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!

Winter is waning

I'm afraid there was a glitch and the layout is all to pot this week!

There are signs everywhere that winter is waning, even if we are only just into the second week of February.  The big question is whether it will come back to bite us on the bum, but for the moment the February forecasts are just for ever more rain.  While that doesn't do much to help the soil dry out for gardening and planting, it does help a bit with energy bills.  

It's not just the weather that says things are on the move.  Winter's guilty pleasures of being curled up on the sofa with a rug, a cat or two and undemanding TV are slowly coming to an end.  The deep winter pleasure of the Dakar Rally and nutters racing through deserts is long gone.  The 17 week binge of pure trash TV that is Star Academy finished last night with a new winner crowned, who will hopefully not be a major provider of lift and supermarket background muzak - they are promoted ruthlessly for about a year across most French radio and TV platforms.  While the mental preparation for spring, with watching 30 well built men throwing balls around in muddy conditions started on Thursday as the Six Nations kicked off.

In an effort to keep our local pub alive, we watched one and a half matches down there, with the luxury of a HUGE screen and not having to fight for the sofa with a stroppy old cat.  France versus Ireland was a pleasure to watch, England versus Wales not so much.

While the trees are mostly behaving and not doing much at all for the moment, spring bulbs are doing their thing.  The snowdrops are amazing in that the flowers keep going for such a long time.

My favourite miniature narcissi are starting to come through and should put on another good show I hope.

The vegetables are starting to look interesting - the cauliflowers are looking a bit pregnant - the curds should appear in about 5 or 6 weeks time I think, and the plants don't seem to have suffered at all from being frosted.

The broad beans are starting to pull away, and with any luck, will start to flower in April.

I fear the leeks are never going to fatten up however - they suffered from drought big time in August and September last year, and by the time there was ample water, there wasn't enough daylight or warmth for them to really develop.  I guess they will make a nice hors d'oevres though.

I am still working my way through the bird feeder camera files - there are only 6,600 in the folder now, or 4 Gbytes of "stuff", most of which is rubbish.  I have still only spotted robins, blue tits and great tits, but since they are what I heard and saw on every visit to the garden in January, I am guessing that is no surprise.  Here is one proving that there is actually food in the feeder.

Butterflies are to my mind pretty well impossible to photograph well for the amateur, so the fact that I was buzzed today by three Brimstone butterflies, daring me to waste my time trying to capture their image was rather trying.  On this photo, there is a little spec of acid yellow - that is the Brimstone saying "nah nah ne nah nah" at me.

The forecast for the coming days is wet, so I expect next week I will be writing about and sharing more photos of birds on the feeder.  Have a good week!

Review of my latest trail camera

Actually, although I got it from the same place as my good trail cameras, this is actually a bird feeder camera, as I rarely get much good bird footage from the trail cameras of birds other than pheasants, ducks and the very occasional woodpecker.

The camera is quite small (and was on offer, which says something), and takes perhaps 150g of bird seed at a time.  It has solar panels to keep the batteries charged up, which seem to be very effective, and takes a 32Gb SD card.  We have it strapped to a redundant lamp post in the middle of the Garden by the Shack.

I first installed it at the end of December 25, and brought it in during the week to clean it out, see if it had done anything and to check that the solar panels keep it fired up - spoiler alert, they do.  Getting it programmed isn't as easy as I had hoped, hence the date/time stamps on the following photos being rather weird, and there are no videos, although it will do them.  Having said that, with 10,218 photo files to go through from about a month in situ, I think the burst of photos are probably all I need to go through!

So, what have I seen?

Well, as  you can see, tits are inquisitive and hungry.

They also like to pose and know which is their good profile.

And the good profile isn't the same for every bird.

Occasionally, you get a really good action shot of an arrival.

Or leaving.

And there are occasional excellent shots of a bird in flight, like this.

Or this.

But there are an awful lot like this - perhaps 90% of the photos - which just need to be deleted.

So far there is a very limited range of birds using the feeder: there is the great tit.

There is the blue tit.

And there is the robin.

Or at least that is who was using it for the first 2,000 files that I have been through thus far.  If I spot anyone else, obviously I'll let you know!

And a reminder - here is what the camera looks like in situ.  Overall, Num'Axes have done me proud again.  The feeder will be out now until the end of March, when we stop feeding birds and let them raise their young naturally.

I'm not sure what this week will bring, but I hope you have a good one!