Zeltus

If someone can help me identify these bugs, I’d would be most appreciative. A number of these nurseries appeared in the Autumn, mostly on our Mallow shrubs.

I started off by assuming that they were nursery colonies of Firebugs (or Gendarmes, as the French generally call them – « masques-nègres » "Masked Nigger" is the local non-PC name for ‘em) – English children prefer the more socially acceptable but coarser "Bonking Bugs" – and indeed, it is all they ever seem to do!

But now I’m really not so sure – yes, they are on my Mallows, the seeds of which Pyrrhocoris apterus enjoys eating. But Firebugs have the typically flattened bodies of Hemiptera whereas these show the more rounded shape that indicated true beetles. Unless it’s simply that these are immature forms of some other Hemiptera. I also believe there are a few adults shown in the photo and, if so, they certainly are not Firebugs. And finally, Firebugs are a very bright red whereas these are a rather darker blood-red colour.

Anyway, if anyone can help me identify these bugs, it’d be one less thing for me to puzzle over.

Technorati Tags: beetle, firebug, france, gendarme, hemiptera, Pyrrhocoris apterus

The rain has brought out the salamanders in the forests. Yet another reminder as to why we own a house in France! :grin: Not native to the UK, they are slightly startling when first seen by us Brits. The ones around here are bright yellow and spotted, although there is a fair amount of variation around Europe (everything from pure black, to bars rather than spots and orange rather than yellow) Quite common (everything is here, it seems) they are not that often seen because they prefer to be mobile during the dusk and night time

Regrettably, the best chance of seeing one is probably when a car has run it over – like frogs and toads, they don’t hurry across nice warm tarmac.

I didn’t try to handle the one I spotted – nor did I let the dogs eat it! Their warning colours are there for a reason – the skin exudes a toxic substance that I prefer not to get on me. Although I am pretty confident that they are not that poisonous that they can’t be handled briefly. But why disturb the creature any more than I have to? I found mine by brushing the ground litter away with a stick – something I always do in the hope of finding some edible mushrooms – alas, after all this time, I never have. But the salamander was a much appreciated consolation prize.

Like the picture of the dormouse, I “borrowed” this photo from Google Images. I am ashamed to say I failed to carry a camera around with me yesterday – s’always the way, the one day you need a tool, it’s not to hand.

Technorati Tags: fire, france, salamander, salamandra

After far too long a break, I have found something I felt worth the effort of posting. One of the delights of owning property here in rural France is that we are surrounded with wildlife that back in the UK, is rarely, if ever seen. A young Hoopoe visits our garden most days for an evening meal, Buzzards abound, bats are all over the sky of an evening and even at the smaller scale of things, European stick insects and Praying Mantis’ are to be found if one looks carefully enough.

Of course, we also get less welcome visitors – particularly at harvest time, when mice are evicted from their field nests and come looking to us for a new home. Mostly field mice, rather more rarely, harvest mice and one memorable occasion, when a whole family of pygmy shrews moved in. In general, I use live traps when I can (that is, when we’re here) and simply move the critters I catch to the outskirts of the village and release them in a hedgerow. The incredibly aggressive but completely harmless pygmy shrews were very vocal in their disapproval of me evicting them but it’s that or the old-fashioned spring trap and rodent heaven as the alternative. I have resorted to killing traps on rare occasions – we have felt under siege once or twice and felt we needed to get rid of the uninvited guests asap. Fortunately, last night it was one of the live traps that did it’s job and this is what turned up in it.

I didn’t immediately recognise the beast – about the size of a gerbil and with a furry tail – well, that alone meant it wasn’t a mouse. I was rather confused as if the tail had been quite bushy, then I would have instantly have thought “Dormouse!” – but the Common Dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius, is an attractive gingery brown colour and the Edible Dormouse, or (Glis glis) is a bit larger and more silvery-grey in colour. Whereas my specimen had a very attractive coat in grey, white and black. A quick look thru’ my books soon identified it as Eliomys quercinus, the Garden Dormouse, very common in the south of Europe and generally completely harmless. Not that commonly seen as they don’t often come into houses and they are nocturnal. The only problem that might occur is that they are communal creatures and tend to be quite noisy. So I’ve set a few more traps to see if we have more of them resident. I released this one as per normal but if we do have a glut, then I’m afraid the spring traps will be the next line of defence. Thankfully, it’s not a family of Glis glis – they can be a real nuisance, noisy, overly plentiful and quite happy to chew thru’ cables, wood pipes – anything really.

I’m afraid I had to steal this picture off’ve images.google.com. I didn’t see much value in trying to keep the animal until the next day simply to take a photograph of it. So I released it as soon as possible.

Technorati Tags: dormice, dormouse, edible, france, glis glis, harvest, mice, mouse

Summer gave way all to easily to Autumn and whilst it was a superb season while it lasted, Autumn is now gently allowing Winter to creep in. Time to start preparing to move out until the warm weather returns in Spring.

The leaves on the trees, after the best display we’ve ever seen, are now dropping rapidly, and it is time to pollard our Poplar trees.

The French are very enthusiastic about the practice of pollarding. And generally I am happy to believe they know what they are doing and follow their example. This decorative pollarding does mean that an otherwise large tree is kept to a reasonable garden size. The French leave a finger on each stump and I blithely follow their lead. I’ve no idea what it achieves but I would hazard a guess it’s to encourage the tree to sprout new growth as soon as possible in the Spring.

The newly pollarded trees look very bare and sorry for themselves. Not at all a pretty result. But in the Spring, they’ll all come good and look very attractive throughout the Summer.

Before coming across this form of pollarding, my understanding of the word was to describe a large mature Elm or Oak that had been completely decapitated in it’s youth as a source of a decent stave, long, long ago and had survived the experience by growing ever more lustily.

Indeed, many of the large, mature trees seen today (or rather, where Elms are concerned, the pictures of large mature trees :-( ) quite probably underwent this treatment. Yet most of us think this is the normal and natural shape of a mature tree. Does anybody still remember the Umbrella Tree, near the bottom of Salford road on the hill up to Cranfield? A magnificent example that like so many, succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the 70′s, it was a classic mature pollard.

Finally, despite their love of the practice, the French appear to have no special name for it. They at best make use of the verb tailler – “to prune”. Sometimes, French is a romantic, expressive language. And at other times, it is quite earthy and plain – there seems to be very little middle ground.

This also highlights one of the benefits of the English language – very little of it is English, it’s all been stolen from other languages. And is all the richer for it. The French attempt to protect their language from external influence is, of course, a fool’s errand.

Technorati Tags: autumn, elm, oak, pollard, prune, tailler, winter

Today is Armistice Day, when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the First World War ended.

It is a public holiday here in France, which is a jolly decent idea. At 11 o’clock – or some time around then – the French are not noted for their timekeeping skills! – D The Maire, attended by all the local Veterans, a bunch of ex-pats, a pleasingly large number of children and other inhabitants of this commune, congregate around the war memorial, just outside our house, and hold a short dedication. One of the children made a short speech, explaining why it is important that this ceremony is relevant and must be continued.

One particularly poignant part of the proceedings is when the Maire, as he does every year, read out the names of all the dead commemorated on the memorial, and at each name we responded “Mort pour France”. That’ll make sure no-one forgets the names of the fallen.

As ever, clicking on the photos throws up a larger, more detailed one.

Of course, my family has it’s own names to commemorate – I recommend a visit to the Roll of Honour. This site is a really good way to encourage both Remembrance and the upkeep and maintenance of all war memorials.

The Maire emphasised that this was not a purely French ceremony. It commemorates all those who fell in all wars. And as such, he thanked us all, les étrangers in particular, for attending. We British do tend to stand out a bit as we all wear our Poppies. The French flower of Remembrance is the Bleuet, or Cornflower. It’s a bit of a shame that they don’t utilise it’s beauty more but simply have a basic stylised motif on an old-fashioned sticky lapel flag.

The event ends with everyone moving to the Mairie, for Pineau (umm, French sherry, for want of a better description) and Kir, so that everyone can meet and greet each other. All in all, a dignified, simple and expressive ceremony that makes exactly the right impression.

If memory serves my right, until the Falklands War, the Act of Remembrance in the UK was rather muted – there was certainly no nationwide two minute silence, T.V. coverage tended to be limited to the laying of wreathes ceremony at the Cenotaph. The general malaise regarding this event was surely best summed up when that twerp Michael Foot turned up at the Cenotaph wearing a brown tweed jacket. Nowadays, most people in the UK seem to make an honest and genuine effort to honour the sacrifices made by the Forces in all wars and engagements. And quite rightly too. I do however have a few qualms about how early Poppies are appearing on lapels, especially on the lapels of politicians and media personalities. I’d like to think it’s a truly respectful statement but the cynic in me wonders if there is not a touch of “I wear mine longer than you, I’m therefore more righteous” creeping in to the whole business. I hope I am wrong.

Technorati Tags: armistice, bleuet, ceremony, lovesey, parker, poppy, remembrance, war

The region where our house is in France is absolutely drowning in history. It was near here on 26^th March 1199 that Richard the Lionheart received his fatal crossbow wound, whilst besieging the Tower at Châlus – "shall-loo", a scant fifteen minutes drive away from us.

Unfortunately, whilst the wound was not overly serious in itself, septicæmia and gangrene set in and Richard died in 7^th April. Not really a pleasant way to go.

Now, what is interesting is that no-one knows definitely where Richard spent his final days. Certainly not in a siege camp in Châlus. So where?

Local folklore has it that he was taken to the chateau at Viellecour (Old Court) and it was here that he died. And when looking at a map, this is so logical a choice that it, to me, has a real ring of truth about it. Whatever, I and many others believe this to be fact. The chateau is not on the tourist trail and is privately owned, but is easily photographed from across the fields. It’s a beautiful (and beautifully restored) building and, being just up the road from Maison de la Famille, it is well within walking or cycling range for a view.

The photographs (click on any of them for a larger, more detailed view, by the way) came about because

• My sister visited me recently, but she didn’t have time for a photograph &
• I needed to test ride my bike after servicing it.

What better excuse than a few hours riding from ruin to ruin taking a few photographs? Here are the ones I took at Châlus, showing the remains of the tower. Again, it’s privately owned but a few polite words with the owner and I was allowed in briefly to take these pictures.

I took these photographs in late mid-October. A typically warm and balmy day, it is at best only early Autumn here in the Dordogne. No need for central heating for a month or two yet!

There is a tourist trail called the "Route Richard, Coeur de Lion" but be aware that it is not a route as such, more an area within which to view various ancient forts, castles and towers – none of which have much, if anything, to do with Richard the Lionheart! Still, it makes for a good day out exploring the area, soaking up more of the history of this photogenic land.

Maulmont chateau, above, is in Châlus itself, a short walk from the tower. It was used as a prison at one time.

The Donjon at Les Cars is quite an impressive site. Being in the middle of the town, a quick visit to the bar was easy and a welcome break.

Here’s the techie bit – I have been playing with the Google Maps API a bit and have put together a fairly simple map (see below) showing whereabouts all these Points of Interest actually are. You’ll have to zoom in quite a way to find Maulmont, it’s so close to the Tower in Châlus it’s hidden at anything other than Really Close-in. The API isn’t really that easy to use, unless you’re red-hot at Javascript and OOP but I’m getting better at it. I hope to use this as the basis for a fully-fledged mash-up of some sort on my "work" site over at http://gites.org.uk in due course. First I need to go out taking more photographs!

To view the map, it’s on a test page at gites.org.uk – embedding anything other than really simple maps in WordPress is causing me problems at the moment. So that’s a miniproject waiting for the winter months.

As a final aside, Red Lion is believed to be the commonest pub name in England (altho’ some believe "The Crown" umm, holds the crown!) – but it has nothing to do with Richard the Lionheart. Originally the name derived from John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster and the most powerful man in the land, in the mid- to late-1300′s, and hence well after Richards time. It then received a second boost of popularity when James the First "the wisest fool in Christendom (because he never said a foolish thing or did a wise one.)" came to the throne – flattering important patrons has always been a good idea!

Technorati Tags: chalus, dordogne, france, lionheart, richard, tourism, vieillecour

The village of Saint-Priest-les-Fougères, where we live in France, celebrated the festival of the Feu de Saint-Jean (St. John’s Fire) last weekend. Nominally named after the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, it is a celebration that is now pretty much extinct in the UK.

It is, as are so many festivals, based on a pre-Christian pagan celebration, in this case, one of mid-Summer. And indeed, in these modern times, it pretty much has reverted to that.

Here in France, the tradition is a sit-down meal (all meals are taken sitting down in France! D ) followed by a ritual bonfire (usually stuffed with fireworks) and then music and dancing until the small hours. The bar is of course open throughout.

In years gone by, the custom was to include cages of live cats on the bonfire – not nice, but not uncommon behaviour in those times. After all, St. Stephens Day in the UK used to involve the hunting and killing of wrens.

More photos on Flickr… click on one of the photos to view them.

Technorati Tags: cat-burning, feu, fireworks, john, mid-summer, saint-jean, st