We decided to wait 3 or 4 weeks before we cleared up underneath (as there was a lot of nesting material all over the floor and the blinds) and before closing the blinds which we do when the weather gets warm and the sun shines in there.
Nothing happened, no sign of any Black Redstarts hanging around so that was it we thought. An abandoned nest.
The other day we were clearing up out there and I wondered what to do about the nest. K said to knock it down with the broom that was in my hand, which I duly did. Crunch! Oh no! There were eggs in it! 😢😢😢 The smashed eggs were a bit smelly and I didn't want to look too closely but in one of my photos it looks like possibly a bird head and beak shape.... well I think there were things 'happening' in some of those eggs.
So what does that mean? It means she was happy with her nest site, had laid her eggs, and started sitting on them. Obviously hidden inside as the nest is quite deep. But then, she disappeared and the eggs would have got cold and the embryos died. I just hope that it wasn't one of our cats that killed her. 😢
Here's where the nest was located!
A close look at the nest:
The materials in this nest are the same as in a nest I found in Brittany, but I don't know where the long wiry black and white hairs would have come from - at our last place they must have come from our neighbour's horses (as they were chestnut and black), plus there were also sheep across the road. Here, we have hens next door so that would account for some of the feathers, especially the orangey/brown bigger ones. But there are no horses around, and the only sheep are way over the other side of the village, so what are all the long hairs from? It also never fails to amaze me how birds can manage to make these works of art with just clawed feet and beaks! 💜
I just recently discovered that there was a motorhome show going on in Toulouse that very weekend, but as we prefer to avoid weekend crowds we shot off that very afternoon on the Friday! The exhibition centre is just north of the airport which is the north west side of the city, the wrong side from us but still only about an hour from home as it's mostly motorway and dual carriageway.
We had a most enjoyable drive there, as the colours along the way were spectacular, due to the amount of Smoke Bushes which had been planted. I could see that they had self seeded with gay abandon, as they were growing low all down the central reservation too, and had obviously been strimmed back occasionally, to stop them from growing into shrubs/blocking the view of drivers. They don't grow wild on this side of southern France (as far as I am aware), but were growing all over the place when we were at the Verdon Gorges in Provence one October. Long time readers of my blog will remember I had a number of them in my garden in Brittany, ranging from purple to lime green in colour, but all turning magnificent orangey colours in autumn.
By the way, in case you don't know France, most of our motorways are only two lanes each side, yet far less busy than a British motorway with three lanes! That's because we have to pay tolls, but they are definitely worth paying for.
We had assumed the show would be indoors like the one we used to visit in Rennes, but it was in fact held in the car parking at the exhibition centre. Even so, we still had to show our Covid passes to get in (good!). There weren't too many people there but we still chose to wear our masks and gloves because we knew we would be touching things that many other people had touched.
I should mention that we have both just recently had our boosters! My doctor considers me as one of the vulnerable people who need their jabs before the healthy, and because K was with me, this time luckily she had some spare vaccine, so he got his jab too! 👍😀
There weren't a huge amount of mohos in the luxury range, which are always the first ones I want to look at, but I did find the two which had piqued my interest recently.
One of them was this Rapido, the 854F, which is a 2022 model. It doesn't have a fixed bed but has up to two that can drop down. What I loved was the huge rear lounge and the much larger than average kitchen. The bathroom is a two in one, like ours, with a panel with the basin attached to it, which swings over the toilet and turns the space into an instant shower stall. Much simpler than ours which requires a lot of fiddling around with a panel which folds in three. It also has a huge cupboard/wardrobe behind the sofa and a final benefit, it's only 6.70m length! K was less than enamoured with the smaller garage though. There was also the slight matter of price as this one is about 20,000+ Euros more than ours cost in 2016. 😂
I also was interested in this one, which has a walk in garage (Challenger 240, 6.99m length). There is room to store clothes in there as well as the usual garagey things, and although the garage was quite narrow, it was full height. It has a large front lounge, also with no fixed bed, and the price is at the lower end of the scale. This moho is also a new style with a narrow cupboard opposite the L shaped sofa where the TV pops up out of. There are a couple of stools which can be fitted together to make a U shaped sofa, thus allowing two places to put your feet up to watch movies, or you can even split the stools up as extra seating if you have a group of people socialising around the table. I thought this was a very clever innovative idea. Not so keen on the weird angular shaped cushions though ???!!! 😂😂😂😂
I am itching to get away in the moho for more than just a day trip and we are hoping to get away twice next year! We will see.
OK remember those plants I bought in late summer to put in my planned Pollinator Bed? They are finally in their new place! K's brother Kevin helped him to deturf and semi dig over the soil. We then had to dig a lot deeper in order to plant out but we made larger holes and added lots of bought compost. This time the soil was much better than we've found elsewhere with far less clay, hooray!
I do expect there will be more petals blown into the pool next year, as the soil is higher up on this side than the patio on the pool side!
I'm amazed at how well the Perovskia is still doing in November; it has been flowering like this since I bought it in August! Some of the other plants had another burst of flowering as well, just before planting them out, and one of the lavenders is still in full flower. Strange but I am not complaining!
The terracotta pot below broke when it was knocked over by wind and a top heavy plant inside it, but it broke in a perfect place for me to place it in the bed, maybe as a shelter for toads or other critters. It's east facing so should provide a shaded place during the heat of the summer, although maybe too warm, I don't know. Hopefully when the plants have grown more it should provide a dry sheltered spot, and it's a bit of decoration anyway.
All of these plants will flower for a long period and are all pollinator friendly. I have also added a spare rosemary for early season nectar - in the wild here on the garrigue rosemary flowers all through the winter, and my prostrate rosemary in the herb bed is already flowering, but even if this rosemary doesn't flower until the usual Feb/March, it will be something for early honey and other bees to feed on. I also have a pot of garlic chives to divide up and plant out in the spring. I hope very much to encourage the butterflies that come into the garden but spend most of their time on the wildflowers in the ditch and bank, to come to the pollinator bed!
I still have bulbs to plant out but being a fairweather gardener I am waiting for a dry and at least not windy, even if not sunny, day. Our weather has been awful for weeks, much colder at this time of year than I would expect for the south of France. Lots of wind, rain, drizzle, low cloud. Yuk.
The geraniums out the front of the house are still looking good compared with the ones by the pool - I suppose they are more sheltered from rain here, and we haven't had any frosty weather yet. These are ones that overwintered in the covered patio last year, so I will be doing the same this year.
I had the usual being crowded out by cats whilst trying to take all these photos, yet when I want to get a pic of them, they either come too close to the camera (these are all phone photos, by the way) or won't look at me when I want them to. So no decent photo of Bertie, but I did manage to get one of Harry looking up at me!
