I swear my loathing of Google grows by the day! Yesterday it took me an hour to get back into my YouTube channel so I could load up some videos for today's blog. Today it has taken me half an hour to log into Blogger to be able to write this at all! A pox on their so called security and ease of use policies!
But on a calmer note -
This whole blog was going to be a rant. About Google, about local politicians saying one thing and doing another, about lassitude and inertia, and about the French national sport of moaning. But when Spring is in full "bursting out all over" mode and you can hardly hear yourself think for the racket a local nightingale is making in the trees - who needs to rant?
The weather for the past week has been too hot for spring, but probably just right for those on holiday and it was certainly good for getting the laundry dry. Today I finally got the first of the new raised beds installed and with soil in it, now for the planting and sorting out the other three. This one is going to be a herb bed, so I might actually use the spacing rods, although I'm not going to screw them in as that will make weeding more difficult when it becomes necessary, as it undoubtedly will.
It has been a pretty cultural week in many ways, with a reggae band at the pub on Easter Sunday, who were very good, but the singer was so laid back he was virtually horizontal! Then on Friday there was jazz manouche at the pub, one of my favourite things. As 90% of the audience were anglophone (shame on you French people), the harmonica player had a lot of fun trying to explain the songs in English, and the trio were outstanding. Finally today we went to see the crafts on display in the newly refurbished Tribune building in Bauge - wood carving, furniture making, weaving, watercolours on plastic (fascinating and lovely), pottery, and calligraphy to name a few. It is the European Weekend of artisan crafts, and if the local talents are a reflection of the rest of the country, what a talented bunch people are!
The highlight of the week was Poirot getting her stitches out and having her sunflower collar taken off, following the successful surgery to have her damaged eye removed. She has taken to going out into the garden again to check on things and find the tasty water, and is a very happy girl once again.
I said I had wrestled on your behalf with YouTube - well let's see if it worked and was worth it. I brought in Trail Camera 2 at the start of March. This one lives on a ridge between two wetland areas, where two wildlife paths cross, but people not so much. There were some 350 files on the camera after two months in situ, and quite a lot were of coypu and of mice, but I will show you the best video for each species of animal (not birds) that the camera captured during that time.
First off we have a rather handsome stag with furry antlers just mooching about.
Naturally the boar passed through, doing their thing. They had a good try at digging up the path too, but not on video.
The badgers were around having a jolly good rummage, as they do.
The fox came through during daylight hours, later among the files I spotted a very pregnant vixen doing the rounds, but the video wasn't up to much other than showing just how near she was to producing.
As I said, there was a lot of coypu action, mostly running across the field of vision worryingly quickly, but this short of one having a bit of a clean up is as near cute as they get.
I mentioned mice and there are also rates. This is natural land quite a distance from buildings of any kind, so this is a rat in the wild, doing what wild rats do, and therefore I have no issues with it.
There were lots of photos of pine martens, quite blurry, as they passed through at speed, but in one instance, one did stop for a moment to perform for the camera!
And finally, my favourite of all the animals we share the land with, the hare made an appearance. It is not a usual area to find them, they tend to be more over in the Meadow, but clearly it was worth them checking out the area.
Well, hopefully that all works.
This week I'll be working on getting the raised beds set up, setting off seeds, and listening to the nightingale while he is in full song mode. I heard my first Golden Oriole of the season during the week, but once they get going, things get really loud. How lucky to share space with them!
Have a good week!
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