Weather

Laetiporus sulphureus: Chicken of the Woods

The weather has lost its summer shine, temperatures are cool, the skies grey. Really this should make working around the farm much more pleasant. There is less chance of overheating, no need to worry about sunburn or heatstroke, enough energy to complete tasks before exhaustion sets in but it is depressing nonetheless. We have started to worry about keeping warm through the winter and whether the buildings are wind and water tight.

The main house has a few slates missing which it should be possible to replace with a ladder and some strong nerves. If we can repair and replace parts of the gutters it should come through another winter with little further degradation. The other buildings are not so well cared for. The tractor shed urgently needs a lot of slates replacing, the facing building has reasonable roofing but no proper gutters, the gite/studio building is still with a gaping hole in the roof, evidence of some wicked weather that has ripped the flashing from the apex and scattered the tiles leaving it open to all downpours. At the very least we must get a tarpaulin over this before autumn.

The new lawnmower is a success, even though the battery starting is a dud. The 12V battery had been left discharged for so long it was past the point of recharging. We will get a new one and replace it at some point but luckily the engine is very easy to start so this is no longer a priority. The mower is tremendously powerful and has chomped its way through the long grass in the back garden, a large patch around the wood shed and pear tree and cut paths into fields and gardens that were becoming overgrown with brambles and nettles. It should be possible now for me to keep most of the areas around the farmhouse tidy and free from unpleasant weeds.

Lawnmower

Today I bought a lawn mower. This is man’s work as far as I’m concerned, engines are messy, lawn mowing hard work but anyway without a man to take over I had no option but to do without.

I did my research last week at M. Bricolage where there is a fair selection of machines from the smallest and cheapest available to frankly oversized and overpriced amateur tractors, not quite fitted with cigarette lighters and air conditioning but well on the way to it. We needed something tough, able to leap tall grasses in a single bound, unfrightened by nettles or the ubiquitous ronce and robust enough to truck across uneven ground and face down chunks of concrete and discarded metalwork hidden in the undergrowth. And for myself I need something reliable, easy to maintain and easy to start. Of course, we needed all this for tuppence ha’penny. Today, after discussing it with Paul, I went back to claim my prize.

The trouble with the cheapest models, as we’ve found in the UK, is they are unreliable, difficult to start and the wheels fall off which may be a function of the treatment we give them. The fear of buying more expensive sorts is that they won’t be any better. This time I’ve decided to give expense a chance as I fell in love with a sleek Italian beast, bright red with a 5CV Briggs and Stratton engine, metal body, a 51cm cutting width and, the real reason I bought it, electric ignition. There is a tiny sealed 12V battery and starter which I hope will make it possible for me to just mow grass instead of getting hot, sweaty, frustrated and eventually disappointed when my feeble efforts with a pull cord yield no results. It also has a single control to change the height of all the wheels at once and a biggish grass box if ever we achieve sufficient lawn to make collecting the clippings worthwhile. It cost just under 400 euros.



The little man designated to help me in the shop was charming. Aware of my pathetic command of the language he jollied me along with baby talk, cheerfully advising on the correct oil and how much, the proper fuel, the need to charge the battery before it would start. Unusually I hadn’t chosen the last item in stock, so there was a cleanly boxed and sealed piece of merchandise to take to the checkout. Unfortunately it was on the top shelf of an extremely high storage area. He got the ladder and tried the box, he went and got a fork lift trolley and then he went and got another man to help and finally they got the box down.. He tenderly opened it and checked everything was in order, found me the instruction booklet and entreated me to read it well. After negotiating the checkout, where everyone advised me to retain my proof of purchase even the people in the queue, we tried to fit it in the car. Alas, that beautiful box was too much volume and all the parts had to be decanted around the boot and passenger areas. I don’t think we left anything behind.

Instructions for the engine are in English as well as 10 other languages. This is comforting, despite my little chevalier’s exhortations over the correct places for oil and fuel I shouldn’t like to get this wrong. Instructions for assembling the grass collector, stone guard and controls was in French translated from the Italian. I think I’ve got it right, there was a tiny circlip destined to secure the stone guard in place which pinged away from me as I tried to fit it. I can retrofit it if I ever find it, and for the time being at least the stone guard shows no sign of falling off. The grass box is two pieces of plastic that need to be clipped together to form a cat basket, I’m sure Bagheera will get more use out of it than we do.

Now all that is left to do is charge the battery. There is a small wall wart supplied which should do the job in 24 hours, I’m not sure I can wait that long, it’s all so exciting.

Progress

Is a bit of a misleading title for this entry. It seems after 9 weeks of being here that almost no part of the journey has been definitively completed. We have had a party, house guests, time to ourselves and yet in all that time the few small indicators of change within the home environment have stagnated or even degraded.

The longest day has been and gone and the weather, which has been gloriously dramatic with enormous peaks of heat and magnificent explosions of storms, has become mundane. Today is windy, showery, neither warm enough for nakedness nor cold enough to make the cosyness of a fire appealing.

The toilet still runs on constantly wasting water, no repairs have been made to the cob or woodwork, the garden is weedy with the tomatoes succumbing to blight and the beans bent and snapped by the winds. The last huge electrical storms destroyed my new computer and I’ve lost mail and irreplaceable photographs unless Paul can recover the hard drive, the actual machine will almost certainly never run again as we think the motherboard is shot. I’m making do with an aged machine, unreliable and out of date which I’m unable to update over the modem line. The pleasure at being freed from slavery to the technological has been destroyed, replaced by anxiety over the risks of similar accidents and frustration with the noisy reduced facilities.

In short, it’s all very depressing. We find ourselves counting the days until I can return to England because the separation is dragging and demotivating but that is a failure in itself, wishing our summer away. I hope the wind stops soon, perhaps I’ll feel happier then.

In the Garden

I’ve had friends Robin and Maggie Tredwell to stay for a few days. They are artists, bohemian, old friends and beachcombers and I’m going to have to shake Robin down before he leaves to retrieve any number of little objets trouvé and scrap metal from around the farmyard that ‘would make a great bit of sculpture for the next show’.

Having people here is an excuse to sit around in the sunshine and make dire predictions about the progression of the weather from tropical heat to tropical storm. Gratifyingly we had a humdinger of a storm with a continuous light and sound show and hail the size of ice cubes rattling on the corrugated iron roofs.

Part of the tourist trail is a trip to St. Lô Market, held every Saturday morning and comprising of all the usual market stalls packed with stuff from sweatshops worldwide, a fish, meat and dairy section and a surprising number of little old people each with a couple of rabbits or a handful of beans to sell for their supper. From a stall loaded down with bare rooted celeriac, laitues feuilles de chêne and cabbages we took a bunch of a 100 leeks for 5 euros to plant in the garden for next winter. The variety was Carentan, named for the nearby town where sand grown leeks and carrots are a major industry. The stallholder had another variety but I didn’t recognise it so went for familiarity, just like every other customer. The baby leeks are planted a little closely but should make fantastic soup to warm ourselves with in the cold.



While planting the beans I noticed that one of the two potato plants had become diseased. The leaves were small and misshapen, and there was some die back. I suspected a virus but when I dug the plant found the stem was blackened and some of the new potatoes rotten. Blackleg, probably brought in on the tuber, bought from a retail outlet in Newport Pagnell. I would urge anyone contemplating growing potatoes to buy from a specialist source and to buy the highest quality of seed available. The so called disease free potatoes available from garden centres and DIY stores are at the bottom of a scale of seed potato grading and little better than a handful of eating spuds bought from a supermarket.

And for the one that got away – I was so busy attempting to capture the Painted Lady below that I waited too long before trying for a picture of a magnificent Silver Washed Fritillary browsing on the bramble flowers…

I don’t like Mondays.

Mostly, that’s a lie. Monday is a great day, time to gird the loins and really get on with stuff. So that’s what I did, having sorted through the post yesterday into piles of rubbish, filing and to do, I picked up the to do pile and worked through it.

I had half a dozen letters to post and a cheque to pay into the bank at the end, just before lunch. There’s no point in flying in the face of convention, so I popped my neat pile into my handbag and took a three hour break with my book under the pear tree.

And at about 3 o’clock in the baking heat I started the little white car and trundled down to the village. We know the baker is shut on a Monday but so were the bank and the Post Office. There was no chance of stamps. Not even a vending machine but the cash machine was still working so I had some. So my immediate tasks delayed by 24 hours I jumped back into the car intending to go to Le Molay Littry , check out the Point Vert and fill up with petrol at the SuperU.

The car chose this moment to exhibit its occasional failure mode; an inability to stay running when half warm. There is no solution I’m aware of except to allow it 15 minutes to come to its senses. So I sat, and after a while I tried the engine. Then I sat some more. And tried the engine some more. Then I locked the car and got out, just because I had to.

The bar was shut, well, it would be, the rest of the town was dead, where would there be any customers, but the Epi grocers was not. Some relief, I bought a can of Canada Dry from the fridge and a dried up old baguette more as an excuse to stay in the cool than because I wanted them. Madame agreed with me that it was hot, very hot.

I went back to the car and got in, threatening the breakers and all the usual charms to solve its problems. Hurrah, we started.

I felt a run would do the car and me good, so we went to Molay Littry but because a refusal often offends and the car park of the Point Vert was entirely empty I didn’t chance it but headed straight to the petrol station at the supermarket. “24h/24h” screamed the signs and my card was good. With joyous heart I pulled up the pump to read a handwritten notice – out of Sans Plomb 95. Reversing I joined the queue for the pay at the kiosk pump – 2 minutes later I was facing the same sign.

Home was calling. I didn’t bother with garage at the Embranchement, their service is casual at the best of times and I was melting in the heat. I stopped the car in the shade and as I walked across the courtyard a butterfly that was undeniably a White Admiral pranced to meet me, nearly landed on my chest and then glided away insolently. Naturally by the time I had found my camera it was no longer in a mood for posing.

I’m utterly defeated. Back to the pear tree with a cold drink.

A Tale Too Far

The weather today is stunning, calm bright with the sort of heat that makes butterflies glide and blackbirds bask. The plan, such as there is one, is to sit under the pear tree barely dressed in a sarong and read but first there have been a couple of events here that are worth recording.

My problem is that the first is so horrific that readers of a sensitive disposition might suffer from nightmares after reading of it, so with reluctance, because it was not without humour within the terror I’ve decided to censor myself. If you really want to know then mail me, but I reserve the right to withhold the story if I think it will adversely affect your quality of life.

And so, moving on, the next catastrophe to strike started innocently enough. Paul has been making an all too brief visit this weekend and amongst the gifts he brought for me is a rather good quality water lily, a Barbara Davies, fragrant flowers of yellow flushed with red and suitable for shallow to medium depth pools. We planned to put it in the sheep dip pond. This artificial water feature is fed from the stream and the outflow forms part of the original privy plumbing. It’s a lovely spot with dragonflies, damsels, frog and newts, currently shaded by some Leylandii which will be coming down eventually.

We had rather more on our minds than gardening though and it wasn’t until the end of his 28 hours with me that we decided to plant the lily in its chosen spot. Suitably dressed in nothing at all and with Paul’s oversized wellies because mine have a leak, I stomped to the end of the pool with water lily in hand, stepped off the concreted edge and into what was apparently six inches of water. But my feet went down and down and eventually came to rest on firm ground a good two feet lower than expected. I was in the water up to what, in anticipation of a family audience, I can only describe as my leg pits. My noble lover and companion wet himself laughing and took several pictures, now suitably archived under lock and key, before offering to give me a hand out. Even then he was more interested in rescuing his wretched boots, now filled with six inches of sludge, than helping me regain terra firma.

At least we know the pond needs dredging now, and although the silt was brackish it didn’t smell badly or seem unhealthy so we’re reasonably sure the septic tank, wherever it is, doesn’t discharge into the pond. Barbara Davies was dispatched to the middle of the pool to find her own level. I think conditions should be perfect for her.

Other cheering news is that La Poste have finally come up with the goods, including post from the Notaire dating back to February and containing a welcome cheque for 438 euros, refund from the sale charges. I seem already to be on a Readers Digest mailing list and there are several irritated and irritating letters from various tax offices wanting to know our inside leg measurements (about a boot and half) before telling us how much money we’ll be owing them. I don’t know where they’d been hiding all this post until now but I commend them of their efficiency in keeping track of it over the last seven months.

Wild Life

There has been nothing like the structured approach to watching the wildlife I had hoped for. The best I can come up with for the time being is a list of things spotted, few of which have been confirmed with photos or other witnesses. Still, our presence here doesn't seem to be putting the non human inhabitants off too badly and with as low impact a lifestyle as we can manage I hope there will be plenty more opportunities to record the variety of lifeforms around here.

Insects are in abundance, plenty of ants and ladybirds, daddy longlegs, flies and other familiar sights but also mysterious creatures that defy identification, wispy flying hoverflies with improbably long protuberances, strange weevils, odd looking spiders. Some of the larger ones are very beautiful indeed, a rose chafer, iridescent green with white markings, the size of a 50p coin, huge stag beetles, a privet hawk moth, tiger moths, all sorts of butterflies including something newly hatched that was either a White Admiral or a Purple Emperor, I could only get a picture of the underside of its wings and need a better book to help me identify it accurately. I think it was the Emperor, if so only the second time I've ever seen one. Bees, wasps and hornets all too busy about their business to bother humans. Many sorts of dragonflies and damselflies, very difficult to photograph. We had a glow worm, flashing her lonely light for a mate. I don't know if she was lucky. And there are less desirable insects, the wood boring beetles, mosquitoes, midges and the wholly intolerable horsefly.

There are lizards and newts, frogs and already a toad has moved into my tree nursery to hunt slugs and worms. We saw a slow worm in the hay field under a piece of discarded black plastic and an adder, not here but in Ouville, which hurried into a vole hole to avoid us.

So many birds, we've had swallows since April and now they've been joined by house martins. Several sorts of wagtails, bluetits, greenfinches, goldfinches, chaffinches, bullfinches and sparrows. Blackbirds and thrushes, wrens, spotted flycatchers, crows and in the spring you could hear woodpeckers and cuckoos marking territories in the forest. Little brown birds I have no hope of identifying. We have a pair of buzzards, one day I saw three over the house, a big kestrel (we think) and one afternoon I'm sure there was a commando attack by a sparrow hawk over the courtyard but I've never seen him again. The barn owl is regularly out at night. Still no robin.

Apart from the coypu, which seemed to have moved on, there are deer. Red deer, who bark terrifyingly when startled and roe deer, much smaller. There is a feral cat and quantities of voles, providing food for owls. We haven't seen any boar, and that's not such a bad thing really nor any rabbits, which I think is surprising. Two types of bats, a small fast one that comes out when there is still a little light and a heavier type, that comes out when it is fully dark and makes sounds even I can hear. I'm sure there are other mammals but we've not seen any of them yet.