October 2013

Our October half term break has been really quiet with none of our family here.  After the summer, when someone was staying with us most of the time,  it has seemed strange but it gave me the opportunity to try out my newly acquired ultra-simple "skill".

 I  really enjoyed making it....so relaxing  almost more than  knitting or crochet.  It was so satisfying using up old, discarded but not worn out clothes and I love seeing pieces of my favourite  dresses and skirts preserved.



  The next one will be better.  I've got a few plans for that one.

The  little cyclamen  in the wood are spreading rapidly, I'm  not sure  if it is  because of or in spite of the strange seasons -  a very cold long winter, spring so late as to be almost non-existent, hot long summer and autumn very mild.



And our little fig tree has made massive new growth. I never  believed it would be this good after our  severe "pruning" a year ago.






It was lovely to see grapes still on the vine,  it s the first time in all the years we've been coming here  that  they  are still being harvested this late.

Orchids and Moths

It's been a great time here in our part of France for flora and fauna although everything including the cuckoo was so late and it seemed Spring would never arrive. But now Nature is  trying to make up for lost time  and we have been treated to magnificent wild flowers





The birdsong has been spectacular with the nightingale singing for hours into the night.  But how exciting and what a treat to see a  creature we had never seen before......

Saturnia Pyri



Thanks for the photo Ellie!  What a great idea to include the tape measure!

Saturnia Pyri,  Giant Peacock Moth or Grand Paon de Nuit  is the largest moth in Europe  and ours had a  wingspan of 5 1/2". We were lucky to see two of these one night at about midnight  flying round the light in the barn and at first thought they were a pair of bats then the next day this one was spread out on the ground  looking dead it was so still but from time to time it moved a little and by nightfall had flown away.
Neither male nor female moths feed at all during their brief lives, the males  only living for a few days - sometimes only a few hours and the female until she has laid her eggs.  Apparently the male moths are attracted by a scent given off by the female which they can detect  from  a kilometre away. The caterpillars are equally  fascinating  and there are  lots of pics on Google.  I would love to see one of them - they can be 4 1/2 " long and are bright yellowy green with blue blobs!!   I know... it sounds unlikely....

I've got some orchid photos, lizard orchids that are very prolific and also some of the much rarer  bee orchids  but they will have to wait until the next time.  The latest  diabolical Flickr update,  some quirk with iPhoto on my macbook and general ineptitude on my part are conspiring against me...

Once there was a fig tree....

This is the fig tree last year.


 If you look carefully you will see that it is almost touching the house wall and there is barely room for the little table on the other side. The lawn is 12 yards wide.
 It seemed that pruning it just encouraged it to grow more and more but we loved it - and especially its fruits -  while they were ripening



and when they were ripe
   

and the pretty cyclamen that grew underneath



We realised last Autumn that drastic action had to be taken so we took a few deep breaths....




and  now although there are lots of shoots  I can't help feeling we've made a big mistake.




We will see what happens over the Summer but I think we have to  be even more drastic.  I don't think this new shape is a good starting point.

Holiday

We've had a lovely summer holiday although dominated by home worries which thankfully have much lessened now.

But there was lots of this


there were balloons over us nearly every weekend

lots of these


lots of this



and this



and this

Wrong Impression?

I think my last post has given completely the wrong impression and shown nowhere near the extent of my problem.

You see, the first three or four days we were here it was cold, wet and windy - no good for fairweather gardeners. The next week Kate and her three young children stayed with us and spending time with them was the priority. And now...time has passed, the weeds have grown incredibly and it isn't just a few borders....

It's bigger than I led you to believe - the whole area is three acres plus.

Here are a few pictures.


We mow a large part of this wooded area with a ride on mower so that's not too bad although time consuming but there are still lots of wild thickety parts like this




Then there's this section at the top that I thought would make a nice wild flower patch so for three years running I've scattered packets of seeds, and also planted little pots of established wild flowers with no success.


And only grass and a few big daisies grow here but we can't dig it yet because it's where the orchids will appear in a few weeks.

Then the lawn in my last post...I agree, the celandines are lovely and under the fig tree it doesn't matter because that will be deep shade in two months time. But beneath the celandines are (were) hundreds of tiny cyclamen and I *really* love (loved)these but will they live alongside the celandines? I don't know but I can't weed kill them. And there's this other large patch of cyclamen where massive cow parsley/wild carrot plants are competing.


I've tried several years running to hand weed the unwanted plants but they regrow with renewed vigour and worse, are spreading everywhere. The next time we come they are likely to be waist high.

This is where the Canterbury Bells grow.


And the nettle patch. These tiny nettles that I think you can just see will be enormous in a few weeks time and covered in black caterpillars that feed and feed and then turn into beautiful Peacock butterflies.


And of course the butterflies love the buddleias that survive despite the weeds.


We're going home in a few days so I don't have much time left and the roofer and plasterer are both coming later today so I need to brush up on a few words before I can continue in the garden.

Lazy Days

Or perhaps I should say idle. There is so much to do but I'm having serious motivational issues. Even the lawn is barely recognisable as such.



It seems to be a losing battle, there are weeds everywhere and I sometimes feel I am losing heart.



And however hard we work now I know next time we come, in five weeks or so, it will be three times as bad, it's hard not to feel we're just wasting our time.



Nothing I've actually planted has ever grown here, it seems that the "garden" definitely has a mind of its own.

If you've got one of these....

If you've got one of these....






then you need one of these....



and then this doesn't matter



Finished Socks



In order from left to right the socks are Fyberspates self striping - Summer Meadow, The Knittery's Merino Slim sock bought from Socktopus at I-knit day 2008, Dye Studio's Darling Sock yarn, Socks that Rock Medium weight and last Vancalcar Acres Jennifers Bamboo Ewe sock yarn, colour Sandstone from Socktopus, pattern "Bavarian Cable Socks" from Wendy Johnson's book Socks from the Toe up with a few more pictures


I think I'm beginning to see a trend towards plain yarns with superimposed stitch patterns, not exclusively but I think it's starting.

Short French "holiday"

Although we've only been home for a week France is fast becoming a distant memory. The ten days away that included only three days on our own haven't actually done a lot to recharge my batteries and the amount of knitting has been inevitably small.

In fact I didn't have time to do much at all except eat, drink and attempt to tidy up the "garden". Oh yes...the garden....

On the plus side the roses this year were fantastic.



and these had the most amazing perfume

despite being some that have done their own thing for so long and now are completely wild, their flowers are only remarkable because there are so many but the smell reminds me of the rose petal scent we all used to make as children - and of the Iranian rose petal jam my friend brings me.

Actually the flowers are very similar to these of our newest rose - Rambling Rector I think it's called -
and I think this is going to be as vigorous a climber as it is reputed to be. It was only planted last year and has already made a very good start.

It's very close to a pair of lime trees and it's always this time - end of May/beginning of June when the flowers start to open and their heady scent completely fills the air - as does the buzzing of the bees.



But on the negative side we've been battling against these little pests.

I'm sure those of you living in the south of the UK will recognise the rosemary leaf beetle. I hadn't ever seen this until this year - and it still hasn't appeared in our English garden.

And the lily beetle


Both of these beetles are very destructive and can destroy completely the plant they're feeding on - or rather the plant that their larvae have fed on - and sadly neither seem to have any natural predator so the best we can do is to pick them off one by one and destroy them. The lily beetles are crafty little things - apparently when one is threatened it emits a high pitched sound that warns all the other beetles to hide and they all drop off the plant into the undergrowth out of sight.

But on a brighter side, these orchids grow wild in the dappled shade at the edge of our wood.

and although they are late this year and when we left there were nowhere near as many as usual, at least they were there.

Back

Although "back" seems a strange thing to say when I don't think I ever said I was away. But we went to France on 24th or so of March and came back last Thursday, so we had three weeks away from the stresses of home....But I really missed dd3 and her three little ones, after all they've been living with us now for seven months - long enough for the two youngest children to not remember living anywhere else and anyway the stresses of home seem to follow. Rachel's maternity leave finished this week and worryingly her childcare provisions fell through at the last minute so guess who's looking after the two youngest three days a week? Yes. Those are the days when the eldest goes to nursery so I'll "just" have the younger ones to look after.

My first day will be tomorrow and I'm finding the prospect quite daunting. How on earth did I used to manage it when mine were all little?? Hmm, yes, well I was thirtyish years younger. And I'm not at all sure how I'll cope in an emergency now.

Back to the holiday....I took lots of sock wool with me - and although one or two are started I brought most of it back unknitted.

I did manage to complete "Skinny Empire" from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits. This is such a great book - I can't wait to knit some more from it. You'll see I've made mine with longer sleeves - and they would have been even longer but that's where the wool ended. I used 8 balls of RYC luxury Cotton DK, shade 254 on knit pick options 3.75mmand KSH for the neck. I did mainly size 2 but any changes - well I can't decipher my pattern notes.






DD2, her husband and three children came to spend the middle week with us - this is the youngest



Isn't he a cutie? I think he must be 6 months old now.


My most exciting knit of the holiday was a test knit for Laura. In the Summer Shade. I couldn't block it until I came home so pics and the details soon.

In that excitement I nearly forgot the one little bit of holiday nature.

What do you think this is?



I haven't shown you this before have I?

Here's another



Now you know don't you?



They are processional caterpillars and travel in this convoy to look like a snake and so not be preyed on by birds. Unfortunately the track they are on is used by lots of tractors and they don't last long. I don't think the French ones are as unpleasant as these Spanish ones here



but they live in cocoons at the top of pine trees and we always see them on the track at Easter time.
From further "research" it seems they are just as bad.

Winter

I'm firmly into making mitts - the Marvelous Mitts from Karendipity that were all the rage last year and in fact are actually fingerless gloves. I loved them then and I love them even more now. They are deceptively easy and very very effective.

And true mittens - the Winter Cottage Mittens that I bought as a kit from Poshyarn just before Christmas. These are a nice easy knit and I'm already planning to make them in other colour schemes.

Photos later because I'm knitting lots at once and nothing is anywhere near finished and anyway the reason for all this mitten knitting is that Winter has arrived.




It's lovely to see the transformation in the garden and the weird shapes the snow gives the plants.



Over the last fifteen years or so we've spent a lot of time in early January here in France and we have never had such wintery weather. It's been below freezing nights and most of the days since we arrived and on two nights the temperature plummeted to -10 degrees and didn't rise above -3 degrees all day. And we've had snow such as I've not seen at home for a very long time.

It came on Monday and is showing no signs of thawing yet!



We would have made a snowman so we could send a photo to the g-children but it's funny snow and just wouldn't stick together. I don't know whether it was too cold? Or perhaps the air was too dry? I don't know but we couldn't do it. Nor even make a snowball, it just fell apart.

So it's just pefect weather for knitting mittens.

I've got Bird in Hand by Kate Gilbert and Anemoi Mittens from Eunny Jang calling to be made next - well next- but- one because I've promised Rachel a pair of Marvellous Mitts and I'd like to have them made for when we get home.

New Food?

Well, it was new to me! And I've reached the age where I don't expect any food surprises!



When we went out to lunch last week to Cafe de laPaix we were sure that it would be good and when Ludovic said that the boeuf bourguignon was excellent I didn't doubt him. We've had it before...who hasn't? ...but I know that beef, however good, can often be - well- stringy however long and carefully it's cooked. In fact it depends on starting with the right ingredients.

OK. I knew it would be tasty but I was prepared for it possibly to be stringy. How wrong I was!! It was quite superb. So much so that I *had* to ask what cut of beef he'd used. It had that same gelatinousness and melt-in-the-mouth-ness of good shin. But more so. And even shin can sometimes be on the stringy side.

I didn't expect it to be a cut of beef that I'd never seen in a butcher's shop nor to have never seen a recipe using it in any of my many cookery books (you'll know I've got a lot when I say cookery was my hobby before knitting!). So what was it??

Cheek. Beef cheek.

It doesn't sound great in English but "joue de boeuf" sounds much better. And I was very pleased to find the local butcher sells it - not even to order. He says he always has it. But it wasn't on the counter, I had to ask for it. Michael is always happy to shop for meat.



So that was our supper last night and it was just as tender as Ludovic's , tasty and most definitely not stringy and I shall be searching for it at my local home butcher. So fingers crossed because that is the meat for beef casserole and stews for me!


I've found that I can get it easily at home.

And look what a lovely homecoming we had!



And I'm really busy test-knitting Hazel's rectangular version of her gorgeous Estonian Lace Christening Shawl.