Well, this nearly didn't happen!

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!

Sunshine and Success!

After a truly frustrating and damp period, things started to work and the sun came out.  I had scoffed about a wine order from down near Nimes arriving chez nous without any issues, but they said they would deliver on Monday in the morning, and at 10:30 while I read the local paper, the daylight was blotted out by a lorry parking up outside, with our (modest) wine order inside.  How could I doubt them?  Also on Monday, there was a flurry of messages from the passport office as my photo was accepted by the bots sometime on Sunday evening, and by Monday morning the document was printed, packed and on it's way to France.  Again, it arrived when expected on Thursday morning, after it had been on a trip to Germany on its way to France.  I can travel again!

I'm not sharing a photo of the passport, but I will share a photo of the daffodils that came out on Tuesday to celebrate sunshine and good will to all men.

The big news of the week locally is that with a scant 5mm of rain during the whole week, rivers have mostly returned to their beds, although still flowing full and fast, and people can get down to clearing up and waiting for things to dry out.  We dug up the remaining potatoes during the week - a heavy, depressing venture, as the fork became as one with the heavy clay soil, while the potatoes were generally rather small and nibbled by slugs.  The bottom allotment plot is really rather unpleasant, although good for brassicas.  Otherwise the ground is too wet to do anything yet, although I did resort to sowing some seeds in modules just to cheer myself up.

The enduring damp, combined with nice weather, did mean that yesterday we finally had to make a start on making safe the dead walnut tree near the ponds, as we had no more excuses.  While good for insects and birds, the tree is highly dangerous, with "widow maker" branches all over the place and low branches that threaten to block access to the ponds.

Using a generator, an electric pole saw and a lot of elbow grease, we got down the most dangerous bits, and created access for getting at the bits that are blocking the hidden path between the Orchard and the Meadow.  The wood is quite light, but even so, there is a bit of firewood there for us in due course.  The area is now rather lighter which might encourage the brambles a bit too much, so as well as carrying on with the tree, we need to get in there with brush cutters of different sizes and power to push those back too.

Looking at one of the large, dead and partly broken branches, we did spot an amazing large fungus.  Not edible and not conducive to plant function or keeping qualities of wood, it is an impressive size.

Our fun was cut short yesterday by an unnecessary shower of rain, very localised but very wet.  It did create a rather nice rainbow though, which is just about visible on this photo.

As getting to the ponds is now rather easier and safer, with the walnut a bit curtailed, I was able to get to the ponds and decided to check on the trail camera based down there.  The camera is fine, although I think I need to bring it in soon, if only to watch the boar doing their best to dig a new channel between the second pond and the larger area of bog and pond to the east.  What a mess!

Spring is clearly on its' way now - if there were no other clues, the bird song has a distinctive character to it, and the mix of birds is slowly changing.  The Cetti's Warblers are strident, and the chiffchaffs are back.  I think there must be food sources appearing too, as the various tits are spending less time on the fat balls and bird feeder.  With grey skies and rain, I haven't paid attention to the wild plum growing by the chicken run, but this morning I could not miss the blossom!

The forecast is set fair for the week, and there is so much to do outside, I feel I must get going now and do something useful.  I hope the weather is kind to you too!  Have a good week!

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!

 

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!

Wildlife activity

I brought in one of the wildlife cameras for its regular check up - I clear off the files and recharge the batteries (or change them - I've only got one working set of rechargeable batteries).  Going through the files takes quite a time, even if there are only 400 (!) this time round.  I delete the obvious ones - pictures of my feet and bottom as I go to and fro around the camera - or where they are blurred or where there is no wildlife.  A second pass is required for me to be more critical and determine whether or not I have enough photos of the rear half of badgers and boar, enough blurred pine martens and sufficient retreating deer bottoms.

Some files need a bit of examining to see exactly what I have captured - the ones where the camera is attacked by randy great tits being a case in point!  While others need a bit of editing to show the true beauty of a wild animal in its natural habitat - getting rid of the extraneous background that might give too much detail of the location of the camer for example.  There were some good photos in the first 150 files on the camera!

This badger was rather nice.

While I don't like coypu, this photo is not too bad.

Birds are the hardest to get it seems and I think this is the short-toed treecreeper that I often hear identified on the Merlin bird app.

The videos also need careful triaging - with the camera on a crossroads, you often get the tail of something disappearing, or the backside heading into the distance.  I hope the following selection are of interest.

This one is of a badger just checking things out.

And then there is one with two badgers checking things out together.

There is a red squirrel being acrobatic.

There is a video with a bird and a squirrel!

There is a pine marten being phenomenally cute.

There's a fox checking things out.

And there is a dog fox doing what all canines do.

What a fine brush he has!

We are also in the process of cleaning out the bird boxes before we put them back.  The really cheap tiny one had an acorn left in it by a squirrel, but the other two had fine nests in them so they did their job.  Once we have done a fire clean on the inside, they will go back up for the next season.

And yes, I'm afraid we evicted the spider!

The truffles arrived yesterday, so next week should be all about my culinary adventures with black gold.

Have a good week!

 

To quote - "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

There are decorations everywhere in the towns and villages and the last Christmas Fairs are taking place this weekend in the smaller locations.  The big Christmas Fairs in major cities will carry on for a while yet, but the ones that last a weekend are nearly over.  During the week, we went back to Chinon and saw their decorations at night - we assume that they get a bit of a bung from the nuclear power plant close by and will have a bit of cash in the coffers after hosting both men's and women's Tour de France in the summer.  The Place Mirabeau looks like something out a Disney film, it is so pretty.

Santa and chums are in the main square near the Mairie, overlooked by the Chateau and its floodlights.

 Last weekend we enjoyed the Christmas Fair at Chinon, with its food and craft stalls.  The first weekend of Advent, we went to a small local Christmas Fair in the barns attached to a local market garden and direct sales shop.  That was enchanting as the venue was a bit different, the stalls were clearly run by the people who produced the things for sale, and there was a lovely mixture of things to nibble, decorations and affordable presents.  Today we went to our last Fair of the season and found it rather disappointing - there are only so many woollen scarves and fake pashminas, leather wallets and handbags, and crystal necklaces and bracelets that can be gawped at.  Few were produced locally although the vendors had shops in the department.  The wines weren't particularly local, and only three of the food vendors were very much of the area.  It is also difficult to create a festive atmosphere in what is essentially a concert hall.  Perhaps the most disappointing of the three.

Having been snide about the provenance of some of the goodies on sale today, the cats' Christmas treats turned up from China this week - a sunflower for when a collar of shame is required, and a "golden snitch" for when Rebus needs exercise.  The latter has already produced hours of fun and exercise for a boy cat.

It is tricky being an over-energetic cat at this time of year, as the days are so short (although they get longer from today - yey!).  I discovered Rebus likes to guard the chickens when they are eating - I guess when they stop stuffing their beaks he runs away, as they are quite aggressive towards cats!

And on that note, I will wrap up for today.  Tomorrow we are moving into the 21st Century with fibreoptic internet, assuming all goes well.  If it doesn't, we are back to the happy days of dial up I fear.  Experiences of the switch over vary, and I am hopeful that we have managed to stagger the pain, by changing internet box before the line changes so that any problems can be clearly identified as the line and not the box.  I've supervised one installation for a chum, which went smoothly, but you hear such horror stories...  Wish us luck!

And in any case, Merry Christmas to you and yours!