In the absence of photos...

...there is nothing actually stopping me from blogging and just writing about stuff. Winter has arrived, with one white frost and this morning, some flakes of snow, but I don't feel like going outside to take photos. I've done it before; the cold hurts my hands and they are numb enough right now anyway.

Before that we had several days of April showers - I did think of taking some pics but moments later I'd be sheltering from torrential downpours, sometimes hail, and it wasn't the weather to have a camera out with me whilst I worked as the ground was drenched. There's nothing very interesting for the viewer about brambles or ivy, which I've been chopping back. In fact many of my garden sorties have involved looking up and deciding which branches need lopping because they are either shading out other trees, growing into each other or dangling down in our way, particularly over the drive. It's amazing how trees grow! Of course they do as they are plants, just like shrubs need pruning and weeds need weeding, so the amount of work needing doing in winter during the dormant months equals the summer work.

There's the perimeter fence which needs clearing of saplings and ivy; brambles and whippy growth which grow out into the main pathways smack K as he tries to mow, and the ever encroaching ivy jungle which threatens to take over all my trees. The enormous Leylandii hedge desperately needs its once every two years trim (that job is now given over to the professionals and the guy is supposed to come next week as he was too busy in November), the elm saplings need constantly hacking back in the chicken runs, sycamores self seed everywhere and need pulling out or chopping off. And that's all before looking at the veg patch, which has a jungle growing over every inch of soil. The orchard fruit trees haven't been pruned for two years, ditto clearing the stream over there of all the brambles and other vegetation which swamp it. Flower beds and shrubs need a good sorting out and compost added to the soil. All the while I mostly laze around indoors unable to get motivated to do anything about it, not that I have the strength to do half those jobs even if I was raring to go seven days a week. I accept that I currently have a semi broken body which needs a lot more time to heal and cannot keep up with this garden.

So what is the answer? Well there's the obvious, which was our original thought. Sell up and move somewhere with less land, an easier to maintain garden, and in our preferred area near the south coast of Morbihan or Loire Atlantique, near to all the good birding areas. This would also fit in with our PLAN, which would be hard to execute whilst living here (more about that later). But first we'd need to declutter all the accumulated junk, all those 'might come in handy one day' things, plus all the really technologically obsolete things which make up a huge bulk when you move house. Maybe someone might want a load of punk LPs at our village vide grenier in May? I'd give them away to a happy home rather than take them down the tip and chuck them. Ditto paperbacks; I've tons here, far more than fit my shelves as we had a number of plant and book swaps some years back with friends and somehow I seemed to end up with bagsful of 'bodice rippers' which my OH likes to call them, which I don't read (unless I'm really desperate). We're both using Kindles now anyway. And don't get me started on the photo albums! However I think the videos can go in the bin, except for our wedding one!

Then there's the house - a lot of it was never decorated and we've been too busy in the garden here to ever get to it, so upstairs we have a lot of bare plaster walls in the hallways and stairwells, plus one of the bathrooms. I really want to do something about that this year and feel like it's time the house had some attention after all this time.

It just seemed like such a mammoth amount of work we'd need to do this year in order to put the house on the market in spring next year, much worse than just the regular jobs which need doing outside, which at least don't involve tidying up outside to make it look as neat and pretty as possible as well. And it would involve work both inside and out. Not necessarily great when you are wallowing in post chemo depression and can hardly get out of bed.

On top of this I have been looking at houses for sale, and they all suck. Big time. Even the really expensive ones miles out of our price zone. Do you know why? I know one can change them, albeit one is usually constrained by existing walls, windows, doors etc, but why are kitchens so forgotten? Why are they so small in relation to the rest of the house, with so little storage space? I'm not a professional, just a normal person who cooks and bakes, and I have a lot of kitchenware, and it all gets used. Plus the large things which reside in cupboards in the huge bathroom next door. Deep fat fryer, breadmaker, ice cream maker, food processor..... I can tell you where some people kept things like that as it was all too obvious from the cluttered photos. No work space left.

Then there were the dreadful designs, mostly in the newer properties. I'm sure they were designed by people who've never cooked in their lives and know nothing about the cooking triangle. Huge living dining spaces with a tiny corner given over to the kitchen, which is open onto this large room. This seems to be the way all houses built in the last 20 years have been designed, ditto a lot of the old house renovations. I HATE that! It's bad enough being in the living room trying to watch telly when my OH is clattering away in the kitchen next door. If he was doing that in the same room I'd go nuts! And I love having a kitchen which is big enough for a table - we have different living spaces this way, and one can be in the kitchen at the table, listening to the radio, whilst the other watches TV in the living room, which is big enough for a dining table too.

Then there's the Breton style houses where they shove all of upstairs inside the sloping roofspace. Another hate. It may be fine for a four foot high child but a six foot 4" husband? It's so impractical as well as ugly as sin. We're very lucky in this house as we have less of that as all the top floor rooms have dormer windows, and we don't live on that floor anyway. We've fewer problems with that on the middle floor.

I was rather taken with the styles of houses south of the Loire - they have the terracotta canal tile roofs which I find very attractive. Many houses within our price range had swimming pools too - but as K pointed out - a swimming pool would just go the way of the exercise bike. A novelty at first then barely get used.

Whilst all this has been running through my mind these last weeks, I've started to look at my house in a new light. I LIKE this house. It works for us. I don't like the tiled worktops in my kitchen, and I wouldn't have chosen this design of cupboards, but it has storage space galore. I counted the drawer and cupboard knobs and there were over 50! We have a good amount of worktop space too and I use every inch when I'm cooking but like to keep it clutter free in between times. Plus we have more things in the mud room/cellier, mostly relating to freezing and preserving, but we don't need to find room for them in the kitchen. I thought, if only we could transplant this house further south.... because another thing. We've been there and done that round here over the years and after a while it gets boring. Yet go a bit further afield to new exciting places and it makes for a long and tiring day out. Then there's the problem of having poultry if we were to go for an overnight somewhere - we could leave the cats alone overnight but the chickens are the worst tie as they have to be shut inside the shed at night for their own safety. I could try to rehome them but I don't want any of them going in the pot!

And so a decision has been made, we are staying put. We will look into getting some help in the garden and we won't be growing any veg this year. No, not even courgettes (although we might still have some cherry toms in pots up by the house. I don't think I could be so drastic as to not grow a few tomatoes!) so my neighbour may be happy to offload excess courgettes on us. We plan however to get out and about more often, but I am keeping the details of what that's about to myself for the moment until the big PLAN comes into fruition. It's just that if cancer should come back to bite me in the non existent arse, I would like to have made the most of this time doing something a bit different that we will both enjoy, rather than just slogging away at same old same old. Watch this space! In any event, I am now going to try to live for today and not plan too much beyond the next few years. Who knows, any of us could get run over by a bus!!!

I'm also breathing a huge sigh of relief as I don't really want to move. The thought of starting all over again somewhere new is scary. We know everyone here in the hamlet even if we sometimes don't see them for months or even years on end. And we need to be within an hour of a hospital, and an airport which has flights to the UK, which meant Rennes or Nantes anyway. I could wave goodbye to my lake, but would feel sad about leaving my buried pets. I'm now beginning to feel a bit less gloomy too - December was a dreadful month for me and I spent a full three days in bed after the chemo port was taken out. Not due to pain. I can't tell you why. I'd feel teary for no reason, plus people kept dying - not people I knew personally but either friends of friends or family, or virtual friends, which was affecting me greatly. I think there was a bit of survivor guilt in there too.

Back to this place - we can't stay here forever; it never was our intention with a big house and so much land to still be toiling away into old age. But for now Chateau Moorhen will live on with us as its guardians.


I can't post without mentioning the death of an absolute genius in the world of music and art - yes that bloody disease took him too but I am not taking this one to heart. But he will live on through his music, like all the legends. 

Moths from back in November, and one I would rather not have seen

I suddenly had a thought the other day that there must have been many times during December when I could have put my moth trap out. Indeed, there were overnight lows in December that were warmer than some nights in October or November! But in my low mood I never even thought about it.  It has however reminded me that I still had these moths from mid November to post.

Then there was a funny which I had meant to add to my last post but didn't get round to it, but it's far more suited to this post, so if moths bore you then scroll down to the last two pics! 

This time I thought to bring in some Liquidambar leaves so I could shoot them on a colourful background, but many moths refused to play ball and either flew off or stayed put in their egg cartons. Never mind.

This was my favourite, The Sprawler (Asteroscopus sphinx).

And again, The Sprawler (Asteroscopus sphinx).

This is a Yellow-line Quaker (Agrochola macilenta).

Some were sleepy in the egg cartons and took a lot of encouragement to come out for a photo. I'm out of touch with the IDing so I am not sure I've got the right ID for this; all the others I identified at the time and keyworded the names into my database (thank goodness for that!).

Not wanting to come out of the the egg carton - I think this may be a Lunar Underwing?

The same moth encouraged to come out onto a leaf - possibly a Lunar Underwing?

Scarce Umber (Agriopis aurantiaria).

This one falls into the the category 'I don't have a clue'.

A pale or worn out version of a Feathered Thorn (Colotois pennaria).

A fresh, darker specimen of Feathered Thorn (Colotois pennaria).

Both Feathered Thorn and The Sprawler doing what moths do best. Sleeping. :-)

As for the next one... well I haven't been using my breadmaker very much (or even doing much cooking) over the last year, so my seeds and grains haven't been used much. I was a bit surprised then to see this little chap or chapess in the airtight container where I keep my sesame seeds.... of course it was dead, due to the container. I was going to be brave and just carry on using the sesame seeds until I looked a bit closer and saw a lot of webby stuff and some lumps in amongst the grains - ugh, no thanks! Chucked the lot and then when I got my new unopened pack of sesame seeds out they were marked best before 2013!! So I dread to think how old the ones I chucked were. No wonder things were hatching out. :-) But the new packet was fine so got used.

Let's called this one the Sesame Moth, although I am sure
it was saying "Open Sesame" before it expired, poor thing. ;-)

It wasn't very big, which is a good thing as I didn't want to see any grubs in the seeds!!

It could very well be Indian Mealmoth which get inside all sorts of seeds and grains, although my specimen looks like a very worn out version. Perhaps it's been dead for a long time! 

As usual, if you spot any errors in my IDing then please do let me know.

Back again, and look what I found in the thyme bank

Silly season is over for another year! I didn't say Happy Crimbo because I just was not in the right frame of mind for any seasonal cheer, but I'd like to wish all my readers a very Happy New Year, and hope that 2016 will be a great year for you. I appreciate all the comments and thank those of you who have subscribed via whatever method - whether you comment or not, if you are reading this then that makes me happy.

I must admit that my Christmas day was not so bad after all. Mostly that was because my kind OH let me watch that Sound of Music Live that had been broadcast the Sunday before Christmas. Wow, I was really impressed by how incredibly professional the production was - I understand from reading about it afterwards that there was one glitch when the youngest girl tripped over a guitar case, but I didn't notice! And who knew that Kara Tointon could sing so well! All in all a brilliant few hours of viewing that got me feeling quite Christmassy after all. Stuffing my face with sweet things helped too, after eating the delicious roast beef and yorkshire pud that my OH cooked (I have to mention that or he will be upset!). Last year because things were different we decided to break from the traditional turkey and I'm glad that we did. Beef is ridiculously expensive and we eat roast chicken often, whereas a beef joint costs an arm and a leg, so it's a real treat. 

I forced myself to do some baking on Christmas Eve and made a Mincemeat Bakewell Tart, which I'd made in 2013 and is absolutely delicious. It's relatively easy too as there is no blind baking involved. I made extra pastry which is sweet with a hint of orange so I could make mince pies with the excess. Yum. Oh and I also made some Peanut Butter Fudge, although I make it with light soft brown sugar rather than dark, and no vanilla, cos I hate the stuff. I'm the only one who likes peanut butter in this house, so what a shame. The pounds are still piling on me. At some point I will have to stop this eating business. :-)  

Yummy!

Icing sugar shaker, French style :-)

Back to the wildlife - I noticed this bird hopping about in the fennel branches so grabbed my camera thinking it was probably a Chiffchaff, then saw that it was a Goldcrest which was much more exciting. But I've just now, upon checking, discovered that it is in fact a Firecrest, which are far less common. I think it's only the second time I've seen one here so despite the poor quality (I was hiding behind the curtains, and there were cobwebs over the less than clean window!) I'm really thrilled with the pictures.

A little Firecrest seen through my living room window.

A few times I have dragged myself out of my gloom and started some of the winter jobs that need doing in the garden. We've attacked and cleared a fair amount of brambles from the side of the pond up the house end, and my OH has been to the tip several times now. I'm currently tidying up the thyme bank which didn't get done last year at all so is a mess. Every year I hack back the thyme really hard and it does it no harm whatsoever. It's a job I usually do in late autumn and it allows the spring bulbs and spring flowering plants a bit of space to do their thing - also if I get around to it, I can add a bit of compost to the soil. However, as I was a-snipping and a-clipping, I noticed the soil seemed a bit dislodged beside an ornamental grass, and that there seemed to be a lot of dead grass under the thyme. Which I started to clear. And then it twitched! I'll show you what it was in pictures.... (you can click on the photos to view larger)

The patch on the right is the cleared area.

Look carefully to the right of the Festuca Glauca grass.
(By the way, look at my Euphorbia! It shouldn't be budding up for ages yet).

Uncovered..... have you guessed by now? :-)

Cropped in to show the spikes. It's a hedgehog for those who are not familiar with them.

I was really surprised to see that it had decided to hibernate here round the front of the house rather than out in the wilds of the back garden! And that it had actually dug down into the soil a bit to make its nest. What also surprised me is that it is hibernating already, given that it has been so mild with barely any frosts. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of light rather than the temperatures? It's now tucked up with loads of dead grass and moss back over it, with the unchopped thyme pulled over it. I am being very careful now to check before I snip, just in case!

Talking of things hibernating, guess what we saw flitting outside our living room window on Christmas Day? None other than a Brimstone butterfly! They are hibernators who may come out on sunny warm winter's days - not that I have ever seen any before in the middle of winter.

As for the flowers, there are still quite a number going on strong, as well as the late winter flowers blooming early. I fear it will end in tears at some point as we are bound to have a cold spell. Well I really hope we do! This is not normal. We have eaten some PSB already but when my OH was harvesting it he found a great big Large White caterpillar on one of the leaves. Ugh - that broccoli got checked over very carefully and I haven't dared eat any curly kale yet. Well it's still waiting for the frost which is supposed to make it taste better! 

The last ? flower on Zephirine Drouhin.

Oriental Hellebore flowering earlier than usual!

Have started having a revamp of the bed it is in,
so have chucked dozens of its babies!
They are dreadful for self seeding all over the place.

That's about it for now. The weather forecast shows a lot of rain over the next week so I don't know how much will get done outside, or when I'll get some new photos but I'll be back at some point when I have something to say. :-)