First Frost

 

Admiring the sunrise

 

Drought!

Normally the sheep refuse point blank to eat hay, even in winter they prefer to scrape around for what little grass they can get. The last week they have been begging for hay and scoffing it down enthusiastically, all the grass has frazzled to a crisp. Really hoping this is a one off, else we are going to have to cut down numbers.

Rainbow!

A break in the stupidly hot weather with a little bit of rain to clear the air

Sooo hot!! Canicule!

We are having a crazy crazy heatwave. It’s JUNE and getting on for 40°C, even here in the mountains. It has been days and it is really unpleasant! We still feel a bit weedy from the corona…

Beer, water and salty snacks - how to survive a heatwave (plus fans and not doing too much in the heat of the day)

Funny weather for July!

 

It’s been quite variable through June too. Some sunny hot days and some rainy cooler days. Lovely having dinner outside whatever the weather! We don’t mind the cooler weather in general!

Snowy Animals

 It snowed a few days ago. Fortunately we had just got hay for the cows and horses so everyone has a full belly or warming hay. The sheep even accepted a little, generally if they have any grass at all they reject hay...

It’s melting off a lot now, but much colder than it has been here for years. The last two winters were very warm and even the few before that, though we had snow it didn’t freeze so hard.

The ducks don’t seem to mind the cold and go swimming as soon as I break the ice on their water. Nutters!

The chickens aren’t too bothered either. Apparently if it gets really really cold they can get frost bite on their combs, but not seen any sign of that

Buttercup always used to feel the cold, but the remaining ones don’t so much

The horses have their run in and plenty of hay as well as wooly winter coats

The sheep have plenty of wool, they only accept hay when they can’t get at the grass at all.

First Frost and getting hay

 It is always hard to remember from one year to the next the different time if things like the first frost. It seems a little later than normal and the trees are getting quite bare.

We had one day of rain recently, but otherwise lovely and sunny. We made our second visit to the hay man to get 60 small bales. We are likely to need to go 3 or 4 times more. Horses eat a lot and cows get a bit of it too. It always a nice feeling to have a good supply in!

More wind!

 Storm Barbara blew though with a LOT of wind but no rain. We didn’t get much sleep with it whistling and banging round the house.

Yet more trees have been splatted, a couple on the drive, one by the stables and one on the road at the bottom. Fortunately (for us anyway) the neighbors cleared the one off the road so cars can pass, but we will have to go tomorrow and move what we can of the rest of it. The biggish root ball we might need to rely on either the mairie or the kind services of the neighbors again.

These on the drive are not very wide but quite tall. You can kind if make out that Doug is cutting the tops here. 

Some friends arrived to pick up some strawberry plants and kindly helped move branches while Doug cut them so we could get out to our French lesson a bit later!

Fortunately these missed the stables. Doug had taken off various branches in the year, so that helped.

Sunny spell

 We had a period of rain, now we are having a nice autumnal sunny spell.

We spend some time mowing, strimming, weeding and generally preparing for winter, but also some time enjoying the nice weather.

Beautiful light soon after sunrise (which is not too early at this time of year)

Fantastic leaf colour

I love the shape of this tree, it is on one of our favorite walks, round the virgin...

Little bit of snow on the hills still

Sunrise

Tired Poppy after a walk

Snow! Lots of snow

Uurgh! We went to La Mongie for a night, taking advantage of it being empty for more than a couple of days the first time since the start of the summer (this week’s guests cancelled, they were Spanish, maybe worried about border closures, not sure). We carefully planned the trip to be ahead of the coming storm.

But look what we woke up to! We were in the small car, no winter tires, no chains!

There are still farm animals up there (you may just be able to make out some Alpaca in the photo - they are better equipped for it than the cows!)

We decided we had to get home because we needed to check on the animals after the storm and Poppy had a vets appointment (sore leg). We managed to drive on the snow a little and then had to dig clear tracks as far as the ploughed road. After that thankfully it was fine. I had to dash back at one point to rescue the plant that Doug remembered - it was going to die if left behind!

All the animals had survived and we had a nice warming pizza for dinner. Bit too much excitement in the day though. This year is full of the unexpected!

The vet says Poppy has hurt her elbow and needs to rest for 10 days. It’s going to be tricky to persuade her to!  

Early for brambles?

Weird weather this year. Everything seemed to flower early. I feel the start of July is early for brambles?

There aren’t loads ripe yet, but still...

First Frost

First frost today (we also had a little bit of snow in the garden yesterday morning, but it melted off quickly). Fortunately Aidan and I pruned and brought the geraniums in last week. Poppy says the best thing is to hibernate until Spring (or the next opportunity to run in the snow).

little bit of frost

time to snooze

little bit of snow

Snow on the mountains

You can’t see it very clearly, but there was snow on the mountains this morning. Pretty much gone by evening, but seems early for the first snow!
It has changed very quickly from heatwave summer to feeling autumnal.

Autumn must be here!

It feels hot and summery, but the mushrooms have started and brambles are out

Field mushrooms from La Mongie

Cow family watched us pick mushrooms

Some chanterelle from our land. Most of these are definitely chanterelle and we ate them. Doug found a few that were a slightly different colour and they just looked a bit different, so we didn't eat them just in case they were false chanterelle - not deadly but didn't fancy the possible hallucinations.

Cooked with mutton chops and beans from the garden (and medlar jelly)

This is a great year for brambles, they are much bigger and more juicy than normal

Wind storm

Really suddenly from nowhere a giant gust of wind struck...
The weather before hand was pretty nice. It stayed windy but not so bad for the rest of the day.

This tent was in the potager - it has been there for years just fine

The hay feeder for the sheep is really heavy but blew over

This tent was keeping building materials dry at the end of the house. We had to take the canvas off as it was attempting to bowl back in to the house. Bits of this are going to get repurposed in to part of a fruit cage.

This apple tree has been dead for some time but we left it be, partly as birds nest in the ivy and partly because we were worried if we cut it down it would land on one of the trees we planted a few years ago.

It did land on this poor little plum tree. It has had a bit of a hard life as the bracken and weeds mean it has taken a long time to get established. It was finally looking quite healthy and like it might actually manage to have some plums. Not this year I guess!

The bedroom door was also blown in. Fortunately Doug was in there to close it before further damage. The bedroom was full of leaves and seeds though.

Crazy storms and lots of snow

Be careful what you wish for! We complained when there was a drought all though December and most of January, now there is a flood and waaay too much snow and wind with so much snow in the mountains the road has been closed again...
One of our many trees on the drive fell over in one of the storms. Fortunately it didn't take too much of the drive with it and it is still passable. Bit of a big job needed to fix it up though. It has rather mangled one of the fences as well but it also is working for now.

The white lines is snow being driven at 1 million miles per hour in the howling wind

Better view in the morning

Doug has started filling it in, but will take some time.

Leaves and strimming

An awful lot of leaves seem to fall on the drive and other places we don't want them. Many thanks to David for the useful leafblower that helps keep them under control.

At the same time I have been doing that, Doug has been strimming everything in site. Autumn is a good time to do it as the weather is nice but not as hot as in summer. It is nice when things are dying back rather than growing madly as ones work lasts longer.

There was a taste of winter also in the midst of all this autumn work

Snow and cold cold cold

It snowed in the morning and settled. Though fortunately it melted by evening.

Overnight it got down to -4 degrees on the roof. Brrrrrr.

Early snow in the ski resort

Not much and didn't last long, but still a sign that winter is coming