A walk around the block

This post should really come after our long weekend getting acquainted with the Motorhome, but I've yet to sort the photos so that will come next. After putting it away in its rented garage on Monday, the sun was shining, the weather was cold but lovely, so I felt inspired to take my camera and go for a walk, rather than start some gardening in the late-ish afternoon.

I surprised my OH after I came home as I mentioned things I'd seen and where I'd seen them, as he hadn't realised I meant I was actually going round the block (as in turn right going out of the house and keep turning right (or vice versa) until one arrives back at the house again). He thought I was just going for a potter up the road and back again! I surprised myself too for having the motivation to get out in the fresh air and away from the house. The walk takes about an hour when you are walking at middling pace and taking lots of photos. It was great to get some exercise and I felt really good in myself for having done this. 

Looking back towards my property which is where all the trees are.

Everything is starting to turn yellow - I thought these fields had been planted with a yellow flowered mustard which is a green manure, but now think this is the rape crop, but very early this year, like everything else!

Still a few holly berries on this bush.

This is the Melodious Warbler Walk! Looking very different as the verges and ditches have been cut and cleared of all the brambles and vegetation which was going a bit crazy and swamping the place by late summer. This will be great for the wildflowers in the spring (and butterflies) which I am looking forward to seeing, as I only started checking this place out last summer. On the other hand, cutting down the vegetation is apparently not good for the Wasp Spiders' egg sacs which must have been destroyed, yet they seemed to be abundant here. Again, it will be interesting to see if they are around this year because if so, that means that the cutting back of vegetation has not affected their ability to reproduce.

A lifer bird! At first I thought it was a discarded bucket, as they were near the entrance to a field where dairy cattle go in and out. When I looked through my camera lens I could see there were two birds, one hiding behind the other. They are so cute - I've seen Red Legged Partridges before but never a Grey Partridge. They stood still looking at me for quite a while until I tried to get a little closer, and then of course they ran off!

We've noticed this year that gorse is doing really well and is in full flower everywhere.

There are lots of primroses flowering on the banks.

This umbellifer is a bit previous - I think it's Hogweed but can't be sure.

The only people I met were my neighbours, Armand and Marie-Jo, who walk this route often for exercise. I'd get bored doing the same route over and over. As you can see from Armand's lack of hands, it was rather cold and fresh!

Beside a farm there was a hedge of flowering currants.

Typical Breton winter scenery - strangely pruned trees although these ones are covered in ivy.

Coming back into the hamlet.

The oldest of the two manor houses in the hamlet. Parts of this one date back to the 1500s.

A view of my house and the back of the barn and chicken/duck sheds from across the field.

As I rounded the corner to come back to my house I noticed the lambs in the paddock on the corner. As I stood taking photos they started gambolling towards me, mother bleating, until they all arrived at the fence, bleating like crazy. Of course they wanted food!!

Home Sweet Home - I've nearly finished tidying this front bed and spreading compost. The Euphorbia characias is looking stunning already.

I feel I can't not mention the very sudden sad loss of a fellow blogger who despite never having met, I would like to call a friend. She commented on all my posts and vice versa. She and her husband moved to Bulgaria three years ago to start a smallholding there.... Sara's husband Dave has said he will keep the blog "NEW START, NEW LIFE IN BULGARIA" going in her memory.

http://debrazzaman.blogspot.fr/2016/03/and-so-life-goes-on.html 

A few critters seen recently

My OH discovered this little lizard without a tail indoors because one of the cats had brought it in. I thought it had lost its tail in the process but looking at some images on the web it looks like this is a tail that is already regenerating. I'm glad to say it was saved and put back outside near the steps to the garage, where there are plenty of gaps between the rocks for it to hide inside. It could be a Common Lizard or a Common Wall Lizard, but I have never delved into the different species of European lizards before!

Little lizard with a regenerating tail on my OH's hand.

And a slightly closer up view.

I was removing some weedy old compost from the tops of the large pots that contain my Oleanders which live out all year, when I moved one slightly and wondered why it was wobbling. I tilted the pot and brushed out what I thought was a stone. Oops, no, it was a tiny toad! 

I worried sick I might have crushed it as it looked a bit flat but appeared uninjured. So I took it round to the back door and went to get my camera. I had hoped it was a Midwife Toad which are only this size when mature (about 1 1/4 inches/3cm) as I know that we have them here from the bleepy noise they make every evening from about April onwards. But after a bit of research it is none other than a young Common Toad, which take quite a few years to reach full size. The way to tell the difference is that Common Toads have horizontal slits in their eyes and the Midwife Toads have vertical ones. This one came to life after I took a couple of photos so I took it back to where I found it and put it under some plants growing out of the house wall.

Very small Common Toad (Bufo bufo). Isn't that a nice Latin name? :-)

Here it is coming to life after its wee shock, and the lovely surface here is my gardening glove!

I was happy to see a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the peanuts a few days ago as it's the first one I've seen this year. They are normally quite common visitors to the bird feeders. I took these photos out of a house window as if I'd gone outside it would have flown off.

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major).

The following photo is a very zoomed in picture of the moorhens' nest, where I was pleased to see that Madame is now sitting on the nest! This is really early for them so hopefully there will be a number of little black pom-poms to watch around the lake soon. You can just see her right in the middle - a black head and the top of the red beak.

Madame Moorhen sitting in her nest.

Not quite wildlife but new life. There are often sheep in the paddock across the road but they do move around to other paddocks. So when they were moved back to this one recently there were already two lambs that were of a fair size, like the one below. But a couple of days ago I was over in our orchard checking out the blossom on the fruit trees when I discovered one of the ewes with twin new born lambs!

A not so new born lamb.

Here's a tatty old ewe with two tiny lambs.

I'm surprised she let me take photos as they usually move away when they have lambs with them.
The sheep here always look really tatty by this time of year!

Beating the blues

My mood has been really up and down during this last week. I think it's a touch of the SAD syndrome after a week of sunshine then a return to the gloom. However it's been a cold gloom with a nasty wind making working outside rather unpleasant. At the same time I know that the antidote to the blues is to get outside, get some fresh air and do things, so I have been trying hard to do this. I will not be beaten!

Whilst the cold snap has meant that no daffodils have yet started to bloom, at least the Hellebores are still flowering and new flowers are opening up adding a little bit of cheer. 

Saturday we were surprised to see the lake had frozen over - the lowest temperature was (only) about -4C and it normally takes days of cold weather before this happens. My newest ducks were in for a shock as I had bought them last year after our last freeze so this was a first for them. As the day wore on they found plenty of patches under the trees which hadn't frozen solid so they still had water to play in, and by the next day it had all melted.

Whilst I was standing around taking photos here I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye in the conifer on my right, and noticed that there was a Goldcrest right close to me. Try as I might I could not get a decent photo of this tiny and not often seen bird. Goldcrests are about the smallest European bird, smaller even than a wren and really cute, but they are one of the most flitty of all birds and never stand still, so out of about 10 shots as the bird made its way higher and higher up the tree this was the best I could get. Many of my shots were either blurs, or the bird wasn't even in the photo at all as it had moved so fast! At least it (just) shows the stripy marking on the bird's head, although it looks a bit odd from this angle.

On Monday I was really pleased to spot these out of my bedroom window! I love seeing the newborn lambs and watching them gambol about in the paddock across the lane. These are twins and I expect there will be more to come as there are three ewes in the paddock.

They are still living in the same field as the new neighbour's renovation job, which is coming along well. We cannot get over the size of the spoil heap now which is just enormous. I wonder just how deep they dug down inside the house before the cement mixers moved in. I must go over and have another nosey!

They are rebuilding the chimney stack and I'm glad to see they are actually doing a nice job with real stone work. Thanks to my Powershot SX50 I can zoom right in and look at the work in close up!

The time came to let Hallie outside for the first time; that is, the first time since she came to us from outside as an abandoned kitten. I wondered how she would fare out there but she was just as I had imagined, a mix of curiosity coupled with wariness and fear. She has been getting the hang of the catflap through from the kitchen to the cellar/laundry but then there is another catflap to outside - and she's a small cat and this is a large cat/small dog size one which we needed for Smokey who was a huge cat.

You can see my daffodils almost ready to open up here! All my euphorbias are oblivious to the cold and are coming along nicely, opening up their flowers slowly and adding a bit of interest to what is still a very wintery looking garden.

On Monday my neighbour came around to collect eggs and she said she'd been digging her veg patch as the soil was just lovely now after a week of dry weather. I had been pathetically cowering indoors due to the evil wind but after she left I decided I had to brave the cold and out I went for a dig. That was really good therapy as I soon warmed up! The veg patch is a mess of weeds so it is a bit backbreaking from the constant bending over to pick up the weeds, but at least it means I've got lots of green stuff to add to all the straw and poo to mix into the compost bins. 

I didn't get very far! But I really don't want to stuff up my back. My OH usually does the digging but he's been having back problems lately so I thought I'd better get on with it. I've done a bit more since. Even the strawberries have shrivelled up and they need a good sorting out too. So much to do!

On the upside, the same neighbour who keeps horses offered us some half rotted horse poo so we went over and filled our trailer full giving us nearly 2 cubic metres worth. I'll be letting that rot down fully over the summer but a bit of it can be used mixed in with the soil where I plant hungry plants like pumpkins, squash and courgettes which should appreciate it.

Next to the Purple Sprouting Broccoli on the right is the patch of 'Wildflowers for pollinators' meadow that is left from last year which I'm leaving in place. These are the biennials and perennial plants. I had forgotten that I had bought another packet of similar seeds, this time flowers for butterflies, when I was in England, so I need to find some space to sow a patch of those too.

The blurb on the packet doesn't give me any indication as to the species of plants, only a photo. I see no Verbena bonariensis which is my butterfly magnet but that's probably a good thing as I have so much of it here already. The only flowers that are recognisable from the packet are some marigolds and possibly hollyhocks, which I shall be pleased if they are as I'd like some here as I know that bees love them!

There's one other thing I love to do, which is an indoor job. In previous years when I've had the blues I've knitted, but this year I haven't even picked up my knitting once. That's because I am far more into photography now. Sure, I can't wear a photo but at least I don't have to sow up the side seams of a photograph!

So I've had a a macro feather shoot. This is my 'studio'. My desk with few props. The feathers of course come free from the ducks - I use a mix of small feathers and pure down. It's hard to see but there is a tiny bit of duck down on the purple thing.

Sprinkle with drops of water and I can come up with fun shots like these. You can see how the props add the colour. The blue thing is just a cardboard file and the purple thing is a strange holder for a multicoloured pen with a magnet in it so the pen just looks like it's floating.... but it was handy for collecting all the excess water that tends to get flung about. :-)

This one I just lightened up a bit to brighten my mood. :-)

So, it's March now so hopefully spring won't be too long arriving. We have daffodils to look forward to, and towards the end of the month, the return of the Swallows, Chiff Chaffs and Black Caps. :-)

Clearing the stream and new life

Over the last 10 days or so, in between pruning the apple trees, I've been doing a far more enjoyable job.

It wasn't a planned job, until I went over to the orchard and looked at the stream. Or rather, looked at where the stream had disappeared in places under a mass of overgrown brambles. Quite where the hell they came from I do not know!

Well obviously there was only one thing for it - get down there in it and tidy up! Thank goodness for my nearly brand new waterproof wellies.

As well as brambles to clear there were the dead stalks of these tall umbellifers which grow in all the ditches and streams - their seed heads are really pretty and I used some in my Christmas decorations.

With thick socks on I didn't get cold feet and was enjoying this new view of my orchard and house.

I could get round the backs of the trees growing beside the stream so found early periwinkles flowering.

All the while I was kept company by the sheep in the paddock next door, and the sounds of robins and song thrushes singing, and wrens and blue tits flitting about all over the place.

I'd got this far previously and managed to finish the rest of this yesterday afternoon - there was light at the end of the tunnel as the 'bridge' (that you can't really see) was up ahead, and the end of our property boundary.

Looking back over what I'd cleared and a nicely flowing clean stream. For a while a number of blue tits came down to the shallows and bathed, but my pocket camera is not up to zooming in on them unfortunately - I only got tiny blurs! Do you like the 'rustic' sheep fence? I think it adds a certain je ne sais quoi!

Wonder how long before all the nettles and brambles start growing again?

Whilst I was working I noticed one of the pregnant ewes wombling off to the barn and didn't think anything of it. Until a little while later when I heard a lot of baaaa-ing so looked up.

Holy moly! Where did they come from?!!!!! All together now, awwwwwwww! (apologies for the rubbish photo, I am sure I will be taking tons more pics of these little babies over the next few weeks, and there should be at least one more lamb from the other ewe). Now, with my first daffodil opening the previous day, I really feel like spring has started :-)

Now the orchard jobs are finished for the time being so I can get on with all the other urgent jobs that need doing, but at least with these signs of spring it makes it so much easier to get my lazy backside up and out there and doing things!