A walk in the woods by the lake

Driving to a bowls competition this morning was frustrating as I when I arrived in the village of St Tréphine, due to them replacing all the pavements with pavers and generally sprucing up the place, it wasn’t possible to carry on through to reach St Gelven.   Finally, I found a route going towards Gouarec and back to the village hall but only just scraped in to the competition on time. 

Coming back home I decided to take a different route, through Plussulien and then to drive to the Bois de Beaucours and walk down to the lake as it was such a lovely sunny day. 

 

 

 

 

Just before you arrive there is a tiny chapel, oratory, on the side of the lane built in 1669.

 

I parked the Land Rover on the roadside at the entrance to the woods and set off.  About five minutes later about 20-25 walkers approached and I had to say “Bonjour” the same amount of times!  They were the last people I saw before I finished my walk 1¾hrs later. 

 

 

 

 

 Here's a horse chestnut trying to break out of its case.

 

 

I started off by going up a steep path signed Roches de Guingamp, but never found the rocks.   When I got back home, my neighbour said that the huge rocks were about 2 kms up the path, so I hadn't gone far enough. I eventually came back down and walked along the lakeside. 

 

 

The uneven and narrow path was inset with tree roots and walking in places was quite tricky.   The sunlight backlighting the pale green leaves overhanging the lake was really pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was almost no sound, hardly any birds, just me rustling through the rust-coloured leaves on the ground.   There were fewer fungi around than I thought there would be.  I liked the Autumn leaves floating on the water.

 

 

Then suddenly, without warning, the most wonderful thing.  I saw my first ever kingfisher - an iridescent blue flash as he left the lake and flew out of sight.  I waited for about ten minutes crouching quietly and hidden but he didn’t appear again.  Something like that just lifts me for the rest of the day – wonderful.  

It seems that there is not a path going the whole way round the lake so I ended up on the lane again and walked just over half a mile uphill back to the welcome sight of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back home again I went up to the field to collect eggs.  The hens have been showing me who's boss and are refusing to lay in their new nesting box array.  Instead they have laid in a totally new place in a fairly inaccessible corner of the barn where the garden tools are kept.   One lovely surprise is that my newly adopted ducks have started laying which I certainly wasn't expecting at this time of year.

Here is a photo of my surrogate hatching bantam and her two babies.

 

Below is a photo of the empty seven nut hazelnut cluster which I picked at the weekend - I thought it was rather attractive.  

Three things I like:

 

1.   Being able to walk for so long through the woods and remembering that just three years ago I wasn't physically able to walk more than 20 metres and with canes.

2.   Playing bowls with friends this morning.

3.   The Jamaica ginger cake I'm eating now, thickly spread with butter ...

Harvests and chicks

It’s been a busy week with produce, picking and preserving, sowing seeds and planting plants.   The grapes have all ripened at once and I know I won't manage to harvest and use them before they start to rot so I am already sharing them with the hens.

 

It’s the middle of September and so hazlenuts are ready for harvesting.  I planted three bushes on my roadside verge in 2012 and this evening collected 684g.  In the supermarket they are priced at €6.95 a kilo, so it’s a very cost saving crop.  Usually the nuts are in clusters of three, but they can apparently grow in clusters of nine.  My largest cluster was of seven nuts.

This was a collection of some of my produce that I took over to a friend who invited me for lunch last week.  I just love this time of year when everything is so prolific.  She gave me some lovely earrings, I'm wearing them in the photo below.

 

I broke my slide and had to wear my hair in a plait for a couple of days until I got to the supermarket for a couple of new ones.  I felt rather like an ageing hippy!

The carrots hiding amongst the tomatoes in the polytunnel are huge as they'd been growing for ages.  Luckily they are not at all woody and are delicious when cut into batons cooked and finished with butter.  

Here they are as part of my duck lunch with some of the berry jelly I've been making, as a sauce with blackberries in it.

 

The rabbits also enjoy the ends chopped up.  They're all getting on so well now and go into their house relatively easily when it's dusk now too.

While out walking I picked loads of elderberries, blackberries and crab apples.  I made them into jelly straining them through a jelly bag into a large glass jar overnight.

The Quiz at St Gilles Vieux Marché was last Wednesday evening.  We were a reduced team of three but struggled through to third place.  We were almost a reduced team of two after my neighbour with all the horses in the village tried to reverse from his work driveway into Phil’s car.   I witnessed the event as I was ready and waiting to be collected from the calvaire.  How a collision was avoided I am not sure but thankfully it was and only Jean-Louis’s pride was hurt and he did apologise profusely.  A friend at the Quiz brought me some peaches from her garden tree and I have Kilner jar preserved them in a light syrup.

The sweetcorn seeds that the same friend gave me produced my first ever cobs and I really enjoyed them.  I remembered reading somewhere that the time between picking, cooking and eating had to be a short as possible to prevent the sugar turning into starch.  I managed to get this down to about 25 minutes and they were all lovely - dripping with golden yellow butter.

I collected a motley assortment of birds this week who are settling in well with my other hens.  They were from someone going back to the UK but she didn’t want to take them with her.  She was, however, taking back twelve cats!  

My surrogate mother hen is taking good care of the two chicks she hatched nearly two weeks ago now.   They started off in a puppy crate, as in the photo, but now I have moved them into the far end of the barn so they can be free without worrying about the older hens bullying them.  I'll introduce them to the rest of the flock when they're grown enough to look after themselves.

 

Yesterday we had our first rain for weeks.  Just a short shower during the day but longer at night.  It freshened everything up but the night time temperatures are still high and it's difficult to sleep.   More hot weather is forecast for the coming week so summer isn't over yet apparently.

This week I visited an osteopath on the recommendation of my rheumatologist.  He worked me over and said that if he'd done a good job then I shouldn't have to go back to him, so fingers crossed.   My usual physio came yesterday for my weekly session.  She's cutting down on her working hours running up to total retirement and I am one of only two clients for whom she will continue to do home visits.  We've changed the day to Friday now so that will take some getting used to after about five years of Tuesdays. 

Another change is that the Book Group I have attended for six years has finished.  We had a lunch in Bourbriac to mark the end and discussed our last book, Snow White Must Die, sitting outside in the sunshine with a post-prandial drink.   Thank you Katherine for hosting it all this time - I enjoyed our monthly meetings.

The previous week I had a mammogram, just the usual two yearly routine one, which is apparently ok, although they do send it off for a second opinion and I'll get the report probably next week.  They found several calcium deposits but nothing to worry about so far.

Three things I like:

1.   My new baby chicks - they're so sweet.

2.   All the baking and preserving I'm doing at the moment - very satisfying.

3.   Going to sleep in the garden while basking in the afternoon sunshine.

 

Veggie produce, fungi, rhubarb juice and Arthur the ram

I've finally given in to the blight which has hit my tomatoes.  For weeks now I've been picking the fruit not affected and extra green tomatoes to ripen inside without the possibility of blight.  

 

However, the plants are now so badly affected that I decided on radical measures and have pulled them all up bar one which still seems healthy.  There are now lots of green tomatoes to ripen indoors just a bit earlier than usual.  I spent about 90 minutes up in the polytunnel clearing the diseased plants and digging through the beds ready for any seeds I plant for growing through the darkest months.

 

In spite of all the blackthorn blossom earlier this year, here are very few sloes on the bushes which doesn't bode well for those people wanting to make sloe gin this year

 

 

When I drove out to collect the ducks on Monday I passed a multi-coloured striped hedge and on my way back I stopped to photograph it.

 

 

The whole hedge was in really good condition with no dead bits and although I wouldn't want it around my garden, I found it quite fascinating to look at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cheap veggies in the one euro bags at the supermarket this week were avocados, so I took advantage of their cool, creaminess and partnered them with hot, spicy prawns and home made bread.

 

 

My neighbour's very tasteful extension is progressing again after the compulsory August break.  The rafters are now all in place and the slates have been going on today.

 

The design has taken into account the existing projection at the other end of their house and is surprisingly spacious inside.  It will make a wonderful sitting/dining area for them, taking advantage of all available sunshine hours.

 

A friend and his son have just called round and we sat outside in the sunshine chatting and drinking coffee.  The real reason for their visit was to bring me a vital supply of Sour Cherry Chilli Chocolate which I can't seem to find over here.  They have just come over from England where, even there, they only found four bars on the shelf of their local Aldi.

 

 

These bars of bliss will be exchanged for three dozen eggs, an arrangement benefitting both of us.  I can't wait to sink my teeth into my part of the bargain. 

 

This weekend should see the first of my broody hens hatch a clutch of what are now, seven eggs, heavens knows where the other three eggs have gone!  However, I've just been up to collect new eggs and she was not sitting on her nest and had still not returned half an hour later, so I am not hopeful now.  She only has one or two days to go at most and I can't believe that she may have given up.  I keep wondering whether I should set up the incubator and pop them in there ...

Fungi are already in the verges of the lane.  I walked a little way along this afternoon after I'd collected two eggs from the barn and found this huge parasol.  I put the egg onto it to give some idea of the size.

These inkcaps are on my field and the three photographs show the various stages of decomposition.

 

 Here is a bee on my buddleia.

Haws and ivy berries in the village.

An umbellifer of some sort - not sure which one and sweet chestnuts in the boundary of my field.

 
A few of my squashes which are hardening off in the polytunnel and some of today's harvest from the field.
 

 

 

I make rhubarb juice to drink with the old, woody stems of rhubarb.  I cook it up with lots of sugar, ginger and some water before sieving it and fridging the juice to drink it chilled.  It's a beautiful colour as you can see.

 

This afternoon I also made my usual loaf and I've been eating it with the gooseberry jam which I made in July - scrummy!
 

 

 

 

 

Lastly a photo of Arthur, my young ram who is now really friendly with me and comes when I call him.  He's also practising butting me!

Three things I like:

1.   Walking along the lane popping ripe blackberries straight into my mouth.
2.   A very good friend's son has come home after serving his time in prison.
3.   Watching the ducks enjoying themselves for the first time in water.

Pickle, hornet and wasp nests and seven new ducks

Last Saturday afternoon I picked the first three cobs of sweetcorn from the raised beds.  The seeds had been given to me by one of my Writers’ Group members and I had never grown this crop before.  I planted out just twelve plants and, as you can see from the photo taken last week, they were not hugely tall.  I had heard that for the sweetest flavour the time between picking, cooking and eating should be as short as possible.  Mine were eaten within 30 minutes of harvesting and it paid off.  I picked three cobs – they were about two thirds the size of cobs I have seen in the shops.  I ate all three cobs, dripping with melted knobs of butter and they were absolutely delicious.  I have eaten more cobs during the week with the same lovely results - definitely a vegetable I shall grow every year now.

 

Last week I made Sweet Green Tomato Pickle.  I watched this being made in 1977 while staying in Bourneville with a friend, during the Queen's 25th Jubilee celebrations, but have never made it myself before.  This method of doing something with green tomatoes was forced on me by the blight which has hit my inside and outside tomatoes.  I have been lucky previously and never had tomatoes suffering from blight but this year it has struck.

 

 

 

I have been picking green tomatoes and allowing them to ripen in the kitchen.  About half have not ripened properly but have definitely shown blight on their skins.  They have been chopped up and served up to the hens who are not as fussy as I am.  I have pulled up a lot of plants and disposed of them but the least affected I am hanging on to in order to get the most tomatoes I can from them.  I still have tomato passata in store which I made from last year's glut so I shan't miss them too much.

While sanding off one of the windows on Monday, my worker noticed a hornet nest on the roofline near my spare bedroom window, so I drove off to the Mairie and asked if they had a number I could call for an exterminator.  In the evening I telephoned a company from near St Brieuc and yesterday afternoon their chap, Sebastian arrived. 

While he was setting up his ladder I used my telephoto lens to look at the nest and found four others under the roof joists by the eaves.  There had also been a loud buzzing sound in the frame of the velux bedroom window in Small Cottage and we found a wasp nest in there.  

The exterminator donned his protective gear and sorted the nests out and gave me a 100% verbal guarantee that they would not return.  He was very pleasant and I hope he was also correct in his certainty about them not coming back.  The velux window is now covered in dead wasps and hornets have been falling to the terrace of my house - so far so good.

 

Monday morning saw me setting out in the Land Rover complete with puppy crate in the back to collect ducks.  There were four Muscovy females, one Indian Runner female, one male Mallard and one gender unknown Appleyard.  

 

 

They're very naughty about going to bed and I spent nearly 45 minutes on Monday night trying to get them into their house and again this evening at least 20 minutes. 

 

The geese aren't mad about having new housemates, but they are getting better together and I think the three brown ones actually went into the pond today as they were all grooming when I went up to collect the hen eggs yesterday afternoon.  They didn't have a pond where they were before so aren't used to the idea.  When I had rescue Muscovies in Cornwall who hadn't seen water it took them at least 7-10 days for them to try swimming.                            

Above is a photograph of the seven new ducks, the two geese and my original duck, Domy.  I seem to have taken a lot of photographs in the last twenty-four hours.  It's very pleasant sitting up on the field in the sunshine watching their antics.

Latest photos, this morning of the three brown ducks already taking a dip before I got to their field.  I "encouraged" two of the Muscovies in but they were out immediately - they'll get used to it.  Here are the brown ones ducking and diving.

 

Three things I like:

1.   These lovely early September sunny days.
2.   Looking forward to home grown stuffed aubergines for lunch.
3.   Picking more runner beans in spite of it being a poor crop this year.