The Sentier Botanique, Montreal

Montreal is a nearby hilltop village that we can see from our house, on the edge of the Malepere range of hills. This botanical walk is an easy 3.5km round walk, with a further loop to extend it by several more kms if wanted. Plenty more paths lead off in various directions but the one we are interested in here is the main, botanical trail, which has many boards giving information on the varied plants and trees growing in this forest. 

We went here first at the end of July last year when it was drying out so there were few flowers out - even so, there were plenty of butterflies about. We wanted to see what it was like here through the spring so we set off one day last week when the weather was fine and mild, and had a lovely few hours. I took tons of photos of course, so I will just mostly caption them and try not to type too much blurb! 😀

It was lovely to see the swathes of low growing early spring flowers; above Lesser Celandine gives a lovely sunny glow to the sides of the path.

What's so interesting for us around here is the mixture of plants that we are familiar with, and ones which are more Mediterranean such as this Tree Heather. There are also a mix of four species of native oaks in this forest, plus the introduced American Red Oak. At the very beginning of the walk, where it is quite open and sunny, there is a little patch of typical garrigue plants - Kermes Oak, which is a short, shrub like ivy-looking evergreen oak, and some Cistus Rock Roses, amongst others.

The following plants are ones that are common in northern Europe, notably - Pulmonaria:

Vinca mixed in with the Lesser Celandine:

and Cuckoo Flower/Lady's Smock (Cardamine pratensis):

It was a day of firsts - the first Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps heard singing, and then the first Orange Tip butterfly spotted. I was a fair distance from it but was using my Lumix bridge camera zoomed in rather than my SX50 which I use for macro. I stood around focussing on the flowers as the butterfly kept coming back so was able to get several shots in flight - not as sharp as I would have liked but I didn't want to change the settings for a faster speed and miss out on shooting the butterfly!

I managed the same with this male Brimstone - in the second picture it is just coming into land. You don't normally see their wings open as they always hold them closed when not in flight.

If I'd been on my own I would have spent more time trying to shoot the many Bee Flies buzzing around, but K was always 20 paces ahead of me waiting for me. 😂 You can just see one resting in the middle of the leaf and another half hidden behind grass on the left of the leaf.

Part way around the track swathes of Wood Anemones appeared in amongst the Celandine.

There was tons of Lady's Smock/Cuckoo Flower as well, but we didn't hear any Cuckoos!

One of the many information boards giving info about the plants found in the forest.

At this point we took a detour way down to the valley floor to the tiny stream and even tinier 'waterfall', which was only about 10 foot high and even after a winter's worth of rain, still only a trickle. Barely worth taking a photo of! Nice to see some streams flowing though as so many of them are dried out in summer. Down near the stream where it was damper and darker there were a few different plants, notably this parasitic plant called Purple Toothwort. It's very funky!

Cowslip:

Anemone hepatica:

On the loop coming back there were the first Merisier (Wild Cherry) trees flowering. The lower growing saplings always start flowering first.

Back at the car park there is a wealth of information given about this area. This is a photo I took last summer, but I wanted to show the info given for anyone reading this who might be wanting to do the walk. The other day these bugs in the next photo were all over the wood!

These are Lygaeus equestris, a species of ground bug, commonly known as - wait for it - Black-and-Red Bugs. What, really? I wonder why? 😂😂😂

I hope to visit at least once more during the springtime to record the flora and butterflies in this little patch of paradise.

We have a pet Hoopoe!

How would you feel if you saw a Hoopoe on your front lawn just as you were turning into your driveway? You'd be excited and amazed - and that even in summer. Now imagine you saw that Hoopoe in your garden in January, when they are supposed to be overwintering in Africa ........ 😍

Luckily it was spotted again in a neighbouring garden that afternoon so K was able to post a few distant pics of it on facebook, and learned that some Hoopoes do indeed stay around their breeding grounds all year round. I've heard some of them hang around the Med area during winter but we are an hour inland, so it's less likely here. We imagined that first bird was a one off, until last week when I spotted one sitting on our wall beside my herb bed looking somewhat dejected in the drizzle on a miserable day. K got some great shots through the kitchen window, and I got to see it raise its crest when a sparrow landed beside it! Unfortunately, that time K was not there with his camera. (I'm being lazy, as his camera is better than my SX50, and anyway, my camera wasn't to hand at the time).

We were very lucky as a couple of days later it was back again, in the same spot, on a sunny day. This time K got lucky with the camera and captured it raising its crest!

Doesn't its tail look fabulous all splayed out like that - I've not seen that before. Unfortunately when they raise their crests, it's all too brief so of course the only thing you notice is their amazing crest! We haven't seen it again, but even if we don't see one again until the summer, what luck to see one at this time of year, so close by! They aren't exactly common birds - I have only seen about 10 in total, ever. Most of those were in Greece or Spain.

Another exciting bird we saw this winter, funnily enough in almost the same place, was a Sardinian Warbler. Now they do overwinter here, but like the Hoopoe, we aren't seeing them commonly. We didn't get a photo of it as, being a typical Warbler, it was flitting about between the wall and the hedge, and searching around in amongst my parsley. So the photo below is one that K took some years back at a campsite where we were treated to a lovely open view of one, pretty close up.

Aren't they stunning?! The good thing about that red eye is that it is easy to ID them in the field even if they are distant.

In other news, I have received my vaccination! Our doctor seems to have classed me amongst the over 50s with an underlying health condition due to my past cancer. I am not complaining! Unfortunately I got the last dose in the bottle, so K, who was expecting to get his jab as well, will have to wait, although he should get it pretty soon.

PS. Lockdown hair! I did actually cut it twice last summer, with K's help. Then it grew again and I didn't want to go to a hairdresser and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my hair, so I just let it grow. Now I can get it in a pony tail! Still unsure what to do. I'll probably get it all cut off again when Covid is a distant memory.

I have some more posts to come (in the mood now!) but will leave you with this slightly shorter than usual post. 😀

Bulbs and plant pot decorating

I have momentarily got my blogging mojo back so I am making the most of it! 😀

Back in October I planted up tons of bulbs; tulips and daffodils in big pots and crocus, tiny narcissus and grape hyacinths in smaller tubs. I planted pansies in the big pots to give a bit of interest over winter, which despite it being quite a lot colder this winter than last, have had flowers all through. We had one mild week recently causing the bulbs to shoot up and I discovered some crocus starting to flower, and the pansies have put on lots more flowers. A sunny day the other day actually made me grab my camera to take some pics of the crocus as they only open up when it is sunny.

I've also been doing some crafty stuff - decorating terracotta plant pots and saucers for houseplant use. These plain pots are much cheaper than buying decorated cache pots and so long as you have the colour paint you want (or can mix it), you get the colours of your choice too! It hasn't really been going out or walking weather much so it's good to have something to do, especially as I enjoy it. I've just ordered some crafting supplies to try my hand at decoupage as well. 

We have booked to go on four day trips with Birding Languedoc but they are not until April and May - preferable really due to hopefully warmer weather 😀, but the earlier dates are places we have been to already. Due to Covid restrictions we can only have a group of six maximum (at the moment), so with the organiser, the pro birder and us two, there will only be two other people allowed. In a way that's great as we can spend even more time grilling Karline, the pro, about her bird knowledge! I just hope we don't have to go back to full lockdown......

Right, on to the pots!

I inherited these terracotta pots (and many others) with the house. I also inherited a pot full of bulbs which turned out to be Tete a Tete narcissus and grape hyacinths so I have mixed them up with the crocus. I think there may have been some other things but they were jam packed and they probably didn't all flower. There's something in the middle of the pot above which I'm not sure what it is - time will tell!

Some of the daffies are up already with visible buds, but for the moment I'm happy just with the colourful pansies. I was given a couple of free punnets of 10 plants when I bought two punnets - the lady running the place said as we were regulars it was a gift. We'd only been there twice before!

The solar lamps are still lighting up this area at nighttime, though the light is weaker than it is during summer. The little pot is the one that had the Tete a Tetes in it, and is pretty. It's been painted to look like rust round the edges.

Onto my plant pots indoors. I've done some stencilling on some but many of the stencils I bought have very small holes which are difficult to get paint into without it bleeding underneath - like this tiny text. I don't care though as who is going to inspect it up close apart from me? 😁

These next pots are in our bedroom.

I decorated the photo frame as well - that's me about 20 years ago!

The painting on the wall Keith bought me about 20 years ago and it reminds me very much of Les Baux de Provence. I just love the colours which go with the duck egg of the bedroom. I lime waxed the frame. Keith made the mirror frame many moons ago and the Camargue horses photo came from Mum's neigbour who used to sell her photos. The white furniture here and in the photo below were inherited with the house. The Mother in Law's Tongue plant was long and straggly and I bought it home from Mum's house - since then it suddenly had four new shoots which surprisingly have a different pattern on the leaves, which are also much shorter and wider than the old ones - its the old part of the plant hanging off to the right that you can see. I repotted it but it already needs repotting again!

We have always had wooden furniture and wood effect wardrobes before but thought it might make a nice change to have the white. We used to have hot autumnal colours in our bedroom; these are now in the spare bedroom downstairs. There's a second corner wardrobe as well as matching bedside tables - we did quite well buying this house. 👍😀

A view of the bedroom. One day I'm going to strip the wallpaper but repaint with duck egg blue in a more bluey tone (I already have the paint!). The colours are a bit odd in the photo as the throw and cushion on the chair look dark but they are much lighter in reality, and the duvet set, which I thought was duck egg in the photo online, is actually grey 😒, though in reality it does go better with the duck egg than it looks in the photo! By the way the reason the bed looks lumpy is that we finally decided to have separate single duvets - the best decision we ever took as there's no more tugging the duvet or cold drafts down the back of your neck! I also have a much thicker duvet in mine than Keith does (as well as an electric blanket, haha!).

These pots are in the office. I did the black image on tin can last winter - it's a very cheap way to make plant pot containers for small plants, or as pen containers for a desk, etc. The image on the left is my first attempt at using waterslide decals and the moth was just printed out and glued on. I've done several pots (and lampshade bases) with the sisal string. I didn't even have to buy it, it was knocking around the house already!

Who can name the moth? (Caroline 😀)

This blue one is in the living room where I have a lot of blue accent colours. It's Keith's favourite of the pots that I have decorated, and I'm very pleased as we discovered the copper acrylic paint in amongst all our tons of painting paraphenalia, no idea when he or I bought it but it covers really well straight onto terracotta!

Where am I getting my ideas from? Pinterest! It's an absolutely brilliant online resource for all things crafty, plus any number of other subjects. I have gained inspiration for room decorating and ideas for making some decorative objects for the garden. The only downside is that we no longer have loads of bits of scrap wood after our barn fire at the last place, so I need Keith to buy me some wood for ideas that I have for the garden.... this kind of decoration requires less hard work than looking after plants! Though I will of course have a few more shrubs and plants in the garden in due course.

Here's a link to my Pinterest account if you are interested in following me there. I have quite a few pins.... 😁

Finally a view of my crafting space in the garage. It's chilly in there so I wear an old jacket, which is already covered in paint. 😂😁 I have a gardening/potting up space up the other end of the garage.

You can see how long our garage is, which has been handy for all our 'stuff', despite having lost about 60% of our 'stuff' in the barn fire. Where does it all come from?!!!

Hope you are all surviving lockdown/curfew/whatever restrictions you may have in your country. I know it's tougher in the winter but spring is very much on the way. Take care xx