Felines, Fluffy Chicks, Flowers in the Rain and Roast Lunch

Purrdy has settled in so well, it's as if she's been here forever. Alfie has accepted her with no problems.  Here are my three beautiful felines cat napping on the sofa.

Daisy is getting more tolerant of this little darting bundle of fluff, for whom everything is something to be played with, but she likes to keep an eye on her, just in case. 

Purrdy seems to play, eat and sleep in equal amounts. Every leaf blowing along the terrace in the June breeze has to be stalked, caught and fought. Each petal which falls off the geranium seems to trigger the starter's gun and she's off again to chase it down. I love her exuberance and the way she sleeps just under my neck when I sit back in the chair watching the television. If I am sitting forward, for instance, while typing this, then she sits on my shoulder as if I were Blackbeard and she my parrot. She has captured my heart.

I know I'm a sucker for chicks and hens of all sorts, but on Saturday I drove for 40 minutes to a lovely young French couple, living the good life with so many different families of cockerel, hen and chicks in separate runs. I was telling them that today I picked and ate my the first home grown broad beans of the year for lunch and they laughed and told me they'd had their first home grown peas for lunch today.

It's difficult if not impossible to buy broad beans in Brittany, and I love them, so I have to grow my own. This year I have planted them very close together, not as recommended on the packet, and just put a stake in each corner of their bed and tied string round. They seem to be supporting themselves and not collapsing at all like last year's crop.

Anyway, the reason I drove to see Dominique and Hervé was that they were selling Faverolle chicks and I thought I would buy five of them. However, when I arrived there was a family of Lavender Pekin bantams which later left with me in a cat basket.

I decided not to have the cockerel as my two cockerels just about keep the peace most of the time and I didn't want to upset the balance. So I went home with the mother hen and her tiny weeny nine chicks. I also gave in and had two of the Faverolle chicks.

They all seem to have settled in their runs in the rabbit parc and Purrdy seemed quite delighted with all these little inaccessible bundles of feathers, pouncing near the fencing of the run and bounding back and forth not quite knowing what to do about all these chirping chicks.

Finally, it rained last night and is still trying to rain today.  The waterbutt by the house is full, but the 1000 litre IBCs on the land are strangely empty.  They are fed from the barn roof, and should be filling up now, but don't seem to be.  Investigations necessary on Monday when my worker friend is here.

In spite of it being grey and wet, I decided to take some flower with raindrops photographs.

The first is of raindrops on a beautiful purple coloured poppy petal.  When I lived in England, after the summer of 2005, I collected a mugful of poppy seeds and this year found them amongst some boxes I unpacked.  There were a lot of seeds.  Most of them have grown into red poppies, but there are two purple ones - one single and one double.

Next a marigold whose seeds were collected last year from flowers on one of the small roundabouts in my nearest town, St Nicolas du Pélem.

And lastly, another poppy growing alongside the driveway - not well focused as quite a breeze today and I was just using my compact camera.

I don't always bother with doing a roast lunch when I'm here alone, but when I was shopping on Friday, I just felt like going the whole hog, as it were, and bought a rolled stuffed joint of pork.  Here in France the butchers remove the skin, which really I love to score and cook until it's a tasty crunchy treat on the side of my plate.  It looked very pretty before going into the oven and, in spite of having no crackling, it tasted very good when cooked with onions, sage, carrots and with roast potatoes and parsips  in a different dish and petit pois.

Last night when I was putting the hens and ducks to bed on the field, the goats were being very active, head butting each other and generally running around in their end of the barn.  I opened the gate between the two halves to collect an egg which had been laid behind the goat feeder trough and they took this opportunity to barge past me and through the main door of the barn.  Twenty minutes later, Basil was on the top of the roadside bank and Betsy was munching through the strawberry bed.  There was no way I could get them back in the barn without help.  I had my mobile in the car so 'phoned my worker friend which I hated doing as the Grand Prix was being televised.  By the time I had put the 'phone down, Betsy was in a corner and just walked through the barn door.  Two minutes later Basil walked in too with no encouragement at all.  I drove to meet the rescue van, but met them on a junction as I was too late to stop them leaving and couldn't for that moment get a signal on my mobile.  They were not amused, so I'd just like to send an abject apology to Andy and Flick. 

Three things I like:

1.  The sound of my cats purring .

2.  The way a raindrop trickles down the windowpane collecting other drops as it goes.

3.  The crackling of seasoned logs flaming in my well-loved woodburner.  

Comfortable Convalescence, Foiled Flies and Cherished Cats

I am so pleased to report that my parathyroidectomy was performed on Wedneday, 1 June at Yves le Foll, St Brieuc.  Within 24 hours my calcium level was down into the normal range and the only real casualty of the stay was my back.  I can never get the adjustable bed in the room to the same sort of angles I use at home and my back is always excruciating after a hospital stay.  However, my son had his post hip operation medication with him and a couple of those and a few nights in my own bed soon had me back to normal.  I can't praise enough the staff, the cleanliness, the treatment and the respect at this hospital.

Apparently I mustn't get the scar area in the sun for six-twelve months or it will show more eventually, so a scarf hides the scar for a while yet.

The swelling is gradually decreasing and my son, Matthew, reliably informs me that the scar will disappear into the wrinkles of my neck - well thank you for that!

Yesterday, my worker friend installed a new fly screen for the door which enters directly into the sitting room, and I am so pleased with it. 

Also he's gradually doing all the windows which are regularly opened so that we can have air without insects and at night no moths will come in attracted by the light of the television screen.  Flying objects have finally been foiled.

My friend, Sue, emotionally blackmailed me yesterday, sending a photograph of a kitten which she knew I would not be able to resist.  It had no home and was trying to adopt Sue and her husband.

She has six cats and is between homes herself at the moment, so couldn't keep this little beauty for herself. If she'd just asked me without the photograph, I may not have succumbed so easily. As you can see, she is so pretty and completely irresistible.

I have called her Purdita, shortened to Purrdy, which suits her very well. She sounds like a small motorbike when curled up on me and being stroked.  Below, everything is something to be played with - even the outside door mat.

She has already found the dirt tray - temporary until she can manage the stiff cat flap, food and water bowls, how to use the propped up cat flap during the daytime, how to take a cat nap anywhere she chooses and how to make me love her. 

She has settled in despite Daisy, my white cat, who hates anything which takes attention from her.  Alfie, having the most charming attitude to everything, is fine with her.

Alfie had his eye operation the day before I had my op.  The vet had to remove the left eye and found a tumour behind it.  Because of the difficulty of access and of having sufficient flesh to sew together, not all of the tumour was removed, so his life may now be limited. 

He came home with a "lampshade" round his neck to stop him scratching the bright blue stitches with instructions that it could be removed after fourteen days.  He was very disorientated with it on and we couldn't bear to see him like that, so removed it a few days later.  He was immediately happier and now just has to have the stitches removed on 20 June.  I was so worried he wouldn't survive the anaesthetic, so it's lovely to have him home again.

It was good having Matthew here for a week looking after me when I came out of hospital.  It had been ten months since his last visit.  Matthew's on the left here, running along the Nantes-Brest canal bank in Summer 2009.

I know he finds it boring without his friends, his music, his programmes on the TV, but he didn't complain and cooked practically all the meals for the week he was here.  Thank you, Matthew - I love you.

Three things I like:

1.   My own comfortable wonderful bed.

2.   Having Purrdy, Alfie and Daisy.

3.   Having friends sending good wishes.

My May Garden

The delphiniums stand in purple spires with blooms on every side

Honey bees are buzzing around collecting nectar as they hide

The honeysuckle's perfume is caught on the smallest breeze

And creamy florets are lit with sunshine on all the elder trees.

The holly bears it berries although cream and not yet scarlet red

And the clematis carries flowers from its feet up to its head

Individual roses clothe their thorny bushes in great profusion

And perennials fill the flower beds in weed-hiding confusion.

The poppy buds hang heavily on their tall stems in the border

And campanula and marigolds spread causing riot and disorder

The self-seeded foxgloves are ringing with their purple bells

And pots overflowing with annuals are casting their own spells.

The fennel in the herb bed has reached the log shed roof

Was all that seed sowing worth it? well here you have the proof

The parsley and the basil, the coriander and the sage

Will flavour meals throughout the coming year, a culinary wage.

I love my Brittany garden, with pond and blue ceramic pots

My terrace and the rabbit park, the sheltered sitting spots

The well-trimmed hedge, the old stone walls, everything's just right

It all looks good, especially when it's lit by sunshine's warming light.

　

28 May 2011

Ⓒ Sandra E Chubb

Dawdling Ducks, Missing Chick and Blooms

It's getting dark so late now that I am having to stay up to put the hens away! I usually go to bed earlier than most people, my back likes being in bed rather than sitting up watching the television before I go to sleep. The next eight weeks or so will see me having to wait up for it to be dark enough for them to go into their houses.

Last night I went up to the field at 9.50pm and started rounding up the ducks, who always wait for me to appear in their run.  They are laying eggs everywhere at the moment, never in the same place, and I have to watch where I put my feet in the twilight in case I crunch an egg underfoot.  I then close their run access door and go into the barn to give the goats a last snack of cereal before shutting up the hen house door.

With the two lots of chicks, who are always the last to go into their house, I wait for the last one to hop in, which is always the largest white one, shut their door and then open the hinged roof and count to make sure they're all installed. Last night I was one short. I glanced around and could see this tiny black hen in the goat field. She was so frightened that it took me ages to catch her. Lots of time my fingertips brushed her tail feathers as she ran past me, trying to avoid the goats at the same time. Eventually I caught her and she made a lot of noise, not having been held since she was first transferred to the run, she was not amused by me clasping her close to me. I walked back through the barn, along the veggie beds and back into her run before popping her into the chick house and finally being able to drive home. I was exhausted. Just walking up the garden and back is enough to finish me at the moment, and I had done far more than that trying to catch her. She doesn't know how near she came to being left out for the night. 

The moon was just rising above the calvaire in the sky, it was a full moon the night before, and I stopped to take a quick photo - you may have to swing your screen back or forward to see it properly as it's so dark.

I can't resist posting some more photographs of my delphinium which is so amazing this year that everyone is commenting on it.  The colour in these photos is not true.  The blooms are much more purpley than they seem here.

The other side of the door from the delphinium is my postbox, which is a double sided box, so the postwoman puts the letters in from the outside and I open the inside - clever eh? 

Then next to the postbox is my honeysuckle, which is so beautifully scented and every small breeze seems to waft the perfume across the garden.

In the driveway I have a small plant which is a wonderfully blue salvia.  The blue is so intense it's almost gentian colour.

I have the same, but bigger in my border. The cats obviously like it and they've been lying in the middle and have pressed the centre flat, so it needs gathering up and tying round some stakes now.

The roses are all blooming now and suddenly there seem to be flowers everywhere.  I particularly like this pink one which grows beside the pond pergola.  I am not sure which rose it is though.

And for more, glorious colour, one of the marigold flowers from the driveway.

I have always loved Monty Don and am so pleased he's back doing the TV programme Gardeners' World with the old team of Jo Swift, Carol Klein and Rachel de Thame.  The late Geoff Hamilton was my favourite presenter of GW, but Monty runs a close second for me.

At the moment I'm reading the book, The Jewel Garden, published in 2005, which he wrote with his wife Sarah. concerning their lives together with their gardens and particularly The Jewel Garden, part of their current garden in Herefordshire.  I have several of their books, Fork to Fork, The Weekend Gardener etc. etc. and enjoy them all.

Three things I don't like:

1.   Curry

2.   Dogs which bark all night

3.  Having to bring in the washing in - not quite dry - because the rain has started