An important addition – and correction – to my last piece on the crocus….I have just found a short I wrote many, many years ago on the very subject: please read carefully… …August ends abruptly….the early rays of the sun later...
The autumn crocus is a very reliable flower, it always comes at about the same time, if not actually at official autumn according to a calendar. It comes when it decides it feels like autumn, or is just the time that it wants to come. We have one very reliable plant,...
At last consistently hot days have arrived at La Chaise! I can stop annoying everyone with my saying ‘as a retired farmer, I am allowed to say we need a little rain…’ The temperatures for the last few days have consistently passed 30 C… This...
Not this year. This year I managed to do something that – for me – was a major triumph. I managed to take a picture of a butterfly as it was resting on a tree. Sadly I do not feel qualified/competent to say which type of butterfly it was ….I am...
She had to go out shopping, stupid things like dishwasher tabs, tissues and loo-paper but on to better things like pink or white wine. The beer reserve was fine. But then…… Since she lived on her own in an isolated place – trees her only friends and...
A confabulation of cranes passed over La Chaise early this March, string after string of black V shapes, honking at each other. It seemed to me that they circled over our roof. Why I don’t know – perhaps they were trying to locate the direction north by looking...
This is what you might see… or perhaps this… maybe this… and who might this be? an older version of this, perhaps? or a variant of this? a decaying version of the same? But...
By skilful manipulation of the pool skimmer – handle some three metres long – I managed to save a small toad from drowning. That is two lives saved in less than two days. The other, a froglet, was in a skimmer with a dopey lizard which I hope revived....
Thea wildness is coming back to La Chaise! As the Clun Forest sheep gradually leave us, so the wild plants sneak back and probably small wild life also. There are small strange holes in the meadows. Butterflies abound but stay safely near the rampaging juniper...
The Great Tree Question in these highly climate wise, sensitive, media highlighted days resolves itself into: To Cut – or Not To Cut? At La Chaise we are surrounded by some 18 hectares of mixed woodland of which only five are cultivated, cleared and cossetted... 
