Now that is what I call very very good news!
In the depth of lockdown, in the winter, we saw a wolf walk down our silent, deserted village street. We live near a forest so it wasn’t too many glasses of wine. It was proof.
: report on species recovery shows how effective legal protection, habitat restoration and reintroductions can be
— Read on www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/27/wolves-and-brown-bears-among-wildlife-make-exciting-comeback-in-europe-aoe
The flowers are from the green dump in the village . Every autumn my neighbours throw away their geraniums and cut down flowering plants, while the sun is still shining and the first frosts are hopefully weeks away.
I don’t understand this .
Why be in a hurry for the winter and bare soil?
I collected the lovely pink geranium flowers and marigolds to brighten my table and decided to spin out the autumn evening with some local wine. It is grape harvest time right now in warmer valleys along the Rhine. I am drinking a table wine of no great repute, but it has the floral taste that I am in no hurry to discard in the rush to clear the soil and let the long winter in!
It is warm and still. I forgot to water my two tomato plants and the half row of beans that have shouldered above the soil.
My neighbour sneezes: the sweet chestnut is in flower. Somewhere a food processor churns, or is it a washing machine or a heat pump? Someone calls in a cat who wants to hunt the light night away. The cars have gone, a lone motorbike rips through the silence . Curfew is an hour away and the air is sweet.
Very small white moths appear. The hobby sheep bleats in the bottom of his lucky garden .
A mosquito whines along the gathering darkness, shutters are descending and the last blackbird fusses out of the cherry tree, a half eaten fruit in his yellow beak.
I think there is still a glass of wine undrunk indoors, so I leave the watering can by the butt, bow to the brightening moon and go quietly inside.
This grape vine tendril has grown right across my front door step. This is vegetable testimony to how few people have stepped across the threshold and how rarely I have been out this way.
When the vine started budding it was early spring and we sat drinking tea in the sunshine, enjoying the lockdown and the luxury of working from home and watching the garden come to life for once. The bat came back to roost in the eves as summer started and the grapes began to set.
Now it is autumn : Being home is still a pleasure and the garden is still amazing but venturing beyond the garden still seems foolish . Covid has not gone away and so the grapes have fattened unadmired by guests and visitors.
I wish there was a reason to trim the wayward frond , I wish the vine shoot was in anybody’s way: but it isnt, so it curls indolently over the door mat.
I wonder if the door will be completely overgrown by the time a vaccine liberates us all back into normal life, or if I will have simply learnt to make my own wine and there will be no reason to ever go out again!
In the forest yesterday we were so close to a deer that I could see the thick, soft fur of her ears; the dark, black iris of her eye and the wet, delicate saucer of her nose, upturned to smell us, to register us and to walk delicately away, unconcerned into the yellowing brush.
A friend sent me a photo of a kingfisher, jewel bright and improbable from the bottom of her garden and suddenly everything is possible, the good and the bad at the same instant, all is lovely and innocent and there is always hope.
This post is for those who would like to trap moths and discover what is flying at night when they are safe in bed. If moths give you the heebie-jeebies then skip this post!
I am sure there are other ways of doing it, with other equipment, but I am just sharing my own experience for those who are curious.
I have been trapping for about 12 years on a regular basis. I had been out with other naturalists many years ago in Wales, but it wasn’t until my husband bought me a trap for a present that I started in earnest.
First thing you need is a moth trap.
https://www.watdon.co.uk/ Watkins and Doncaster provided Charles Darwin with his equipment. They send across the world and they know what they are doing. I recommend their basic plastic bucket trap to start with and two bulbs (in case you smash one!).
All a trap is, is a UV light bulb which attracts the moths, above a plastic funnel. The moths then fall down into the bucket below, where they perch on cardboard egg boxes in safety for the night.
The next morning you switch off the light, open the trap gently and carefully remove each egg box one by one. You then photograph the moths (in case they fly off!) and then try to identify them using a good guide book.
I use British Moths by Chris Manley published by Bloomsbury. I have not found a similar single volume guide for France. I am certain there are excellent guides for where you live. There are also some excellent free on line identification sites. I use https://ukmoths.org.uk/systematic-list/ and also http://montgomeryshiremoths.org.uk/ which is very good for showing what is around at the right time of year.
You make a note of the weather and date and keep a list of what you find in English and or Latin. I tick off all the species that I have confidently identified in my guide book, so that I can find them again more easily. I later send my list and photos to my local naturalist organisation, https://faune-alsace.org so that my records can be compared with others, but you can skip this bit!
That is the bare bones and I am aware that it sounds unutterably dull and nerdy. The reason for doing it is because you get to see the most wonderful creatures with your own eyes, while drinking a cup of tea on the back step of your own home and that takes some beating as a wildlife experience. I have been lucky enough to live in Zambia and to spend months on safari, I have lived in Costa Rica for four years and in Brazil for two and spent as much time as possible in the forests, rivers and oceans, seeing wildlife that most people only see on David Attenborough tv programmes and yet I have never enjoyed wildlife in such comfort, or been so amazed on a daily basis as I have been when moth trapping in my own back garden!
Tips.
2. Start by identifying the ones with clear colours or markings. Leave the dull ones until much later. There is no shame in being confused. If the guide book says the moth that you have spent hours identifying is very rare in your area, then you probably have made a mistake.
3. Keep your moths cool. If it is warm and the trap has been left in the sun before you open it, then they will all fly away before you identify them. Move your trap into the coolest shade you can and let them settle before taking out the boxes. If you do this, you do not need to put them in collecting jars to look at. They will sit happily on the egg box while you admire them.
4. Take a photo on your phone or camera, so you can look back at them and identify them when you have time. This final phase often requires a glass of chilled wine and a sofa!
5. Let the moths fly off when they want to, or shake onto a bush. My cats used to try to eat them, but now treat them with feline disdain.
Enjoy!!
1. UV light and plastic funnel.
2. Box containing old egg boxes and electrical connection.
3. Lead to mains or to a big battery if you want to set up the trap in a remote place.
4. Identification guide.
I could be in Tenerife right now. I’m sure the sun is shining and the waves are glittering, but I’m not there, and I’m glad! The problem with other places is the getting to them. Hours of checking in and checking out, passports, cramped seats and jampacked flights full of people you hope never to see again are just the prelude. Then there is the location of the hotel. Then there is the finding of the place you so hopefully booked, so long ago, which looked such a great deal, but turns out to be hours away again from where you expected, adjacent to a motorway and next to a noisy bar and under some piledriving construction.
I know where my houses is, and I like it. The wind may be roaring, the sun intermittent, fretful and only momentarily glorious, but the bed is comfortable, the food and wine to my taste, and the cats on the sofa are relaxed and purring, purring.
The mad March wind blows the first spring flowers up and away into a noisy maelstrom . Rain splatters against the windows and into my face as I race into the garden to chase a flying garden chair, but I right now I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else and I don’t regret my cancelled holiday for a moment.
There goes the bin over again, but here comes the sun and I think that was a rainbow!
Champagne froth of white bubbles erupting out of the dark wall of a winter hedge: blackthorn should have a whiter, lighter more joyful name as its flowers explode into life . The first tree to break into proper, petalled glory, no timid unfurling of green leaves to prepare us: the little buds fatten in the first sunshine and then from twig to trunk it is all light, all flower, all beauty!
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Today was a very Alsace day.
Firstly we went to a very small and a very strange museum called the museum of love in the nearby village of Werentzhouse. In a tiny renovated Alsace house there is an astonishingly rich collection of vintage post cards in albums neatly stacked on wooden shelves. All are connected to love .
There is barely room to open the album, but each one holds a treasure trove of beautiful post cards. I looked at the album of cards made of real human hair, which was slightly creepy, but also very funny and touching.
I also looked at cards sent by French soldiers in the First World War to their sweethearts back home and was amazed by their variety and also the sauciness of some of them! The ladies explained that they were bought by soldiers in packs of 12 and they built up to tell a story of longing and love, for the shy or the inarticulate. Both world wars are still so close in the Alsace, I couldn’t help wondering how many young men got to send all twelve cards or to experience the effect on the loved one.
Returning home saddle sore from unaccustomed cycling, we decided to try a glass of Auxerrois wine recommended by our next door neighbour. I love all white Alsatian wines, especially the wonderfully perfumed Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris, but Auxerrois is a rarity, possibly because it is so hard to say. This wine was a delight. I am going to stop myself burbling wine snob nonsense, but it is light, and full of flavour and perfume. Not much of this variety is grown and often it is blended in to make Pinot Blanc and essential in Crèmant d’Alsace. I include a photo and a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI7La0dopZU&feature=sharek
to a you tube clip that gives some sense of the history, complexity and great wines of this little border region, where I have planted my unexpected garden .
This weekend we went looking for a flower. We were told about this flower a year ago, by an elderly botanist who showed us pictures of the great pink spikes of flowers as we ate dinner in a vineyard last summer.
In a mixture of broken German, French and English we discovered that this very rare and very strange plant grew close by and he tried to describe exactly where he had seen it.
The next day we also tried to find it. We tramped over the wonderful limestone cap of a hill that was covered in fly orchids, thorny roses and pinks. We found the most extravagant orchid I have ever seen in Europe outside of a green house. Large and smelling powerfully of goats, the tongues of its greenish flowers cork screwed down and seemed to lick the stems, giving it the obvious name of lizard orchid. As we dipped back into the neat rows of vines, a bird was startled up and the great parti coloured crest of a hoopoe was plain to see, as the heavy bird lifted up and gave its unmistakable hoopoe call : familiar in the Mediterranean, but so strange here in central Europe. This little patch of limestone protected for nature amidst the closely planted vines, is a truly remarkable place and is home to so many species that are rarely seen in the Alsace.
Eventually we wandered our way back to the car, stopping only to cool off in the wonderful cave of the local winery. Swallows nested high up in the eves of the old roof and swooped in to chatter noisily as we sampled some Alsace Pinot Gris and Muscat and chatted to the young woman who lamented Brexit sadly, as she had enjoyed working in England for a while, loved the people and could not see what Britain had to gain by cutting itself off from Europe ( and good wine!).
A year later, we tried again. We tramped the same hill in the sunshine; saw more hoopoes and clouds of Marbled White butterflies, Banded Graylings, Swallow Tails, Queen of Spain Fritillaries and man, many more. The lizard orchids had gone to seed and we were tired. There had been no seats on the walk so far and so when we found one with the most wonderful view of the village below, I remarked the only thing that would be even better would be if the elusive flowers were right next to the seat – and there they were – also all gone to seed!
If you look closely at the photo you too can see the robust glossy leaves of the plant and the tall brown stems of the seed heads. This is Dictamnus albus or Fraxinella. A strange plant that is unique in its own genus (rutaceae) and very unusual in the wild. It exudes a curious smelling perfumed oil, that clung to our hands after we had touched it. In fact it produces so much of this oil that it is also called the Burning Bush as in very hot weather it has been known to spontaneously combust and may well have been the burning bush of Moses in the Bible. The oil can be ignited by a lighter as you can see in this you tube clip of the garden variety.
We were too late to admire the great pink flowers we had seen in the photo. You don’t always get what you want, but in pursuit of this rarity we had seen and enjoyed so much, that I think you could definitely say we got what we needed!
Still hot and sunny here and not a drop of rain. I am sure my arms have elongated from all the watering cans I have carried!
Plants show you very quickly when they are suffering as the leaves droop and the flowers wilt and I cannot enjoy may garden until everything is perky again. However, perking up everything would take a river full of water and so I ration out my re-cycled bath water to those who seem in greatest need.
Anything growing in a hanging basket or a planter need the most water and I am conscious that growing in containers when you have access to land to plant in, is a wasteful way to garden . Terracotta plant pots are the very worst, as the water evaporates through the porous planter before the roots even use it and so I have given up using them, even though I love their natural weathered look . The bigger the pot you can use, the less watering is needed and so this year I have dispensed with my usual corner of waif and stray little pots of things that are waiting to be planted somewhere else and dry out in the blink of an eye.
While I understand the wilting plants: the forsythias, buddleia, mock orange, hydrangeas, phlox and roses; I am more intrigued by those plants who is the same amount of time have made deeper roots and show little or no signs of stress. Peonies stay green and glossy; the fennel in the veg patch towers over the shriveled vegetables; lavender thrives and the ecinacia flower freely in the dry heat.
I realize of course that what I am observing is the geographical origin of each of my garden plants. In my little garden I am growing plants that evolved perfectly to their natural habitats from all over the world. Those who thrive are originally from hotter drier places and those who suffer are from the cooler climes. As gardeners we want them to all grow promiscuously together and generally we manage this by careful planting each in sunny or shady spots to mimic their original homes; but in a heat wave; when all the garden is hot, this is not enough.
As an English woman transplanted to a very sunny spot of inland Europe I am also trying to recreate my ideal growing conditions and so this weekend I shall be up at dawn, enjoying the cool air, sleeping in the heat of the day and later in the evening watering myself with a long, cool bath and a tall glass of chilled Crémant d’Alsace.
Cheers!
Cathy's real country garden 
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