Awesome Autumn

Although autumn has been with us for several weeks, some of its symptoms are only just here. Trees have mostly only just shed their leaves, following beautiful colours, the weather is mostly still warm – in the twenties C for the last couple of weeks with night time temperatures still consistently above 10˚C and a forecast for them to continue to at least the middle of November, with just the occasional showery day.

 

Unfortunately, I have been suffering from excruciating sciatica for about 4 weeks, following a very minor fall in the garden whilst cutting down some of our huge old Cupressus Leylandii hedge plants. We wanted to open up the view from the back garden to see more of our own land from the house, and a patch of next door’s at the back, where we get a nice pastoral view of their sheep and chickens grazing, and a few wild rabbits emerging from the brambles occasionally. The Leylandii also shaded the garden a lot and takes a lot of nutrient form the soil, which is not brilliant anyway. So we’ll replace it at the back and left side with a better fence that we can still see through, but will stop the chickens and sheep from coming into our garden. Anyway I’ve been going to a physiotherapist three times a week and having lots of tablets and it’s slowly getting less severe. Hugely frustrating though, not being able to do much during the lovely weather we’ve been having.

Elsewhere in the garden and fields, the trees and two new hedges we planted are doing well, in that almost all of them have survived. The big water tanks feeding irrigation systems have helped a lot, but some of them are showing signs of chlorosis – yellowing of the leaves due to all the alkaline stone in the ground. 

Speaking of stone, Jeanne is becoming a dab hand at pointing, which she’s been doing to the remaining wall of the old grange, soon (?) to become a garden, while I’ve been out of action. Just need a bit more to strengthen the bottom (you point old stone walls with lime fom the top down) and then the tiles on the top levelling and setting in properly.

 

The wall I’ve been building next to the new gates (which you can just see on the right of this picture) came to a stop, of course, so I’m getting very frustrated losing all the great weather when it  should have been moving on.  We'll be making nice beds for the corner on the right to match the left, but the cost of the Italian Cypresses has rocketed since we put the ones in on the left of the drive.

 The hens are continuing to thrive, presenting us with lovely eggs every day, and Dusty doesn’t like the darker evenings, but is coming in on her own once it gets dark. We had a fair crop of grapes, some of which is now juice and the rest is fermenting into wine, and another huge crop of walnuts, so the squirrels will be happy with those we don’t collect.  Around us the wine vendange – for cognac – was completed and the farmers went back to harvesting arable crops so we’ve had massive combine harvester in the lanes and tractors pulling trailers full of sunflower seeds and corn (maize) to the co-operatives. That’s more or less finished and they’re all busy ploughing, harrowing and sowing seed on their fields at present.

We just had a small success with our insurances – we changed the car and house ones to the people who do our health insurance, and have saved over 500 euros for our trouble – good news at this time of the year when everyone’s broke with all the taxes coming out.  Another was that my old car got through its Controle Technique – equivalent of the MOT test – a couple of weeks ago, so good for another two years, hopefully.

We’re ready to light the fire each night but haven’t had to much yet, and Pierre the stone mason says he expects have the fireplace and chimney in the dining room renovated by mid to late November, so we’re banking on there being some more good weather then – needs to be warm and dry for a couple of days while it’s out of action.

All the events for locals in autumn and winter are starting up now, so we’re booked in for a musical night out next weekend, a seminar in a couple of weeks, another musical evening in December and a weekend in Paris before Christmas, so far.  It’s all go here all the time!

Best wishes everyone.

Sunny Summery Summary

We missed doing a posting earlier this season, apart from Wendy’s slightly sad little piece, so here’s a summary of the whole of summer!

This year’s summer has been hot and sunny, consistently up in the 30s C, and we’ve enjoyed it both at home and away on our first proper summer holiday for many years. 

We went off to Italy in mid June to spend a week with Jennie, Ian and Dylan at a resort complex in northern Sardinia, and took a few days to get there and a week or so to get home, travelling about quite a bit and experiencing Italian driving!   We had a lovely holiday, staying at Florence, Pisa, Sorrento and the Amalfi coast and Rimini, amongst others over the three weeks.

Jeanne’s sister Christine and her husband Jay were looking after the house and menagerie for us while we were away, so some watering and weeding had been done, which was a help.  They stayed for a few days afterwards to extend their holiday with us.  We’ve also had lovely visits from Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth; from Jennie, Ian and Dylan and from David, and our pool's been very well used.

A hot-air balloon festival took place at the beginning of August and we got a ringside seat from a nearby restaurant in the evening as several passed overhead at rooftop height.

Summer here is filled with spectacles all around us and we also went to a show with horses and fire at a Roman amphitheatre with some friends.  Most recently we went to Chateau Marquis de Vauban in Blaye and had a great day there, with a trip in a calèche around the citadel and town, a super lunch and wine tasting and tour of the chateau and winery.  Blaye is the northern-most part of the Bordeaux wine producing area and a very good appellation.  Lots of other social occasions going on as well, together with the usual chores. No time to be bored (or at least no rest for the wicked)!

Most of our 300 new trees and hedge plants are surviving despite the hot dry weather – we’ve only lost a handful, thanks to irrigation from big water tanks filled from the well.

The pillars for the new gates have now been up for a few weeks but the gates themselves only recently arrived, and are waiting for our builder to come to fit them.  In the meantime Rhys has started building a wall next to the gateway ‘cheek’ walls to enclose what will become the grange garden. It’s about two feet high so far and uses stone from the old grange itself – big heavy ‘dressed’ pieces for the bottom course, more rustic higher up.  It will take a while and it won't be hurried, fitting it in between other jobs and its heavy work!

We’ve also had two Ash trees cut down, one at the back of the back garden and one in the former sheep field, so they’re giving us plenty to do cutting them up and storing the wood for firewood.  We’ve got about three or four winters’ worth now so won’t have to buy any for a while.  Ashes grow like weeds here – very fast growing and seedlings sprouting up all over the place which we have to keep removing, but we’re changing the balance with our planted oaks, beeches, birches, etc., and there are a few self-seeded walnut seedlings about the land this year, probably courtesy of the resident red squirrel who forgot where it had buried its nuts! Unfortunately they're not in the right place, so a winter job will be to move them to better locations.

In the meantime, proof that the stream at the bottom of our land is reasonably healthy - this crayfish came up to the house from it this week. Presumably looking for deeper water as the stream is very shallow at this time of year, though not quite dried up.  Too small to eat so back to nature.

We’ve just said farewell to more visitors - Peter, and Claire and George, but still looking forward to more in a few weeks though still plenty of space for more.  So back to the grindstone for a little while!

Best wishes everyone, and hope to see you before too long!

Last chicken standing

Hello everyone, my name is Wendy and I’m a buff-laced bantam Wyandotte hen. For those that don’t know their poultry that means I’m a very pretty small female chicken, generally kept for showing rather than for any egg laying abilities.

When I was young l lived with a couple called Liz and Gray in the north of France. There were five of us bantams all together and Liz used to take us to shows. We’d be bathed and primped so we looked our best and we won a number of awards.

There were four others with me: Geraldine, a Polish who had a pom-pom of feathers on top of her head with a fringe that came down below her eyes, she was quite tall for a bantam and always looked very ditzy. Then there was Beryl - a Belgian. She was so small she looked like a large pigeon rather than a small chicken. And there were two Pekins, Lily who was white and Yvette who was a buff colour.  Pekins have bustles on their bums and feathers round their feet; pretty, but not very useful when the weather is wet and muddy.

Anyway I was definitely the dominant bird, I looked after the others but I made sure they respected the fact I was top of the pecking order.

Liz and Gray decided that living in the North of France wasn’t different enough weather-wise to living in their native Cornwall so they upped sticks and moved south to the Charente Maritime and brought us with them, and the weather was definitely warmer here. We settled into our new little home but didn’t do any more shows though we did lay just a few eggs between us. Quite small eggs but definitely acceptable to eat by our owners.

Life chugged on in a pleasant enough way but sadly it wasn’t to continue. Gray was suddenly no longer with us; we overheard that he had died but didn’t really understand what that meant.  Our quiet, routine life was about to change forever. It seemed that Liz didn’t want to stay in France on her own. She wanted to go back to Cornwall and had no plans to take us with her. We overheard comments about having us ‘dispatched’, whatever that meant. Apparently we were now all about 9 years old which made us unattractive to possible new carers.  Liz advertised for a new home for us in the area but nobody wanted us, even free.

However in July of 2013 a new couple came to visit us; Jeanne and Rhys were offering to take us to their home to live. So one very hot day in August we were all put in a cardboard box in the back of a car and taken to our new home. A week or two later Liz came to see us to make sure we’d settled in but we all ignored her because she had given us away to these people who we didn’t know.

But we quickly settled in to our new home; we had a very nice house and lots of garden and field to roam around in and scratch about for new things to nibble, and plenty of food and treats. 

But tragedy was just around the corner. In the October Geraldine went into our house one day, climbed on the roost and keeled over – just literally fell off her perch. Now we were four.

Things carried on smoothly in 2014 until Yvette started laying eggs and became broody, the daft old bat!  How did she expect to hatch her eggs when there wasn’t a cock in sight!  We could hear one sometimes at the house next door, but he never came near us. That would have been an experience for us!

There was an enormous change in May 2014 when five rather large brown hens arrived to share our home. I’d always been top of the pecking order and now I was being pushed about by these bigger, younger, bossy hens. This got even worse when they started laying eggs on a regular basis which really pleased Jeanne and Rhys.

Beryl was unimpressed by the changes and went into a decline, and after some weeks she died, so now we were three.

Not long afterwards Lily started looking fragile.  She didn’t die in our home but suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Yvette also disappeared and it was only when Yvette re-appeared I discovered they had both been kept in an isolation pen for a couple of weeks but eventually Lily had died, so now we were only two.

Sadly, because Yvette had been separated from us for a couple of weeks the brown chickens kept attacking her.

One day she had a funny smell (Vick Vapour Rub, I understand) and the browns stopped attacking her and she recovered her strength.

Things carried on until May 2015 and then a miracle happened, Yvette laid 6 more eggs over a week or so.  But she became broody again and insisted on staying in her nest box, despite Jeanne and Rhys trying to get her out of her broodiness. After a few weeks she did come out of it and joined the rest of us in the field, but as usual when she got broody she hadn’t eaten or drunk as much as she should so was somewhat weaker.

In August she started looking a bit peaky and on August 19th she stayed in a nesting box all day and passed away peacefully in the afternoon.

So now it’s just me with the 5 brown chickens. I’m bottom of the pecking order and I don’t lay eggs because I’m a really old lady now – 11 years – supposedly the equivalent of well over 100 in human lifespan terms, but I’m still hanging in there. 

I try to keep my dignity and cope with these young interlopers, and they seem to give me some respect as long as I don’t try to get to the food trough while they’re eating.  I'm trying to keep my pecker up, though I miss the friends whom I spent so many years with.

Summer is blooming !

We’ve had a great spring, in terms of our own lives, our social life and our work on the house. For ourselves we are reasonably healthy still, with only minor inconveniences and a few trips to the dentist for Jeanne.  Rhys has had another of his regular post-treatment check-ups and everything seems to be OK at present. We are a bit slower, deafer, and tire even more easily, however, as time goes on!  We’ve made a few more new friends, which is really nice, done a few more new things and explored a few more new places.

A replica of the Hermione has been being built at Rochefort for nearly 18 years and is at last complete, so we went aboard when it visited La Rochelle in April and it has now sailed for the USA. The original Hermione was a frigate built in 1779 (in only 11 months) that took the French General Lafayette to help fight the British in the American War of Independence.

We’ve not been away from home since the last update so we’ve had plenty of time to concentrate on jobs around the house.  The biggest of these has been planting 220 trees and 90 hedge plants. The trees – all saplings – were relatively quick and easy to plant, although our topsoil is not brilliant for the task, and they benefited from some rain to help them settle in. Almost all of them seem to have taken so we’re hopeful that they will have enough root growth to survive the summer dry spell coming up. 

New hedge at the back

New hedge at the front

The first lot of hedge plants had to wait until I had finished the groundwork, which meant converting a drainage ditch into a proper land drain / soakaway, then covering with soil from the adjacent bank. This was completed a couple of weeks ago and the second hedge then went into the veggie garden next to the road, where it will make a useful windbreak once its established. 

Both hedges have had a piped irrigation system, installed over the weed control fabric, and two 1000-litre water tanks feed the two when the weather’s dry.  We fill the tanks from our well so there is no cost for the water other than the electricity for the pump to draw it.   

We’ve also been able to tidy up the veggie garden and get everything planted, so it’s looking much better than before.

Our house from across the potager

Dusty patrolling the veggies

Elsewhere on the property the pillars for new gates arrived but the supplier discontinued the gates themselves, so we’ve had to re-order, delaying that job by a couple of months and throwing out the builder’s timetable a bit. We’ve made a small start on getting a new wall built on the old grange garden, with a foundation strip and pathway. Indoors we’re only waiting for our builder to come to re-plaster the dining room wall then we’ll be pretty well finished, with only a handful of small jobs that need doing and one or two bigger but merely ‘nice to have’ jobs to tackle at some point with no urgency.

Socially we’ve enjoyed hosting a few visitors already and are looking forward to more coming during the summer.  We’ve still got space in August and September though, especially for anyone who would like a working holiday!!!  We’ve continued to attend the local quiz, and won again (ie. came third for a better prize than first!)  at the May event.  We’ve had friends round for lunches and dinners, been out to other friends and gone out with other friends for lunches.  We’ve also done a ‘semi-nocturne randonnée’ in a nearby village, Avy. This was a 10km walk in the evening in four legs with the courses of a meal at each stage – aperitif, starter, main course, cheese and dessert, so despite what turned out to be actually 12km we felt very full by the end.  These walks seem to be very popular here and are (in our limited experience so far) good fun so we’ll be doing more. Our own village has one coming up at the end of June, combined with a cycle run of up to 50km. We’ll be walking!

Our own holiday comes up shortly and our house (and cat and chicken) -sitters are teed up ready so we won’t be worried about the place being empty – it won’t. 

Best wishes everyone