This is my friend Mikhail. He lives in Preuilly and does the best massages. He is kind, thoughtful, helpful, honest, discreet, generous, professional and a really skilled masseur. I highly recommend him. He charges 45 euros for an hour session (which is not reimbursed, as he is a private practionner). He works from one of the rooms in the salle de fete complex and takes cash, cheque or card. If you want his contact details, send me an email/message/SMS and I will forward them.
On Friday 21 February Simon and I walked 6 kilometres with les Galoches Yzeuroises group. It was overcast, 16°C, and took us two hours. Simon slipped in the mud near the end of the walk and ended up sprawled out full length on his belly. Face, T-shirt front, coat sleeves and trouser knees all covered in wet black stinky mud, plus a hole in the knee of his nice new tan corduroys. Luckily he just grazed one knee and all the mud washed out of his clothes quite easily. Thanks to Bruno and Geneviève as we stopped off at their place to clean him up a bit before driving home.
Bruno and Geneviève's garden, overlooking the Creuse River. They freely admit they took one look at the garden and the view and decided to buy this before even looking inside the house. They have had to put up with flooding over the bottom third of the garden four times this winter though.
The community orchard. The vine hut is not old but brand new, made in the traditional style when the orchard was planted. Vine huts, usually referred to in the Touraine as 'loges de vignes', are for agricultural labourers to store their tools, eat their lunch and shelter if caught out in bad weather.
The town water supply. Even in this form the structure is referred to as a 'chateau d'eau'. I would have thought that 'tumulus d'eau' was more appropriate in this case. Or 'casemate d'eau'. I always think it looks like some sort of Cold War military bunker.
Bruno informed me that this unremarkable farm is 'the Australia of France'. It's a sheep farm...The name 'la Pluche' is an old word meaning 'plush' or 'fleecy', so it would seem to have been associated with sheep for a long time.
This lake is an étang, one of a series of dams that drain into one another in a line, in the manner that is common in the Brenne, just a few kilometres away. This one is used for irrigation.
Some of the Gorse Ulex europaeus (Fr. ajonc d'Europe) is flowering, providing important early season nectar for bees. Gorse is remarkable in that individual plants flower at different times, so there is always some gorse out somewhere in the vicinity.
A small parcel of oak woodland.
A male Small Bloody-nosed Beetle Timarcha goettingensis (Fr. Petit crache-sang) lumbers across the track. He is easily identifiable as male because of his small size and his 'velcro' feet pads, used to grip on to the bigger female when mating.
Lesser Celandine Ficaria verna (Fr. Ficaire fausse-renoncule), always one of the earliest and most abundant spring wild flowers. As you can tell by the characteristic glossy yellow petals, this is a member of the buttercup family.
These vicious thorns on the roadside belong to a volunteer sapling Black Locust tree Robinia pseudoacacia (Fr. Acacia). They are an invasive nuisance in many places, but appreciated by beekeepers as they are an abundant source of nectar for honey bees and miel d'acacia is the most popular honey in France.
Shutters on a village house.
Hazel Corylus avellana (Fr. noisetier) is a plant you will easily encounter in our forests. hedges and woodland edges. Most people know the nuts, but may pay less attention to other parts of the tree. It flowers at the end of winter, often ignored.
Hazel catkins photographed last Friday near Yzeures sur Creuse.
These flowers are called catkins (Fr. chatons) and are in fact the male flowers. They are rather delicate and unspectacular, dangling in the winter winds. Grouped in twos and fours they are browny grey to start with but develop a yellow colour as the pollen develops and is liberated. The female flowers are nearly invisible, just some tiny red filaments.
Hazels favour woodland understoreys and clearings. You will often find them on the edges of forests or in the hedges around bocage (damp pasture). These flowers, with their nutritious load of pollen, are one of the most important food sources for early emerging solitary wild bees.
On Monday 17 February I walked with the Phoenix en Claise group around Marcé sur Esves. We did 5.5 kilometres, taking an hour and a half. The temperature was 14°C and the sun was shining.
There is still a lot of standing water in the fields. Finn the lurcher turns around to check why his Mum and I have stopped.
Lesser Periwinkle Vinca minor (Fr. Petite Pevenche), a common wild native plant here.
Our friends Anne and Denis nearly bought this house 20 years ago. If they had we likely would never have met them.
A flooded poplar plantation. The poplar trees, as usual, have lots of mistletoe.
The exterior of the charming little church in the village of Marcé sur Esves.
An interior view of the church.
The Angevin style side chapel, with 21st century window glass. See link below for further details.
It's early spring so the floral arrangements feature wattle blossom (Fr. mimosa).
Box pews.
Interior view.
Entering the medieval church through the 17th century porch.
Further Reading: My previous blog post on the church: https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-church-at-marce-sur-esves.html.
On Sunday Simon and I walked 5 kilometres from home, along the greenway (Fr. voie verte) in the direction of Bossay, then back along the road. It was cool but pleasant, and gloriously sunny. It took an hour and twenty minutes.
A view of Preuilly from the footbridge (Fr. passerelle) over the Claise. The building on the riverbank is the Guinguette du lavoir.
If the ghost sign is to be believed this was once a garden centre.
The Bourg Neuf, looking across the river to the Abbey. The house with the trees on the left has a rather nice studio apartment holiday rental.
Swampy land along the river.
Swampy land along the river.
European Alder Alnus glutinosa (Fr. Aulne glutineux).
The classic view of Preuilly sur Claise.
François Botté's family have published a book about his life and passions, which includes several of my photos of him in full flow on botany outings. He truly was a force of nature and it was a privilege to have known him.
Front cover of the book.
He trained originally as an agronomist, then did his PhD in botany, on the phylogeny of wild leeks, to try to work out where domestic leeks came from.
Back cover of the book.
I knew him in the last decade or so of his life, and loved to trail around after him as we surveyed the biodiversity of different sites.
My photo bottom left. He is explaining wild leeks.
My photo at the bottom.
My photo top right.
On Friday we joined a new walking group, les Galoches d'Yzeures, on a 6 kilometre walk along the river then a loop back into the village. It was sunny and pleasant, taking us an hour and three-quarters to complete. The sunshine was beautiful, the wind a bit chill, the temperature around 9°C. My friend Geneviève is the secretary of les Galoches and her husband Bruno led the walk.
Fancy vine supports at the Relais de la Mothe.
A 19th century roadside cross.
A farm feed preparation shed.
A farm shed.
I took this photo because it was Valentines Day and there was a metal heart stuck in a planter in this garden. The resident Australian shepherd decided to photo bomb.
Les Galoches cross the endless flat plain of the Creuse Valley...
Velpeau is the name of a district (Fr. quartier) in Tours and named after a 19th century doctor who trained here. He is one of a group of doctors, all contemporaries, who began their working lives in Tours and made their names here. Dr Velpeau has a type of heavy compression bandage used for burns and other mishaps named after him. He was known as an absolute stickler for best practice, a ceaseless worker who had come from very humble beginnings.
His last words were supposedly 'You must not be lazy, always work'. He was born in 1775 in a village near Tours, where his father was the farrier. This allowed him to gain some idea of veterinary practice. Because of the interest he showed in medicine, it seems a philanthropic neighbour sent him to be trained in the hospital in Tours in 1816. It was there he met Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau, the head doctor at the hospital, and they remained associated until Bretonneau's death in 1862.
In fact, it is really Bretonneau who introduced the compression bandage. He drew on the work of an earlier Prussian surgeon and advocated the use of such bandages, especially for burns. Velpeau in turn made the bandages better known, widened their usage and as a result this type of compression bandage now bears his name.
In 1820 Velpeau left Tours to graduate in Paris. We know a lot about what he got up to because of his extensive surviving correspondence with Bretonneau. With Armand Trousseau, another of Bretonneau's brilliant students, Velpeau was at the centre of a remarkable Tourangelle medical network who all published their research in leading medical journals. They became celebrities, being referenced by Balzac (also a native of the Touraine).
Velpeau was a researcher, practicing surgeon taking both private and public hospital patients, hospital administrator and medical training lecturer. He was the Chair of Clinical Surgery at la Charité Hospital in Paris for thirty years. He was interested in a wide variety of medical conditions, especially diphtheria, typhoid and other fevers, quinine, and compression.
He was described as the clinical doctor who had the biggest following and was the best liked, open to new and progressive ideas but hostile to dangerous eccentricities. His strong character and unwillingness to accept poor unscientific practice did make him enemies early on in his career though.
Sadly, although Tours has hospitals named after his colleagues Bretonneau and Trousseau, there is none memorialising Velpeau.
Further reading: An article in Gallica, the Bibliothèque Nationale (National library) newsletter (in French) https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/fr/html/velpeau-linfatigable-chirurgien
All the experts agree that vanilla pods that produce a white bloom or frosting are the top of the range. In French this is called 'vanille givrée'. The first time I noticed my vanilla pods from Réunion getting a white bloom I freaked out, thinking it was mould, but I was reassured when I found out it is quite the opposite, and a sign of the highest quality.
'Frosted' vanilla in my pantry.
Vanilla pods are the seed capsules of an orchid, cultivated in places like Madagascar and the French island of Réunion. It needs just the right balance of sun and shade, and is entirely dependent on man to grow and reproduce. The cultivation cannot be mechanised.
Vanilla orchids grow up rainforest trees, seeking the light. The red palms on Réunion have spikes on their trunks when they are young. It is these spikes that the vanilla farmer will harvest first, to use to hand pollinate the vanilla flowers. When the vanilla flowers resemble cobra heads the farmer will insert the spike and force the pollenia down to the stigma. In the south of Mexico, where vanilla is native, this is done by a native orchid bee. But the bees are not present on Réunion. So in 1841 the method of manually pollinating the orchids was developed by a 12 year old slave, Edmond Albius. And now, manual pollination of vanilla is the norm wherever it is grown.
'Frosted' vanilla in my pantry.
A month after pollination vanilla pods are fully grown, so the farmer knows quite quickly if his pollinating technique is good or not. The people who know how to do the pollinating are called 'marieurs' ('marryers'). The best are women and children, with small or fine fingers. The better the pollination, the longer the pod.
The pods are initially green, then they begin to get brown spots. Good pods are over 20 cm long.
Vanilla orchid plant.
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| Photo courtesy of Helen Devries, from her garden in Costa Rica. |
The first harvest is the culmination of four years cultivation, while the plant climbs the tree and finally matures to flower and produce seed. Then there is another year of preparing the pods. In the workshop they are bundled together to cure. The frosting is not to be confused with mould, and the pods are carefully monitored, because they can go mouldy.
The frosting is different flavour crystals, and they do take slightly different forms. Some look like hairs and some like wax. Once sufficiently cured the bundles of pods will be divided up and put into glass tubes for commercialisation.
Vanilla orchid flower.
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| Photo courtesy of Helen Devries, from her garden in Costa Rica. |
Only 0.5% of the flavour compound vanillin consumed globally comes from the natural pod. 99.5% of vanillin is synthetic. Most synthetic vanillin is extracted from lignin contained in the waste pulp from the paper making industry. But real vanilla has over 150 flavour compounds in addition to vanillin.
