

This was the view from our garden, but social media, doing a good job for once, gave us more details, kept us informed on progress in the fight against the flames, told us where not to go, and supplied the occasional excellent photo - so this one isn't me, but was put out there to show what was happening.

After a massive effort by some 150 firefighters, 52 engines, lots of farmers, 2 helicopters, 2 small planes and one very large Dash aircraft, the fire was first contained, then mastered, but won't be declared out for quite a while yet, as roots and peat burn slow and deep until they find a pocket of oxygen and flare up again.  The worst is behind us.

That did not affect the spectacle that was the partial eclipse of the sun on Wednesday.  We saw the total eclipse in 1999 on the Normandy coast, and it was spectacular.  This time, it was only 95%, and in the evening so the light was already getting a bit odd.  It was still nearly 40 degrees when we donned our slinky eclipse glasses and started to track the moon's passage.   Last time we got photos by using an old school SLR camera with telephoto lens and welding glass.  This time, the best we could do was the fabulous, old school pin hole camera effect, which was very effective.  In the main, we just watched and enjoyed the experience.

While we did actually have some rain yesterday, the signs of drought are all around us.  There is a new phenomenon of ready cooked apples, although only on one side.  People have been wondering if it is a new disease - no, it's just an immature apple being fried by the sun, on the tree as it grows.

Other things are doing OK - the three aubergine plants like the lack of competition (last year's got dominated by the courgette monsters) and also the weather conditions, so are producing good quantities of tasty fruits.

The pumpkin plants that started slowly, now look like they will produce at least three fruits between the two of them, possibly more if the weather cools down and gets a bit wetter.  One snuck up on us and looks like it will be a reasonable size for the variety (potiron, so quite small).

Last year we did very well for tomatoes.  This year we just have three coeur de boeuf plants, but they should provide enough fruits for a few punnets of tomato sauce for the winter.

We did our last picking of blackberries today - I would love to say that we were being altruistic and leaving the rest to wildlife, but if I am honest, I am fed up with lots of little cuts on my hands and arms from bramble thorns.  I think we have about 6 pounds of fruit which will make a good few jars of bramble jelly when I am ready, so it is time to call a halt.  When I did that this morning in the Meadow, I was then treated to an aerial display by a couple of buzzards.  I couldn't tell if it was a pair, or a parent teaching a child, but it was lovely to watch.

That brings us full circle from birds to birds, which works nicely I think.  Now I must go and do things with stewed plums, and wipe down the jars of Victoria plum jam I made earlier.  This week brings a few sewing challenges, and the final decorations for the Float for the Comice.

There won't be a blog next Sunday, as I will be with the float at the Comice and hoping it stays dry (but not too hot).  I will do the Comice blog(s) on the Monday and/or Tuesday the following week.

Have a good week or so!