41) A flavour of Autumn

Although it is lovely to have the heat and bright sunshine of summer, the Autumn is a wonderful time here.  The colours become sombre whilst also rich and intense.  And the light is magical, as are the stars.

A family of five red legged partridge came to visit us , all dressed in Autumnal colours

And we are still gathering walnuts.................

This little cricket evidently decided Autumn is upon and decided it was time to move inside.

40) Post script to the Frog

The tree frog may be hidden in here

We have discovered that the tree frog is living in our virginia creeper.  The reason we know this is because we heard a quite loud quacking, duck-like sound coming from the creeper.  We searched but there was no duck. There was in fact no room for a duck in the creeper, so it had to be something else making that noise.  After a quick search of the internet I found a posting by Lang Elliott which said that the call of a male tree frog is "....a harsh quank, quank, quank [sic] repeated about once a second."  I do not know who Lang Elliott is or what his credentials are, but it all seemed to ring true (and I suppose frogs go quank rather than quack to distinguish themselves from ducks, and thus avoid potentially embarrassing confusion).

The perfect camouflage for a tree frog

The only trouble is, virginia creeper is the perfect camouflage for tree frogs.  The green of their leaves is the exact same green as the frog, and the red tips to the leaves and the red stalks exactly match the tree frogs red toes.

Virginia creeper coloured tree frog

As a consequence, it is very difficult to spot the tree frog, and it's hard to tell where the "quanking" is coming from.  We haven't wanted to get too close in our search in case it activates its paralysing mucus defense mechanism (even though we mean it no harm).

Or the tree frog could be hidden in here

We have carefully scanned this photo and the one at the top for the elusive little quanker, but we cannot find it.  I thought it could, though, make a good alternative to those spot the ball competitions you find in provincial newspapers (it also might make rather a good jigsaw puzzle - all virginia creeper leaves with just one little tree frog hidden among them).  So, "Dear Reader" we will offer a prize of a bottle of our local wine to the first person who successfully locates the frog (Terms and conditions apply - see below).

The prize (minus the glasses)

Terms and conditions:
1. You must have good enough eyesight to read these terms and conditions.
2. Only one prize will be awarded and this will go to the first person to notify the blog by email of the location of the frog in the picture at either the top or the bottom of this posting (NB the proprietor does not know which photo the frog is in if, indeed, it is in either).
3. The prize will be one bottle (75cl) of Domaine de la Garde Rose, which will be available to collect from La Borde Neuve (NB the prize does not include the two glasses shown in the photograph as these are now both broken - see post no. 38)
4. Any members of the proprietor's family or friends may enter this competition as they are the only people likely to be reading this blog.
5. The proprietor will not be held responsible for any untoward acts carried out under the undue influence of alcohol resulting from the consumption of the prize, including (but not restricted to) loss of virginity, the loss of the prize winner's driving licence, loss of job due to insulting or degrading behaviour, loss of partner resulting from inappropriate acts with another person, loss of liberty following illegal activities carried out under the influence of alcohol, loss of life due to an accident or an allergic reaction to  rose wine from the Coteaux de Quercy, or un-planned preganancy. 

39) Strange house guests

This strange little fellow arrived on the door step the other day (uninvited).  It was (apparently) a tree frog.  It looked rather hot so I (rather helpfully/kindly) splashed some cold water on it.  The (tree) frog didn't seem to like this much (presumably because it is not necessarily that wet in trees - as opposed to ponds) and promptly spat some sort of (potentially poisonous) fluid at me, which luckily missed.  It then hopped into the kitchen and jumped several feet onto the wall, where it stuck with gravity-defying sureness.  I had read about bright green tree frogs in the Amazon jungle, whose poison the natives use to lace the tips of their arrows so that their victims become instantly paralysed and then die.  I even seem to remember it was a particularly agonising sort of death, although this may be just my memory or imagination playing tricks.

Whatever the truth concerning Amazonian tree frogs, I was not going to pick up this potentially lethal toxic frog in my hands, particularly after its attempt to paralyse me with a squirt of its noxious mucus.  In the end it seemed to decide, of its own accord, that our kitchen was not a forest and, indeed, it did not even have any trees in it ( I suspect it may have mistaken our 1970's fake oak look-alike kitchen units for a forest of local Quercus)  In great leaps and bounds it went back onto the balcony and then disappeared over the side.  Clearly frogs have to be very wary in France, with the local's penchant for frying their legs as a rather tasty entree.  No doubt they also have to watch out for the many different birds of prey that circle on thermals, searching out juicy morsels in the landscape below.  Not surprising then that their first reaction (particularly when being drenched with cold water) is rather on the aggressive side.  But once he (or she) realised I meant no harm but was merely ignorant, we became the best of friends - it even smiled.

38) Wine tasting

Rose from our local vineyard, Domaine de la Garde

At long last we have got round to the serious business of wine tasting.  The Cahors appellation takes itself quite seriously, but the wine does vary tremendously.  There are several hundred vineyards and so far we have been to two (we are looking forward to trying out the others).  In addition to the official Cahors wines (mostly along the course of the River Lot), there is an area of wines known as Coteaux de Quercy (we are just in this region).

The other week we went to an evening wine festival in Castelnau Montratier.  It was great.  We bought our two wine glasses (above - both of which we've now broken, I broke one, G broke the other) and off we went.  There were lots of producers from both Cahors and the Coteaux de Quercy.  We tried quite a few and bought several bottles.  We also had a rather good supper, sitting in the rain at trestle tables with all the French locals.  We had aligot for the first time and it was delicious.  It is made from a blend of creme fraiche, puréed potatoes, cheese (tomme d'Auvergne) and garlic.  It is traditionally served with Toulouse sausages (which is how we had it, together with a sort of ratatouille).

A no nonsense box of rose from Clos Siguier firmly settled in our fridge

Since then we have visited our nearest vineyard, la Domaine de La Garde (which happens to be rather good), and le Clos Siguier, which is also nearby.  We had come across this one in Montcuq market.  They do a rather good dark rose at 3.80 euros a bottle.  However, we have discovered that they do exactly the same thing in a five litre box.  As can be seen from the photograph above, they do not spend anything unnecessary on fancy packaging - but this does allow them to sell it at the equivalent of about £1.32 a bottle.  You just stick it in the fridge and it will keep for about three or four weeks (if you don't drink it before).  Boxes are better than buying "en vrac" (which is when you just take along your own container for them to fill up).  Boxes have a collapsible plastic bag inside, which allows the wine to come out without any air getting in.  We have bought en vrac, but you really have to drink the wine within three or four days, which can be a bit of a challenge if there are just two of you to get through five litres (or maybe not).

37) Home produce

All of a sudden the walnuts have started to look like proper walnuts.  Despite having only one tree, it seems to produce vast quantities of noix.

They do take quite a lot of cracking, but they are well worth the (quite considerable) effort.

The figs on our (fig) tree have also suddenly started started to swell up and ripen, having been rather worryingly small until recently.  They are really delicious, but I fear they are going to all be ready at once (we are thus investigating methods of drying them).

We have also begun to plant a herb garden.  It may not look much but it was an enormous effort to dig up all the weeds, not to mention a labyrinth of knotted roots formed over years and years of neglect.

Unfortunately, we discovered another hornet's nest.  This time in an old half dead tree, just near the little house again.  These weren't Asiatic hornets, though, just ordinary "European" hornets.  Quite big (and loud) enough to put the fear of God into me.  Straight on the phone to Monsieur Delsol, and he was round the same afternoon.  The mole also seems to be back (together with a friend), and I suspect the explosive charge must have just missed him.  Our amiable assasin is now my best friend, and he has offered to blow up BOTH moles free of charge.

He has already dispatched the poor unfortunate hornets.  I never thought I would feel sorry for a hornet, but he bought me the queen to show me how much bigger than the others it was.  It really did look so very sad.  Once so proud and powerful, ruling a complex community of potential warriors, and now covered in a noxious white powder, and dead.  Very dead.  Probably for the best.  It was right by G's bed of saffron crocuses....... too terrible to contemplate.  But sad none the less.

36) Some random updates

Not everything in the garden is a creepy crawly, we have some rather sweet and cuddly inhabitants as well.

And there seem to be lots and lots of Bambi's cousins all around us (not so great once we start growing vegetables).

After a prolonged hot spell, though, it often seems to end in a spectacular storm - and once again everything is fresh and green.

We have been cooking on a barbecue (exclusively) now for several weeks.  We like barbecues but they do take quite a time (this can be helpful when you have no TV).  We were given this camping stove by some friends and decided to make pasta for a change - difficult, if not impossible on a barbecue.

It actually turned out to be quite difficult on the camping gaz stove.  It may have been the size of the saucepan in relation to the stove.  It MAY have been that it was not on quite straight (those this was hotly disputed by the person concerned).  Most probably the bubbling of the water set up a slight movement which gently, gradually, ever so slowly jiggled the whole bloody lot off all over the wall.  Subsequent experiments seemed to support this theory.

Given the snails pace we are making progress with the artisans, we felt it was time to invest in a hob (or we would be doing barbecues well into the winter).  We found this two ring electric hob for 32 euros and we wondered why you had to pay as much as 1,000 for a four ring electric induction hob.  I then made what I think is a rather handsome kitchen unit out of a couple of old doors we found in the attic.  We then started to wonder if you really need to spend thousands of euros on kitchen units when old doors can work very passably well.

Having, made the unit we decided to invest in an oven (which we will need eventually in any case).  Oven shops in France have a strange way of doing business.

We had looked things up on line and found that the list price of what we wanted was almost double what the equivalent would have been in England.  However, you could get them for a lot less direct from the internet.  We did not really want to do this with an oven as it would be a hassle if anything went wrong (it's bad enough arguing in English with someone at a call centre in India, let alone trying to do it in French).  Instead we went armed with a run off of the cheapest deal we had found on the internet.  The first shop initially quoted the recommended (outrageous) price.  We showed them the ad' from the internet and, after realising they might miss a sale, they came down 20 per cent.  This still made it quite expensive so we went to another shop.  The same thing again.  First the ridiculous recommended price, then we brought out our trump card of the internet ad'.  Cool as a cucumber, the girl got out her calculator, fiddled about on it and then announced they could reduce the price by 38 per cent.  We agreed the sale and are now able to cook almost anything.

They are over in our garden now, but we had the most delicious plums for a couple of weeks and they are still in the markets - and very cheap
.

In the garden there is just one walnut tree, but it is quite a big one, and it is covered in walnuts.  The nice thing about walnuts is you don't have to risk life and limb climbing the tree.  They fall off naturally and don't get bruised or attacked by wasps.  We do, however, have a little red squirrel who seems to have cottoned onto this.  Each morning (usually before we are up) he comes along to see what has fallen over night, and off he goes with them to pile them up in a store for winter.  We need to get up earlier, risk climbing the tree, or find his/her store.

Melons we don't have in the garden, but they are all around us in the fields.  This particular area is apparently quite famous for melons, and I have certainly never eaten melons like these in England.  We were told by our friendly French estate agent that the best melons to be had in Cahors market come from a stall with a man who has certain similarities to a melon.  It didn't take long to find it, and he is (as always) absolutely right.

Although French bread can be wonderful, often it doesn't last.  We have found this stall at Cahors market (which rather helpfully happens on a Wednesday and a Saturday) where you can buy a Querbi.  Not only is it delicious, but it will be fine for the next day.  They also have all sorts of other tempting breads made with olives, onions. cheese. tomatoes and practically anything you can think of.

The other home produce we have is an abundance of quinces - all from just the one lone tree above, growing on not much more than bare chalk.

When the fruits first started to appear, we weren't sure what they were.  They are furry, shaped a bit like a lemon (but bigger), and very hard.  Having discovered what they were we needed to know what to do with them.  We knew we liked that stuff you sometimes get served alongside cheese (in discerning sorts of places), but we have never had much of it as it's so fiendishly expensive.

G's worked out a recipe and now we are living like Kings (ummm....).  It's called Membrillo (after some place in Spain), and I must say G's version is the best |I have ever tasted.  It has a kind of mysterious perfume to it and is like a little piece of heaven.

Talking of mysteries, something strange has been happening in our Salon.  On the walls there are the marks where pictures obviously hung for many years.  We have noticed of late that faded images have started to appear, and our room is becoming peopled by figures from the distant past, perhaps associated with the house in days gone by.  We think they are friendly.

35) Praying Mantis

I always thought it was a "Preying" Mantis, which sounds very sinister.  Actually, it turns out it is a "Praying" Mantis, which alters one's attitude to the little creature entirely.  A sort of monk like bug who may, indeed, be saying prayers for the benefit of the household.

It does, though, seem an extraordinary design and one wonders what kind of evolutionary advantage has been gained through the bizarre arrangement of its permanently genuflecting front legs.