Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

We love autumn here. Despite the attractions of hot, sunny summers, of cold and crisp winters with real snow and of spring bringing back life just when we think winter, for all its charms, is going on a bit too long, autumn is probably our favourite season. Normally the weather is quite soft and, because of the millions of trees around here, most of them in mixed woodland, the autumn colours are stunning.

This year, as elsewhere in Western Europe, autumn is unseasonably warm (although our weather data suggests that last October will have been warmer) and the garden is reflecting that. Roses are still flowering, the fruit bushes are covered in big, fat buds and we’re still getting a very decent daily crop of strawberries and raspberries.

One of our favourite events, a plant sale at a local arboretum, occurs each autumn. The plant sale is particularly attractive as it provides a range of plants difficult to find elsewhere. There is a world of difference between the approaches to gardening in France and Britain. While British gardeners tend towards a wide variety and large number of plants in the garden, the French seem to prefer lawns with carefully placed single trees or shrubs. The variety of flowers in a French garden is very limited. So it is that when we visit the sole local garden centre, there are masses of geraniums, busy lizzies, asters etc. but not much else.

The trip to the plant sale also gives us the opportunity to see the arboretum – a particularly beautiful spot – when the autumn colours are, or should be, at their best. Unfortunately, both this year and last, the unseasonable weather has resulted in the full gamut of colours arriving a little later than normal so we didn’t have high expectations when we set off last Saturday.

We needn’t have worried. There was still sufficient colour around to leave us open-mouthed in admiration and the plant sale was as good as ever. We passed a very enjoyable 3 hours there and left 70 euros poorer but very pleased with our three lovely roses and a wisteria.

Oh yes, that’s another difference between gardening in Britain and France. Plants are very expensive over here.

Smashing Pumpkins

Sunday was one of a number of days on which we are committed to a programme of music training. This extremely expensive course, 10 euros each for a minimum of four full days with a professional teacher, has two objectives. The first is to improve our breathing and singing techniques and therefore, we hope, our singing. The second is to teach us music theory. It’s great fun, if very tiring, but since it always takes place at the weekend we have to forego other events which clash. This Sunday, for example, we were unable to give our full attention to the Pumpkin Festival in our neighbouring village.

This being an agricultural area, celebration of all things rural is a major part of cultural life. Throughout the year we have many festivals related to agriculture and horticulture. We reported on the Mushroom Festival a couple of weeks ago. Keep your eyes open in the future for our writings on the Apple Festival, the Donkey Festival, the Horse Fair and the Potato Festival to mention just a few.

Being relative newcomers to the area, we had assumed that these fares and festivals were deep-rooted parts of the local heritage. In fact, many of them are no more than 20 years old. It was only a determined attempt by the local authorities to boost the local sense of heritage and, thereby, tourism which led to the establishment of what now seem to be long-standing traditional activities. (If, like me, you have difficulty believing that a Potato Festival provides much of a boost to tourism, watch this space. We’re determined to visit one next year.) So it was that our neighbours in the next commune decided, not more than four or five years ago, to hold an annual Fête de la Citrouille or Pumpkin Festival.

If you’ll allow the expression, pumpkins are big around here. All gardeners worth their salt have an area set aside for them and many village entrances and exits are decorated with pumpkins growing in containers. For the most part they are grown for the table and the varieties are relatively common, divided between those for savoury dishes and those for sweet. But judging by the bewildering variety on display at the Festival, there are enough people around who enjoy growing for show and for fun.

We managed to call in on the way back from our course. The place was heaving and everyone seemed to be having a great time (the French really know how to party). As well as the exhibitions, competitions and decorative displays, there were loads of stalls selling everything from the usual cheap tat (football scarves etc) through pumpkin-related produce (jams, chutneys etc.) to foodstuffs made from snails and from nettles. To ensure the party atmosphere was kept at full pitch, an Oom-pah band was going full tilt.

Although we couldn’t spend as much time there as we’d have wished, we’re really glad we got there.

Rat In Mi Kitchen

It’s OK. Relax. It’s not true. We just thought that the UB40 song provided a useful headline for today’s topic.

We like our house. We think it is, in property-speak, quite a des. res. The trouble is, so does much of the wildlife around here.

Now don’t get us wrong. We love the wildlife we encounter in the garden and surrounding countryside. It is a constant source of pleasure for us. Consider the salamander (pictured). This rather striking beasty can often be found lurking near the front of the house or in the long grass around the garden. Usually, they are only in evidence at night but it’s always a thrill to come across one.

Lizards abound here. They’re everywhere in the summer and every time we go for a walk we hear them scurrying off into the undergrowth as we approach. They have the most fantastic fights; lizards without a tail or a tail partly re-grown are commonplace and they really must be most remarkably tough and/or stupid as they leap to catch bumble bees for lunch.

Snakes too are reasonably common and Mrs A found three different sorts in the garden in the space of a few days. The first, a sort of grass snake, about 60cm in length and as thick as my thumb, could be found sunbathing by our part-time pond every morning. The second, a variety of aquatic snake, slender with a pink collar and about 30cm long was spotted in a similar place. The third, a viper, was lounging on the drive one day when we returned home.

Pine Martins, a fox and a hare are fairly regular visitors and as long as, in the case of the last of these, they don’t eat our vegetables, they’re most welcome.

However, where we draw the line is when those creatures which belong outside decide they want to share the house with us. Every year we find ourselves fighting battles against ants which, despite making no contribution whatsoever to the household budget, decide that regular access to all floors, even to the point this year of building a nest inside the house, is theirs by right. In our first couple of years here we had to take firm action to prevent first bees, then wasps and then bats (pictured) setting up home in various parts of the house.

At the moment, as far as we know, all is secure. However, we are suffering a related problem. The inner-skin of our roof is made of compressed polystyrene sheets (which form both the insulation and the sloping ceiling in our bedroom and the lounge) and the gap between it and the outer skin, the slates on the roof, has become a nocturnal playground for ‘Things’. This, we hardly need say, is not conducive to lengthy, untroubled sleep so we’re both a bit bleary eyed at the moment.

We can’t be entirely sure but we suspect these ‘Things’ are the very cute but incredibly pestilential ‘Loirs’, also know as the Edible Dormouse or Glis Glis. We can’t be sure because there is no way we can see them. However, given their reputation for eating through most materials, we expect one to be dropping in on us very soon. Now that will disturb our sleep! 

Marsh Mellow

Mrs A has got a job (of which more at another time) and therefore, naturellement, needed to go shopping for clothes. Unfortunately our local town, the largest in our Departement, is sadly deficient in clothes shops to suit Mrs A’s style. So whenever we need to go looking for clothes we have to decide which town to visit. The largest shopping centres within easy reach are Limoges and Clermont Ferrand but on this occasion we opted to go to Bourges, the ‘capital’ of the Departement of Cher and of the area traditionally known as Berry.

One of our reasons for choosing Bourges was that it has an area, Le Marais (the Marsh), that we have wanted to visit for some time. Well, what a good decision that was!

Unlike the fascinating district of the same name in Paris, the Marais in Bourges is still a large wetland. True the rivers which have created the marsh are now channelled and controlled but, to our eyes at least, despite this management and shaping of nature, the area is absolutely beautiful, overlooked as it is by Bourges’ imposing cathedral.

The almost 400 hectares of the marais are crammed with gardens which, despite their unusual setting, would be instantly recognisable to Britons as allotments. Virtually all of them were bursting with fruit, vegetables and flowers, had wonderful sheds and sitting areas and, on this Saturday afternoon, were hives of activity. The allotment holders were harvesting, mowing, fertilising, building with the sort of intensity you find on a warm sunny autumn day, all doubtless trying to get everything shipshape before winter.

Gardening in the marais brings a benefit we can only dream about. The gardens are surrounded by water. The rivers and channels give a year-round supply that must be the envy of all other gardeners in central France. However those very waterways create their own issues, not least that many of the gardens are accessible only by punt. Not only does produce have to be brought out of the gardens by boat but, of course, lawnmowers, water butts, sheds etc all have to be taken over that way too.

The whole visit was immensely uplifting for us both and we will definitely revisit. And, to complete the success of the day, Mrs A’s shopping expedition was successful too!

And Now For Something Completely Different.

We have to smile. It’s only a matter of a few months since some Home Secretary or another (Dr John Reid, the scariest man in Britain, we suspect) was boasting that Labour was locking up more people than Michael Howard (his predecessor as Scariest…) ever did. (Surely that’s an admission of failure, not success.) Now he’s got nowhere to put them all. What were those slogans? ‘Tough on crime and the causes of crime’ and ‘Joined up Government’. Don’t you just love politicians?

A Fête Worse Than Death…

…or one which saves your life?

Yesterday we visited the annual Fête Mycologique at a nearby town and, as before, it was a fascinating, if scary, experience.

Mushroom gathering is a big part of the culture around here, as indeed is collecting any free food. For several weeks from early October the fields and woods are populated with people searching for mushrooms and signs appear at the roadside advertising mushrooms bought and sold.

It’s simply not done to ask people where they find their mushrooms. The best sites are closely guarded secrets, often passed down from generation to generation, and enquiry is never accepted as just casual interest.


So far we’ve talked vaguely about ‘mushrooms’ and that’s perhaps not surprising from a pair of English people brought up in urban environments. For us there were always two types of fungi, mushrooms and toadstools. Mushrooms were those white-topped, pink-gilled field mushrooms which are widely available in shops and were definitely edible. Everything else was a toadstool and, if not poisonous, was definitely not considered to be eating material. Being told that puffballs, for example, were delicious and safe impressed us not one jot. Since we moved here, of course, we have discovered a vast number of fungi are both edible and delicious, if you know what you’re doing. And therein lies our difficulty.

Our first attempt at mushroom hunting was not, we must confess, crowned with success. Our guide inspected our basket at the end of the morning and pronounced, with much ooh la la-ing, that the whole lot had to be thrown away and that we must wash our hands thoroughly before putting them near our mouths or touching anything we were going to eat. Apparently those delicate, harmless-looking beauties we had collected were a deadly form of Amanite. But did we let this destroy our confidence? Of course we did.

The Fête Mycologique displays a bewildering number of different mushrooms, some of which are delicious, some OK, some not nice to eat, some indigestible, some poisonous and some deadly. And the trouble is that some in the first category can easily be confused with those in the last two categories. Even the names don’t help. The black and sinister ‘Trompette-de-la-Mort’ (Trumpet of Death) is delicious and safe as houses.

Although French country folk are reasonably adept at sorting the good mushroom from the bad (although many of them just learn to identify a handful of safe varieties and pick nothing but them) accidents can and do happen. That is why, at this time of year, pharmacies display large posters giving information to help identify mushrooms and, if you ask, the pharmacist will examine specimens you’ve collected and rule them safe or not.

We now have sufficient confidence that we can definitely identify one safe variety that we picked some yesterday and had a delicious mushroom omelette for dinner. We feel really proud of ourselves.

Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better finish now. I’ve been suffering from a very queasy stomach all morning and now I’m developing double vision. I’d better just call into the bathroom, assuming Mrs A isn’t still in there.