Another posting without photographs Friday, 26 November 2010

I still don't seem to have sorted out the few photographs I have taken this Autumn.  I will get around to it, but other things seem to take priority.

The bird table has been moved to its winter position in front of the sitting room window, so that I can walk easily to it when the weather's bad and can see the birds easily from my chair beside the woodburner.  Everything seems to be visiting at the moment from chaffinches, starlings, blue tits, great tits, robins, sparrows, magpies etc. etc.  I am afraid I wave my arms at the magpies to scare them off.  I don't budge from my chair about 12ft from the window, but their sight is so good that they see the slightest movement and fly off straightaway.  Each day the table is loaded with different things, often depending on my own food the day before.  Today, cooked rice from my prawn dish at lunchtime yesterday, some crusts from the banana toast I had for supper, and topped off with golden sultanas and bird seed. 

This year, for the first time, I have a window seed feeder too.  It's lovely to see the blue tits land on the stones of the window reveal and then hop onto the perch to eat.  Daisy and Alfie, my cats, are fascinated by this new entertainment and stare, wide-eyed, for hours from the comfort of their sofa.

I don't remember a better year for Autumn colour.  The leaves have stayed on the trees much longer than usual, perhaps because there haven't been the strong winds well not until 10/11 November when very strong winds took out broadband and telephones to the entire village, except that, for some inexplicable reason, I alone retained my broadband connection.  Luckily, because I have Freecall, I am able to telephone through the internet and became a bit of a lifeline for neighbours too.  It was 8 days before I was reconnected to my telephone and over 13 days for my opposite neighbours.  The engineer came out and did one house on each visit instead of the whole village of 7 houses simultaneously.  I shall never understand large organisations and their bureacracy.

The last of the pumpkins are now in the polytunnel drying off and all that remains to be picked in the veggie beds is spinach, which I collect as and when I need it.  I have sown winter lettuce in the polytunnel, but have yet to see any seed leaves.   Yesterday, I made spiced red cabbage.  I cook the red cabbage with onions, apples, sultanas, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.   I just love it, especially reheated the next day when the flavours seem even better.  With fried or oven-cooked pork sausages and butter-mashed potato it's just scrumptious.

The little fish who were born in October in my aquarium are now swimming freely without their parents repelling other interested neighbours.  This is a photograph of father Kribensis.

They have now taken on the appearance of their parents, Kribensis, and are about an inch long.  I have a Gourami who is looking very fat and I'm wondering if she too is going to have babies - it's all very exciting.

We had our first sprinkling of snow here yesterday, but it was followed immediately by sunshine and didn't last at all.  It was very frosty here this morning and I had to change the bird water on their table for some without an ice covering.  The sky is blue with white puffy clouds and the sun is really bright out there, but the temperature is deceptively low when I opened the door to friends just after lunch.  In Cornwall, where my children live, there has been more snow and it did settle.  The forecast is colder and more snow expected tomorrow, Saturday, and nothing warmer for a weeks at least.  Brrrr!

The first of my Christmas group lunches is on Friday next week, followed by the Bowls club lunch the next day.  It hardly seems possible that Christmas is less than a month away now.  Where does the time go to?

Where does the time go? Sunday, 17 October 2010

The early mornings are really fresh now and it’s tempting to pull the duvet slightly higher and watch the morning news from bed for another half hour. Luckily the sunshine hasn’t been slow to come out and most mornings have warmed up nicely by the time I’ve got the fire in the woodburner going well, fed the cats and fish and had my own breakfast too.

The acer palmatum dissectum atropurpureum in the large border has turned every shade that Autumn possesses and I see that the birds, probably blackbirds like last year, have made off with at least half of the crop of holly berries while I’ve been visiting Cornwall. My daughter, Libby, had her 23rd birthday last Sunday and we all went out to the local golf club for roast lunch. I also had my usual six monthly dentist and hygienist appointments and shopped for the things I miss as I’m living in Brittany. None of the things are essential, but nice to have in the cupboard or freezer, like creamed rice pudding, mature cheddar cheese, mint jelly and redcurrant jelly. I also brought back something I didn’t want at all – a cold. Well, more a red raw sore throat, which has laid me low this week and, in fact, resulted in two pyjama days. I’m feeling much better today though and have definitely turned the corner. Unfortunately it meant that I had to postpone the endoscopy appointment I had for last week, and that has now been rearranged for Friday this week.

My fish tank surprised me when I fed the fish on Monday morning. There were about 20-30 little fishes, from the Kribensis couple I have. The parents are guarding the front right hand corner of the tank from all marauders and are mostly hiding in a slate tunnel which I created from some broken bits Brian brought me specially for the tank. I had been worrying whether the environment was quite right in the tank, but this has allayed all fears as I feel sure they wouldn’t breed under difficult conditions.  I have a new snappy camera which I collected in England last week, but still have to take some photographs with it to illustrate this blog.  They will be inserted when I've done them.

Alfie, my oldest cat, who came with me from Cornwall, is definitely not quite right. He has abandoned his usual seat on the sofa as he can’t seem to make the jump to sleep there. I’ve folded a velour throw for him on the carpet next to my chair and the woodburner, and he now spends most of the day curled up asleep at my feet. I’ve checked him all over and he doesn’t appear to have anything obviously wrong, so I’m guessing it’s just old age – it does come to all of us.

The geranium foliage is still looking very healthy, but the flowers have disappeared. The cosmos is still in bloom at the side of the terrace and the yellow climbing rose on the east side of the house is still putting out the odd pretty rose. I suppose I will have to take the geraniums in soon if I want to save them for next year. This afternoon Flick planted in the polytunnel some salad leaves, spring onions and herbs I brought back from Cornwall.   They look a bit sorry for themselves, so fingers crossed.

In view of the current fuel crisis, I am glad that I fully filled my car before I left for England. The Land Rover is empty of diesel, but has a transmission pipe problem and can’t be used until I receive the ordered new parts when the next person coming over on the ferry collects them from the garage in Saltash. Perhaps by then the supply will be re-established and I won’t have to worry about finding fuel.

This morning, my friend, Flick, cleared out my understairs store cupboard, which resembles a mini Tesco and is indeed better stocked than many of the tiny épiceries in villages here. People generally laugh at my hoarding instinct, but it’s inherited from my mother who never forgot the deprivation of rationing in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a very useful resource when we were snowed in for ten days last winter and I lacked for nothing. The trick is to know what you have in the store and use it well before the expiry date. Something I have not entirely perfected. As a result of this, the hens are in for a mixed treat this afternoon. Loads of apple sauce, dated 2008 which has fermented and I wonder what effect this will have on my birds. A jar of bean shoots and another jar dated 2007 of foie gras, all mixed with yesterdays stale bread slices. I now have enough empty jars for my next jam making session.

Three Beautiful Things:

1.   Being home again in front of the woodburner fire.
2.   Celebrating with my daughter, Libby, her twenty-third birthday last week.
3.   Sinking my teeth into a Crunchie.

Playing Catch Up - Sunday, 26 September 2010

It’s been a busy summer, which is why I didn’t get round to doing my blog. My daughter and grandson spent six weeks here and so I had lots of family time.  I’ve just been dredging through the photographs which I took, and thought I would get them posted and then try to get back into more of a routine with regular posts again. 

My grandson had to be occupied, so we went out for days and one of the places was Quintin, where there were lovely roses along the riverside and the bushes had hips too.
 

 

 

           This is Charlie seriously enjoying a peach.

These were flowers in my garden this year, except for the irises which are my neighbour's,  The first is a campsis which grows on my house wall.

The exquisite irises below are in my neighbour's garden.

This is a verbena bonariensis which is a delicate bloom.

 

And now two aquilegias in my own garden.

Primula candelabra - a gorgeous yellow which brightens up the front of the border.

Honeysuckle on my terrace wall

My beautiful delphiniums against my house wall



 Some of the goldfish in my garden pond enjoying the warmth of the water in the sun.

Betsy, my Mummy goat - full frontal.

 My favourite, and very non-PC starter at my favourite restaurant, Le Pelinec.

      I was fascinated by the bubbles in the water as it came up to a boil in the saucepan with my breakfast eggs

These were two butterflies on a walk in the woods at

St Nicolas du Pélem.

The first is a red admiral and the second a peacock.

 Two dragonflies taking advantage of the sun

A little Breton cottage by the lake at Corlay

There were probably more which I could have included, but it's a flavour of this summer and I can start on the Autumn pictures now.  Many thanks to Miranda, without whom I would not have managed to do this post, as I had forgotten how to do it!

Three Beautiful Things:

1.   Watching my chicks come out of their eggs in the incubator.
2.   Picking, cooking and eating the first runner beans.
3.   Relaxing in front of my new tropical fish tank.



Saturday 15 May 2010 - Local beauty

This afternoon I wandered down lanes near my house. The sun was shining and I put the roof down on the car and drove slowly, very slowly, looking at everything.

Often as I went round a corner a bright yellow field of oil seed rape shone at me and I had to stop and take a photo.

I couldn't resist the curves on the edges of the field in this photo, it really brightened up my afternoon.

The trees are all clothed in different colours of yellow and green and the light shining through the leaves is wonderful.  I can never decide which I like best, the skeletons of trees in the winter landscape, the hints of green and yellow on the twigs in the spring, the lush leaves of summer or the yellow, rusts and reds of autumn.  I love the look of the bark on this tree and of its leaves against the sky.

  

 Further along the lanes there were plantations of trees along the roadside and I found the patterns fascinating.

The next photographs were of plants in the grass alongside the lanes.  I love the colour of the honesty flowers but can't wait for the "penny" seed pods which come later, and I love the dandelion seedheads which are covering the fields here.

These irises are such an incredible blue and they've only just uncrumpled from their bud stage.

There are new calves of various ages in so many of the fields near to me, and this is one little calf I couldn't resist.

  

There are hundreds of streams, rivers and lakes in Brittany.  I love water and here you can never be far from it.  Today I stopped at a bridge across the lane I was travelling over and took the photographs below.  The first is of the rippled water and the second, which looks like shot silk material is of weed flowing in the current of the water.

Three Beautiful Things:

1.   Drinking ice cold water with my chocolate bar.

2.   Watching my three week old chicks trying to fly a little.

3.   Picking parsley from a full to bursting 3ft x 3ft greenhouse bed which originally all came out of a small supermarket herb pot.