C'est l'heure de l'apéro

Last Saturday we attended the Auto Bourse at Chatellerault. As usual we had lunch with La Traction Universelle. Everyone brings something to share (my hard boiled eggs topped with cream cheese and bacon went down a treat) and before the meal there is an aperitif, with a toast.

The words to the song are as follows:

Santé ! Santé! Santé!  (Your health! Your health! Your health!)
Là c'est trop haut (Here is too high)
Là c'est trop bas (Here is too low)
Là c'est trop loin (Here is too far)
Là ça va bien (Here is just right)
Santé ! (Your health!)

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Orchard News: I spent yesterday afternoon digging in the potager. It's hard going, with the soil only just workable. I spent quite a lot of time scraping accumulated wet clay off my gloves, and trying to convince weeds to go into the weed bucket and not just stick to my gloves was getting on my nerves. However, there was reassuring bee activity, with an Early Nesting Bumble Bee Bombus pratorum working in the almond and a queen White-tailed Bumble Bee B. lucorum checking out Field Cricket Gryllus campestris holes as she searched for the perfect site for her nest. She was either a bit fat for the cricket holes, or there was an outraged occupant just out of sight of the entrance, as she had several goes at entering the hole, but never entirely disappeared down one. Quite a few of the Field Crickets were  sitting in the sun at the entrance to their burrows, but it's still too cold for them to be chirping. I saw my first bee fly of the season, the Dark Edged Bee Fly Bombylius major, always the first of its kind to appear. There were several solitary bee species present too -- male Mining Bees Andrena sp, the tiny Halictid bees, a male Hairy Footed Flower Bee Anthophora plumipes and a female European Orchard Bee Osmia cornuta. Not many butterflies -- just a couple of Brimstones Gonepteryx rhamni and a few Peacocks Inachis io -- and a new species for me, a Large Tortoiseshell Nymphalis polychloros! They really are quite large. At first I thought it was a Silver-washed Fritillary Argynnis paphia, but it is totally the wrong time of year. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo of it.