Autumn is truly here, as are animals

After the marvellous weather of the first half of October, and the fabulous conditions for our summer holiday, this week Autumn is really getting into its stride.  Storm Benjamin took people's attention in the middle of the week, and although for us, the wind speeds were mostly in the annoying bracket, an official weather station about 5 miles away recorded 103kmph, so something around 60mph in old money, which is quite strong enough thank you.  There are some fabulous autumn colours out there, and while the storm took some of the leaves, the liquid amber maples are still looking amazing, as are our strawberry leaves.

It is also the time when, rather like the exotic birds of summer, second home owners arrive to "winterise" their houses and depart until the warmer and longer days are here again.  I have said Happy Christmas a few times this week, which doesn't seem right!  

In addition this week, there was a permanent departure, as another second home owner finally sold up and left.  I always find this bittersweet, as I am happy for them, that they have achieved their wish and have sold a property that must have become a burden or a challenge too far.  On the other hand, it is extremely rare that the new owners are as nice, if we even meet them at all, and while some who sell, come back to visit, in most cases, there is the nagging doubt that we will ever see certain people again.

I did finally get round to my biennial autumn task, and by Tuesday lunchtime, the Christmas puddings were wrapped up in greaseproof paper and foil and tucked away to mature for 2 or 14 months.

That certainly keeps the winter blues away for the moment!

Well before Storm Benjamin hit, I brought in one of the trail cameras that had been sitting in a secluded spot since early August, to check the batteries and the contents of the disk.  I was worried as the strap seemed to have come loose and I wasn't sure if the poacher or the hunters had been meddling with it.  After inspecting all 850 files, I have narrowed the suspects down to two.  This is the first.

We've known we have red squirrels for quite a while, normally because Donald the Cat brings us a carcass from time to time, one year it was a Christmas present.  Whether Donald is losing his touch as a scourge of squirrels or whether there are more about this year, I don't know, but this fellow spends a lot of time around the camera, while one visited the Garden area, and got chased up a tree by two well fed cats, and had a lot to say about it!

The other possible culprit doesn't stay still long enough to do good photos, but there are some excellent video streams of my lovely pine martens doing what they do.  Clearly there is a family of these in the area, but with so much dense undergrowth and so many large trees, I am not sure where they sleep.  I do keep finding places where they play, eat, and do other things.  I'm still working out how the links work, but so far I think you have to Go Back from the YouTube page to get back here and follow the next link - technology!!

hello pine marten

chasing game

morning routine

daylight marten

night time forage

dusk

scratching

I find pine martens quite the most enchanting animals to watch, particularly when you watch their eyes coming towards the camera at night, so you get the full effect of their lolloping style of running.  They were eating apples - it appears there is an apple tree around there, which attracted them as well as badgers and deer - I have way too many short videos of deer eating apples.  This is a bit weird as none of them seem to eat the nicer apples in the Orchard or down the side of the Meadow.  I guess the shelter is an added attraction.

Yesterday we found evidence of hunters taking liberties on our land, laying bait and marking a tree with a smelly substance roughly where the boar use the tree as a scratching point.  We assume they attract deer and boar with the corn, and hope they will pick up some of the creosote-like substance on the tree, which makes it easier for the dogs to track them.  We hid the corn and today John sprayed the creosote with lemon-scented washing up liquid.  During the week we will pressure wash the tree too.  There are too many boar and deer, with no predators, so yes, the hunt needs to do its thing, however they are not allowed to leave polluting stuff on our land, and certainly not near a spring that is a source of the local river!

The coming week should be quieter, I have nothing in my diary at the moment apart from Keep Fit for Seniors sessions, but that means I can get around to doing many of the tasks that have been building up over the past few months, as there is less to do in the garden.  The house now demands my attention.

Have a good week!

Our Summer Holiday

I enigmatically said that I might not write about sweet chestnuts this week and that was because I knew that I would be writing about our visit to St Malo.  Because of Poirot's eye drops, we can be away from home together for a maximum of 36 hours, which limits where we can get to.  Last year's holiday was a night in Paris.  This year we needed to see the sea, and we timed our visit impeccably, to avoid school holidays and catch the fine weather which broke today.

When we arrived, it was high tide, so we couldn't walk out to the National Fort, let alone the Grand Be or Petit Be, but we could walk around the ramparts admiring the views, watching boats and ships come into port and people bathing and catching a last top up of their tan by the outer ramparts.  The low sun meant that cafes were shaded inside the walls, but still inviting.

It was impossible to resist the temptation of café society inside the walls, so we had a coffee and the most amazing hot chocolate - a quantity of boiling milk poured over a large blob of chocolate, and you are left with a spoon to decide how much to eat and how much to stir into the milk!

We stayed at a favourite hotel inside the ramparts.  The hotel has no restaurant, so we are free to roam the town in search of good food and good drink.  Our dinner, once we had got over the shock of how much eating out costs at the seaside nowadays, was excellent, and we also visited our favourite pub twice during the evening, once for aperitifs and once for digestifs.  Well, we were on holiday!

The following morning, once we had checked out, we went back to the café society zone for breakfast - HUGE croissants and strong coffee and a glass of water.  

We then went out to the beach as the tide had gone out, to try to fly the kite we had brought with us.  Such was the fine weather, that there wasn't a strong or consistent enough breeze to get the kite to fly.  It wanted to but there just wasn't enough oomph to the wind, so instead we settled for walking out to the rocks and taking photos back towards St Malo centre.

St Malo was a major port in times gone by, and close to the Channel Islands too, so a favourite target of the British and Dutch navies.  As a result, Vauban spent a lot of time thinking about its defences.  The National Fort, the Petit Be, the ramparts themselves were all part of this defensive ring, as was the Fort that sticks out on the horizon, similar to Fort Boyard, but predating it I believe.

Anyway, from the beach, we went round the coast to Cancale, to admire the oyster beds and walk out along the harbour wall. 

You can buy oysters from those beds at a small market at the end of the harbour wall, and if that is what you want, the vendors will open them for you, and you can sit on the wall, eat your oysters and chuck the shells over the wall onto the beach.  But NOT the lemon wedge you are provided with - that has a special bin!

We didn't do that, we went to another favourite haunt, Chez Victor, for our lunch.  John needed a vat of mussels and I rather fancied a crab, each washed down with a glass of sauvignon, and served with the style and elegance that we have come to expect from Victor.

And then it was time to buy a box of oysters and dash back home to Maine et Loire to give Poirot her eye drops, after an amazingly refreshing and very enjoyable escapade by the sea.  We had the oysters for lunch today - some hot with bacon and prunes as Angels on Horseback, and some raw.  This is a bit of an experiment as 5 years ago we were poisoned by a dodgy batch bought locally and haven't dared try them since - fingers crossed!

But after all that fun, there are serious things to attend to - making the Christmas puddings (starting shortly) and sifting through the 850 files from a trail camera I brought in.  It was watching a crossroads of wildlife paths, and from what I can see, pine martens, badgers and deer have been cavorting there through the summer.  So you know what I will write about next time!

Have a good week!

It was supposed to be about chestnuts

Because of the sad demise of Typepad, and the loss of my old blog stream with all the fine advice I put together over the years, this week was going to be all about sweet chestnuts: how to peel them, favourite recipes and useful stuff like that.  I went out and collected more than I can strictly use this season (they really don't store awfully well, whatever people say), so that I could do staged photos and videos, once I remembered how to peel them a bit more easily.  Here is my stash.

So far we have indulged in two evenings of pure greed, having carved crosses into the tops of about 40 succulent nuts, and roasted them in a hot (Gas mark 7) oven for about 15 minutes, then singed our fingers getting the shells off and dipping them in more salt than we should probably eat.  Yummy!

My plan was to do the photos/video yesterday late afternoon, so they were all available today to write the blog.  How things change!

Last week I commented on the village Challenge Communale in boule de forte, and that our all girls team for the Comite des Fetes had trounced a boules de forte society to get into round 2.  Our opponents in round 2 were another boules de forte society (indeed our "home" society, la Paix), who seriously wanted to win.  At one stage it was looking extremely dodgy as to whether they were going to get even one point, but they pulled back, and we won 10 - 3.

That win on Friday night meant that Saturday morning had to be spent playing the semi-final against elected members of the council, rather than my usual Saturday morning ritual of outdoor market, bakery and Aldi for cat food and beer.  That was a much closer match for some reason - a different boules de forte society was hosting, we were closer in ability and not taking anything for granted, time of day, lack of alcohol in the blood stream.  It took ages - we started at 10am, didn't get to a winner until 1pm and I wasn't sure who had won, until I asked!  Anyway, it was really good fun, and of course we had to celebrate the win, so I didn't get home for lunch until 1:45pm.

I had to be back at that boules de forte society for 3pm and the final - it took some effort to get up the hill I can tell you!  Our opponents in the final were the council employees (one mayor's secretary, the cook from the school canteen and a dinner lady), and while they do have important day jobs, I have to worry about the amount of time they must spend honing their boules skills.  We were destroyed!  Well done them!  But their win had to be celebrated (liberally), while we waited for the awards ceremony and vin d'honneur.

Every participant in the Challenge Communale received a bottle of red wine, the finalists each received a fine potted flowering plant, and the winners also have to look after the trophy for a year.  There were speeches, hand shakes, kisses, photos and more wine before I got to stagger home under the weight of boules de forte, bottle of red wine and potted plant.  I spent the next hour on the sofa drinking tea!

We are currently enjoying a period of idyllic calm autumn weather - occasional dawn mists, sunny days, magnificent sunsets and cool, clear evenings.  So far we haven't had a frost, so the delicate plants haven't come indoors and we are occasionally tempted to sit out.  When I close the chicken run just after sunset, there are still bats dashing about, stocking up on the last tasty bugs and mosquitoes of the season.  Apparently we are set fair for another week of this, which is wonderful news, and I might get to do my chestnut photos yet!  This time last year was cool and dank and muddy.

I categorically promise not to write about boules de forte next week, and I may not write about chestnuts either - wait and see!

Have a good week!

Early October Excitement!

I thought this week would be relatively quiet but it's not proved to be the case.  We've had good weather which has meant a fair amount to do in the gardens, and my early autumn sniffles are gone so I had two keep fit classes this week as well.  The fine weather ended with the arrival of Storm Amy, but before she hit, we had a couple of evenings with remarkable sunsets.  Of the two photos that I think are OK, this one is for me more atmospheric, although not so dramatic.

 I started to pull up the courgette plants as most were covered with white mould and not producing anything.  They were also mugging the remaining aubergine, chilli and pepper plants.  The root balls weren't huge, but the plants themselves were absolute thugs - this is two thirds of one plant!

We are almost at the end of the year's fruit - just medlars to come in early November - but we were able to take advantage of this extraordinary year for fruit to rustle up about 100 kilos of quince to take to the fruit press.  A quince pressing is always the last of the day as the flesh is so claggy, but they are happy to work with us.  We were indeed greeted cheerily with the question of whether we would like to add a further three cases of quince to our pressing, to save them from making any more quince jelly?  Well naturally it would have been rude to say no, so we got a healthy 70 litres of juice.

We were also asked if we wanted to take away the quince residue, in case we wanted to make anything with it.  We turned that down - we've tried composting quince sludge and it isn't easy, and frankly it is better off going with the rest of the fruit residue they produce at the press.

Friday night was boule de forte night for me, as part of the Comite des Fetes Ladies Team.  As last year my boules had been ridiculed for being ugly and old, I took advice from an afficionado and went to a particular shop in Andard for a "gomme" for my boules.  I then spent a bit of time in the garden with said gomme and a glass of rose and a lot of elbow grease to improve the aesthetics of my boules.

The one on the left had had some attention, the one on the right not.  Anyway, it seemed to do the trick, as after a quick spin on the spinner at the Societe de la Paix with the gomme, our team did alright, indeed a bit better than alright as we wopped the bottoms of the other team and won 10 to 1.  This was a harsh defeat for them, as none of us are serious players and they were representing a boule de forte club!

The celebrations were protracted and convivial!  We play next on Wednesday against another boule de forte society, who will be a real challenge, and normally win the whole competition.  Even so, my best win yet at boules de forte, and one of only 3 real wins, as any others have been forfeits by the other team.

Autumn is kicking in with cooler overnight temperatures and falling nuts.  Walnuts and chestnuts are our next big task, when not polishing my boules and going to gym classes!  I also plan to sow some winter spinach in the vain hope of getting some sort of crop, and then there are more potatoes to lift in due course.  It's all go!

Anyway, it's time to go up to the school and look at the photo competition entries, and see who won this year.  We didn't take part, so it is really an exercise in seeing and being seen!

Have a good week!