Bambi in the Back Garden

Roe Deer in back garden

Caught red-hoofed! Is this the culprit who decimated our strawberry patch last month? 

Early this morning we spotted this beautiful female Roe deer in the back garden. She had been sitting quietly amongst the Lupins before she decided it was time to get up for breakfast. Fortunately for us there is nothing but grass growing in the tunnel she chose to  munch from so no harm done this time. 

It is lovely seeing the deer so close at hand and, even though we have had this place for four years now, we still get a buzz from seeing them. It is also interesting that we have at least three different deer visit us on a regular basis. We wonder if they are part of the family group we used to see feeding in the fields in the winter.

Roe Deer in back garden

Bee on Ox-eye Daisy

Bee on oxeye daisy

Because it has been so dry there have been far fewer wildflowers in the fields.  Luckily for us and the bees though these ox-eye daisies flowered what seems like months ago and have just kept going.

We've decided this year to leave large areas of the fields unmown.  We did this so that we didn't mow all of the plants at the same time and also we wanted to leave large areas for the birds and hares to nest in.

Next year we will be able to see whether not mowing stops the wildflowers growing because the ground is too overgrown and rich.

Diary update - repointing the bathroom wall

Tuffeau wall revealed in bathroom

As you know we love the look of the tuffeau stone blocks that the old farm house is built from, so we want to preserve as much of this beautiful stone as possible.

As we work our way through the main house, stripping out the modern plaster block walls, we are uncovering some fantastic tuffeau stone walls that with a bit of TLC will look gorgeous. 

We have stripped the downstairs bathroom and found that three of the walls are tuffeau.

The two longest walls are internal which means we could keep them exposed.   The external walls are being heavily insulated in an attempt to keep us warm in the winter and our fuel bills low.

Both of the internal walls were originally covered in lime render and limewash. One wall is in a sound enough state that, with a little careful cleaning, we can retain the original limewashed render. We will protect this with a few coats of limewash when the temperature drops a bit.

The other wall has not fared so well as previous owners of the house have removed large areas of limewashed render to enable earlier renovation works.  We have now removed all of this render and cleaned the wall.

Unfortunately the lower section of the wall is crumbling due to damp, so we will render with lime plaster. The beauty of this for an old house built without a damp proof course is that the lime render allows the moisture to escape into the room. The stonework is damaged in this and other rooms because during the previous renovation the walls were covered in moisture resistant plaster and concrete which trapped the moisture into the porous tuffeau, leading to it crumbling away.

From about 1m up the stone is sound so we are repointing the joints to give an authentic and attractive finish.

Garden Cross spider on Ox-eye Daisy

Garden Cross Spider on Ox-eye daisy

One of the nicest things about this time of year is seeing all the young creatures growing and changing into adults.

Whilst walking through the fields the other day we came across a patch of Ox-eye daisies that have been able to defy the drought. In the centre of one of the flowers we found this beautiful, tiny Garden Cross spider. These spiders grow up to 20mm long, so this one could still have some growing left.

In common with many spiders the the female is larger than the male, but I have no idea how you tell the difference between them without a proper examination.

I love the shadow that the spider creates, like something from a horror film.

California Poppy

California Poppy

With the digging around the pond area over the winter and early spring loads of poppies have come up, including these wonderfully vibrant California Poppies. 

As these are not naturally occurring here the seeds must have come from one of the formal flower beds, but they do look superb here.
 

Frog on Lily Pad

Frog on lily pad in pond

I think that this is a fantastic photo of a frog who looks like he wants to be a hippo.  I love the way that his eyes really bulge when seen from straight ahead.

Log Rolling

It is very hot and humid already this morning.  It was 25C by 9 o'clock with a forecast for today of even higher temperatures, thunderstorms and, almost unbelievably, hailstones.

Over the last week we have been using a sack truck to haul a tree's worth of logs one by one from where the pine tree was felled. The route through the woods to the field is steeply uphill and uneven, so this was a real challenge.  A couple of times the sack truck rolled over when we hit a large bump, with the result that the log rolled back down the slope, though luckily not too far.

We had thought that being Saturday we might have a lie in, but it was just too hot even at 6 o'clock.  I got up and quickly checked the forecast as, while thunderstorms were the forecast yesterday for today, Meteo has been known to change its forecast more often than I change my socks.  

Thunderstorms were still forecast for this afternoon so we decided to hitch the trailer up and get straight down to the woods to collect the pine logs that we cut earlier in the year.  

They are now all randomly dumped around the log pile, so my next job is to split them and cut them to size.  Looking at the size of some of the logs I can foresee that I will have my work cut out!

Deer in the Garden

Young male Roe Deer in front garden

The wildlife here in France is everything that we hoped for and more. As I am writing this I have the door open so I can hear the Great Tits, Sparrows and Blackbirds, amongst others, chirping away.  I've not heard him yet this morning, but I'm sure that the Skylark will be adding his tune to the symphony soon.

Anyway, I digress from what I should be doing, which is writing about this gorgeous Roe deer who popped in for a munch the other morning.

Maybe if we hadn't disturbed him with the noise of the camera he might have sorted out the long grass around the Poplar tree!

We know from the stubby horns on his head that this is a young male Roe deer, probably about 1 or 2 years old.  We think that we have seen him about quite a lot with an older male, but of course it is impossible to be certain.

Drought Goes On

As the drought continues in this part of France it is having an ever bigger impact on the crops and plants.  

I'm no expert, but the wheat near to us is only 40cm or so high, whereas from memory it would normally be about twice that height.  Now, it may be that this year's crop is a different variety, but more likely it is linked to the drought, as these fields are not irrigated.

We are continuing to water the vegetable patch, but with temperatures regularly reaching 30°C it is getting beyond us.  Our aim now is not to encourage a crop but just to keep the plants alive so that when it does rain, and there is rain forecast for the next couple of days, they are able to take advantage of it.  On the positive side, there is a lot of fruit and flowers on the plants, including courgettes and peas, but the peas in particular are not developing well within their pods.

Actually, we are now becoming more concerned with the shrubs and trees around the land.  The leaves on the trees are yellowing and falling, and those on the shrubs are wilting.  We are certainly not hopeful for a bumper fruit crop this year, but we do hope that everything survives.

I don't know if it is related to the drought, but there have been gusty winds (Rafale) over the last few days and a lot of small poplar branches have been blown down.  In Montrichard on Wednesday a poplar was blown down across the Rue Nationale, knocking down the power and telephone lines.

Traffic Lights in Montrichard

A fairly useless piece of trivia, but to the best of my knowledge there are only two sets of traffic lights in Montrichard.

One set is on the main road from Loches to Montrichard on Rue du Pont at the end of the bridge over the Cher.  The other set is where the Rue Nationale crosses the road from Montrichard to Blois. 

Photograph showing Rue du Pont and Castle in Montrichard

Rue Nationale Montrichard with view of castle