juggling with the unpredictable

There is nothing quite so stressful as juggling with the unpredictable. This is what I have been doing for the last week and am likely to be doing for some to come. The first, and most important, unpredictable event is the arrival date of the roof tiler. Already he is two months behind on his work schedule because of bad winter weather. Apparently we are now in third position on his works schedule which puts his potential arrival date about 15 days from now, say early May. Unless time consuming snags arise on sites one and two. Or unless it suddenly starts to seriously rain.

JP and I were relatively serene about the whole event, nothing we could do about it, so why worry....then other people started panicking. 'Where are you going to go?' 'You can't stay in the house with men on the roof'. 'The noise, think of the noise.' We had not really thought about it, despite having had the roof done at least twice before in the thirty-plus years we have lived at La Chaise.

The first time the roof was re-done we were not living at La Chaise because there was no hot water, cold water or electricity either – nor very many solid floors. The second time we were only having one half done. The workman concerned was M.Parrot, senior couvreur of St Aquilin. He came with his own flat bed truck, ladder, tiles and cement, sand – all the necessaries. Later he came up with his trusty Manitou (a French brand of fork lift truck) which, he observed, was a lot more hard working than any ouvrier and incurred neither wages nor social charges. The third time it was the other half of the roof and M. Parrot again.

But this time it is going to be Pascal Maillet from Tamarelle (the hamlet where strange men throw their dancing shoes into the road, see an earlier blog) together with his equipe, scaffolding, underlay, new tiles and vast metrage of bache to cover any open parts of roof over night. They might even bring their own radio.

The first, obvious, solution is to bolt down to Spain – but we cannot do that in case A Decision has to be taken because A Problem has arisen, which it will do. Occasional admiration of work in progress is obligatory. Also a friend is coming for a long promised visit – and he has 'done' Spain and does not wish to 'do' it again. He is due to arrive in the second week of May, definite.

So the other solution is to install ourselves in the Farmhouse which, by a great stroke of luck, or subconscious prescience, I have not let until the third week of May. But we do not know how long the roofing work will take – depends on any possible imprevus - in other words, as long as a piece of baler twine.

On a much more cheerful note, though equally unpredictable – the first orchids are flowering, and in great numbers. Never have there been so many 'Early Purples' under the ash trees as this year. And there is a discreet clump of 'Serapia' amongst the pines in Pont François field, possibly serapia lingua, the tongue orchid but we won't know until it flowers, until then it is quite unphotogenic...

note the grape hyacinth that has snuck in on the left..!

spring blood to the head

As spring settles in and humans start to relax, cease to believe in the unpredictability of the weather, non human life starts to get excited. The birds have become almost obnoxious. Whilst their song is still delightful – if occasionally repetitive – their antics are less so. There are a couple of red-starts who are disputing possession of the former garage, once my workshop, now Alexandre's atelier. There is an aerial bird fight between the two couples, presumably both males, in front of the atelier which is full of carpentry and other machinery. Also occasionally Alexandre. The machines are noisy and Alexandre is tall. The birds don't seem to care. They are determined to gain possession of last year's wren nests, still attached to the beams. Last year's wrens managed to chase me out.

Then there are the 'docile' doves, making wonderful coo-ing noises and flying gracefully from tree to tree in the back garden. They are also – before our very eyes – eating the flower buds of the Virginia tulip tree. Then they go and have a squabble in the palm tree right next to our terrace whilst we are having the first drink outside

this spring. During the few minutes silence as they fly to the highest point of the twin oaks, an aggressive batrachian Trumpet Voluntary starts up – way out of place, nowhere near any of the ponds. It greets us as we walk through the gates, appears to follow us down to the farm but at least there we have a duck pond. This sound quite drowns the plaintive 'ploop-ploop' of the midwife toad.

And, of course, the newly liberated sheep are making a racket, ewes and lambs.

Whilst the ewes are frantically eating fresh, wet grass and yelling (mouths full) for their lambs, the lambs are running around in circles, jumping up and down and getting their heads stuck in the fencing. Our second year ram, DSK, has been liberated into the woods with a duenna to keep him calm but he does bawl from time to time when he sees the others. Then greed for fresh food takes over and he, too, stuffs his mouth with new grass.

In short, the animals have no respect for humans at all, whatever was written in Genesis 1.26, they did not read or do not believe.

On a quieter note, the wild ducks appear to be settling down between our three ponds. Mostly they are in the reed fringed pond, good for nest building, at the far end of the land. But they do come up to the official duck pond as well as the Black Pond in the Woods. I went up there to look for them and startled three hen pheasants who 'ran' along the fence and disappeared into the woods. Really, those birds need deportment lessons, hen pheasants waddle like ducks.

see what a nice pond we have for the ducks!

as April begins....

It is that time of year

when the dawn chorus seems to last

all day

and only experts can parse

the sound

into its component parts.

I no longer hear

the screech of the owl

that tears night from day,

for I am still safe asleep

in my dreamless dark

as the sun rises

and calls the birds

to sing.

Those tremulous riffs,

complex movements of tongue,

throat, lungs

become triumphant sound,

calling to future mates,

defining hunting grounds.

And then, at the darkening

of the sky,

the night-jar's churr

sings of warmth to come

and the owl's quiet hooting

rejoins day to night.

A big welcome to the fourth 'A'

Last week's great excitement was the liberation of the sheep, plus their lambs, from confinement in the sheep barn. A riotous occasion that showed how truly stupid sheep/lambs can be. You would think humans could just open the doors to the grass rich green fields and the ewes would pour out, followed by their offspring. Wrong.

Many of the ewes do rush out, followed by some of the lambs – not necessarily related one to the other. A few ewes rush around in circles looking for their lambs whilst a large number of lambs hide in nooks and crannies, resisting all encouragement to go outside. The main management tool, up till now, to get this exercise sorted in as short a time as possible, has been the wooden barrier, skillfully manipulated by A ¹ = Arnold. The wretched thing (barrier, not Arnold) weighs a small ton and is not very effective.

  

Given that A's ² and ³ (Alexandre and Audrey) were temporarily absent, I was permitted, requested, bullied into helping, though I am only a D. I knew the theory but was hardly dressed for the job, in stockings, skirt, ear-rings and a new, clean pullover. The final six lambs were fished out of their hiding place by me on my knees in the shitty straw, reaching under a manger, catching a leg, hauling them out and passing them to Arnold. He then tipped them over the gate from which they could go to their bawling mothers – mothers who were bawling with their mouths full of fresh grass. This took 45 minutes

Arnold and I both dreaded the reverse action that evening, when all had to be brought back in from a much larger space, with many, many more hiding places. This requires walking round the field, rattling the grain pan and walking back towards the barn. Then going down to the fields again a couple of hours later to see who was outside the barn, bawling to be let in, usually the smallest lamb.

But this time a new, four legged sheep management tool was brought into play by Alexandre. He wanted to see how the young Haska, (the 'H' is silent) his dog, would behave when the sheep were in the fields. Haska has the same colouring – black and tan - as Bianca, Clea's dog, pre-dominantly Beauceron, a short-haired French sheepdog breed, whose favourite activity was rounding up the sheep into a square and then waiting for further instructions. The sheep apparently could not tell one from the other, obediently formed a line, lambs alongside, and trotted into the barn. The reverse action the following morning took ten minutes. A ⁴ welcome to the La Chaise management team!.

-----------------------

Forgot to mention last week that it was St Astier's 1,000^th birthday – of church and town. Many celebrations in both, with expositions of medieval life and early pictures of the town.

Sing 'cou-cou'

It may be only a few days after the official (French) start to spring on March 20th but the season seems already well established. The dawn chorus has become more dense, more complicated and lasts all day. Song birds are very competitive. I no longer hear the white owl's warning call as it hunts for small rodents at day break because day break comes when I am still deeply asleep.

The early violets have been joined by a rush of other wild flowers, mostly yellow, like the butterflies, the cowslip or coucou in French was probably the first. It is a medicinal plant, leaves rich in vitamin C but also saponines, so not edible by humans. The dandelion, or pissenlit, whose leaves are eagerly picked for the local (bitter) spring salads, is prolific in the horse-fields, it is known as the 'horseflower' in Dutch. And yes, pissenlit does mean 'bed-wetter', it is a diuretic, so why eat it? The only way to make a pissenlit salad edible, in my view, is to add crumbled crispy bacon and some toasted pine nuts, then eat, interspersed mouthfuls with authentic country bread and glugs of decent wine. In the marshy areas we have a few celandines – souci d'eau – a plant of the ranunculaceae family. My favourite wild flower reference book Quelle est donc cette fleur* observes that it is mildly poisonous, bitter tasting: Il est donc preferable de ne pas la manger en salade. End quote.

These commercially raised primroses have come back for the second year....

The curious thing about the cowslip is its relationship to the primrose, both primulaceae but only the cowslip grows on our soil – except where I have planted commercially raised primroses, as above. A few kilometres from us, on a shady bank, there are nothing but primroses to be seen – odd. One year, when replacing the window box primroses with geraniums, I could not be bothered to replant them elsewhere which I normally do, being parsimonious. I threw them over the wall into the woods. And the next year, there was a 'cowslip' plant that had exactly the colours of a rejected primrose. Odder.

hopefully happy ducks on Black Pond

Well, the cowslip may be called 'coucou' but I have yet to hear that bird's call which should easily be heard above that of all the others. Perhaps it is just a little late, not quite trusting that spring is really here. The daily showers that come down hard and fast at unexpected moments may discourage it, as they do humans. But one small, rain related creature, has not been discouraged. The mid-wife toad, with its rain drop cry ' ploop, ploop' – seems to have established itself on the Black Pond in the Woods, along with the wild ducks. The ducks, too, are making themselves heard. They are quacking which, apparently, is what ducks do. Our tame ducks were Muscovies, also known as Barbary ducks. They do not quack. It took me some while to distinguish the 'quack-quack' from all the other bird noises. Keeping my fingers crossed that the ducks are here to stay.


 

*Quelle est donc cette fleur?. By Dietmar Aichele, translated by Thomas Althaus, illustrated by Marianne Golt-Bechtle. Publisher, Fernand Nathan, Paris 1975.

waiting for the moon - again

There is no accounting for daffodils: there has been a sudden rush to flower with the majority of the plants either appearing in the rose hedge or the brambles. I believe roses and brambles are related plants – think of the thorns - but no time to check that out now. Of course, some of the 'daffodils' will be narcissi when they condescend to open but they open later than the standard daff. What I do not understand is why/how the daffodil developed a flower that is too heavy for its stem. Many of the flowers, when fully opened, are virtually touching the ground. Then, unlike most wild flowers, put them in a vase and they start to stand up straight. They cannot be lacking water – the rain, it raineth every day.

It is also encouraging to note that the orchids are back under the ash trees that form such a welcoming clump of shade for the sheep in summer. Every year I worry that the weight of sheep settling down will destroy the plants. They certainly destroy the flowers. As always it looks as though it is the purple spotted orchid (dactylorhiza maculata) that has returned, flat circles of large, dark green, black spotted leaves are easily visible. It will be a race between self and the sheep to get at the flowers first.

Meanwhile we are going to let the former horse fields just grow naturally for the coming year and see what comes up. There used to be some serapia orchids, Aphrodite's own flower, behind where the horse boxes were built but I think their big feet may have killed the plants. We shall wait and see. For the rest, there still seems to be clover of various colours, wild chicory which seems indestructible but, sadly because it is a lovely colour, dies promptly when cut for ornamental purposes. With any luck the wild sage in its three colours of white, pink and blue, will come back also. I have recovered all the golf balls that the horses stamped into the ground.

It seems that the deer that used to jump the fence so they could share the horses' hay have damaged the grove of parasol pines. Some of the bark has been eaten, probably during this last snowy winter (the horses may have refused to share their meals) but not so badly that the trees are likely to die. We buried our last labrador, Edward the Black Prince, in that grove of trees, so the site is important to us. Audrey says she will protect the trees against deer for the coming winter – just this Sunday I heard the strangled bark of a male deer establishing his territory. Terrine de chevreuil aux pistaches, I mused.

One lucky or clever ewe has manipulated, bullied – I am not quite sure what word to use – the triple A team into bottle feeding her twins four times a day. And she still gets breakfast, lunch and dinner brought to her. There are seven ewes who have not delivered, with luck at least four of them should do so around the full moon on the 27^th of this month. The ones who do not look remotely pregnant are quite likely (loi d'emmerdement maximum = French for sod's law) to deliver lambs in the fields in the course or April or May. Oh, joy!  And more joy today, Monday 18th - the ewe who had a prolapse last year and this year has just successfully delivered very small twins.   The twins are so small one wonders if there is not a third lurking....

spring is sprung

Only nine days to the official start of spring but the signs of its imminence are unmissable. Now we can actually think of something other than the irregular arrival of lambs even though eight mothers have still to produce. The lambs to ewes ratio is now 1.5 and we are all very proud, especially gold star god-mother Audrey.

Underground the moles and the worms are busy, the neat worm casts contrasting with the untidy heaps of the mole's mining activities. We have stopped feeding the birds for there are insects as well as worms to keep them happy. Stopping the dog from attempting to dig up the moles is more difficult. We assume she only want to see what is happening, not actually to eat the moles, but it causes unlovely chaos. And Haska does not have the absent Elvis-non!'s excuse of terrier blood in her veins. She'll get over it, is easily distracted by a new stick.

violets in lime tree

Above ground the flowers are a joy. The first to show their heads were the violets. There was a bunch of practically white violets under the vegetable garden's magnolia and, nestled between the roots of the lime tree, a contrasting very dark Victorian mauve violet. Not only does the violet come in a huge range of colours, the number of defined varieties seems to have doubled in the past hundred years to around 400 plus. But there is still only one violet that is of any culinary use – the 'odorata' – but try distinguishing her from her sisters – not possible for amateurs. I have tried to make crystallised violets with moderate success, my eau de vie de violettes was a total disaster. Some things must be left to experts.

below: daffodils coming up amongst the roses....

and gendarmes on lime tree

The weather, as befits Spring, is erratic. We had a few beautiful, warm and sunny days, so decided to start airing the gîtes ready for the summer. I had forgotten that, if a freezer is in a place where the ambient air is colder than the air inside the freezer, it will defrost, then re-freeze when the position reverses. So I found 2 x legs of lamb and one shoulder, that I had carefully frozen and stored, which had gone through this process in one unheated, shut down gîte. Not funny.

What is funny is that inanimate things seem to have multiplied, as well as those living. For some reason I have two spare single mattresses...perhaps I had bought new ones from a retailer who would not take the old ones away. But where had I stored the old ones over the past year? No time to waste brain power on such idle matters when there are curtains to be washed, cupboards to be cleaned and bugs to be chased back to their proper home, outside.

Ah yes, Spring brings out the bugs as well as the flowers, some of these, too, are pretty – such as the red and black spotted gendarmes on the other lime tree.