Sprue'n'Strawbs

One of the excitements of the April produce markets here is seeing the first asparagus and the first strawberries of the season. Usually you just admire the first week's offerings - they will be outrageously expensive - €9.50/kg for asparagus and €5 for a 250g punnet of strawberries this year.

Locally grown white sprue from the Preuilly market.

The asparagus here is always white, as that is what the locals prefer. It's like eating straw if it's old, but if you buy it freshly harvested (no more than 48 hours earlier) and locally grown, it is sweet and delicious, steamed or sautéed, and served with melted butter or hollandaise sauce. The ones pictured are the skinny cast offs, sold at the knockdown price of €3.50/kg even in the first week of April. They were purchased from a woman who sells nothing but asparagus and walnut oil.

Gariguette strawberries from Preuilly market.

The most prized strawberries are a very early bearing old French variety called Gariguette. They smell divine, wafting strawberry aroma from metres away on a cool April morning. I serve them cut in half, macerated at room temperature for an hour or so with a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of homemade cherry liqueur, topped with a dollop of vanilla icecream. The ones in the picture were purchased on Thursday (by then a more reasonable €3.50/250g punnet) and grown by our local orchardists based at Chambon.

Neither of these delicacies will be in the market for very long - eat them now or miss out until next year (although the Gariguettes will be succeeded by other varieties of strawberries - but I am assured it is just not quite the same).

Susan

Searching for Clues

A moment of your time, if I may....

Now that everything on the internet is location based and so called clever, it is getting increasingly difficult for someone in France (for instance) to know how effective web pages are when it comes to search engines used in the USA, Australia, England or any other country. Add to that the fact that not all brains are hardwired like mine and people may use different words to search for the same thing, and it becomes obvious that maybe our business website could be more visible on the internet.

Therefore it would be really helpful if some of you could go to your search engine of choice (google, bing, duckduckgo, whatever) and type in the sort of words you would use if you were coming to France and wanted to see stuff in the Loire Valley.

If you use your own words, then post a comment telling us: the search engine you used, the words or phrase you used, and where we appear in the list of results, that would be very useful.

I thank you.

In the meantime, here are some photos which I like, but haven't found an opportunity to post:

Chaumont sur Loire taken from behind Onzain,
a distance of almost 3 miles. Early morning March 2012

The Roman "thing" at Cinq Mars la Pile,
taken from the garden at Villandry

Célestine at Villandry

Simon

p.s. I am extremely pleased to have had the opportunity to write this - for a split second yesterday it didn't look as if it would get to be written. If it hadn't been written it would have been entirely due to the idiot DHL van driver who - in the pouring rain - pulled out to overtake a truck on a blind corner, forcing Célestine and I off the road. He seemed happy to tell me he had missed me (like he had anything to do with it) by "one mm". I think it was less.

p.p.s. I tried to email a report about this to DHL, but the mail was not delivered because "account is full (quota exceeded)"

Barn Swallows - a photo series

The Barn Swallows have arrived from their wintering grounds in Africa and will spend the summer breeding here. This Eurasian species is very similar to the Australian species I grew up with, called the Welcome Swallow, which migrates from the warm north of Australia where it overwinters, to the south eastern states in the spring.

Susan

Free at Last

Chenonceau has been released from the scaffolding and safety sheeting that has covered one side after another for the past 3 years. The project to clean and stablise the stone exterior and the leaded windows has finished and the chateau revealed looking more magnificent than ever. The work went right down to the very foundations under the water in the river bed and for ages there was a system of barrages to hold water back and allow the masons access.

Simon took a series of photographs in late March showing this lovely building set off against a burgeoning spring garden and fabulous blue skies.

Susan

A Green Roof

In late March we took our first clients for the season to Loches. As we strolled passed the souvenir shop / café on our way to the Logis Royal we noticed they were installing a green roof. The café wasn't open - too early in the year for most tourists. While they were closed they had a team of gardeners working on the roof.

There were barquettes of Stonecrop stacked on the pavement. The plants were hoisted up to the flat roof on a lift and positioned by the men up there. Several Stonecrops are native to here and will colonise walls and roofs for themselves, so these plants will thrive up in their new home.

You can't see it from the ground at all, but it is nice to know it is there. I have a hankering to create something similar for a carport on our front courtyard. This installation, right in the heart of an historic monument, gives me hope that I might get permission to install one here eventually.

Susan

The Vexed Question of Coffee

[rant]
I spend quite a bit of time on travel forums, and I also read food blogs.

One thing that I see often is discussions on coffee - either people asking about how to order their favorite kind, or mentioning about new coffee shops opening (usually in Paris). And although I have quite a bit of respect for some of the writers, I get the distinct feeling that when it comes to coffee, they just don't get it. Of course, it doesn't help than many of the food writers are North American or Australian, and come from a culture that drinks coffee all day every day by the big milky cupful.

That isn't how a Frenchman drinks coffee. A big milky cup with breakfast, then a petit noir after lunch and maybe dinner, and that's it. He may drink a small cup of coffee instead of having a glass of wine in a social situation. If he is on holiday he might stop mid-morning or afternoon and have a coffee and a petit gout, but rarely will he have a cappuccino or frappuccino, and I imagine if you offered him a gingerbread latte he would drink it - once - as a cultural experiment, whilst thinking that foreigners are weird.

Coffee is drunk after a meal, not instead of water

I now address this to people who complain about French coffee being bad:

Coffee in France is treated as a digestif. Many French people would no more drink coffee all day than they would drink cognac or calvados all day. That's the way they grew up, and the coffee they drink is the coffee they like for the purpose they drink it. Just because it isn't what you drink it isn't "bad", it's different.

And this is the point of my little rant. Coffee is part of the food culture and deserves to be regarded as such. You wouldn't say that French steak is bad just because it is served rare, nor would you complain because French bread isn't like Tip-Top, WonderBread or Tescos own brand, so don't complain about the coffee.

It says that it is a café, but most of the clients
will be drinking something cold and alcoholic.

I have no doubt that you would be offended if a Frenchman opened a tea shop in Bourton on the Water saying that English people make bad tea because they boil the water. Likewise, if frenchman opened a Mexican restaurant in the US saying that American chile con carne was bad because it had too much spice in it, you might think of him as less than polite.

If you want to know the articles that offend me so much, read this, this or this. And if you really want to offend me, call yourself a barrista. You'll probably get called something else.

Something that starts with W.

[/rant]

Simon

A Walk in the Woods

A Polypodium sp fern growing out of a limestone rock.

The second part of the botanical club outing on 1 April was to a limestone butt along the Vallée du Feuillet on the outskirts of Truyes (part one is here). These limestone butts are common in the southern Touraine and botanically outstandingly rich. All sorts of lime loving plants spring up here, often growing directly out of the soft limestone rocks themselves. Some, like the hellebores and daphnes, periwinkles and polypody ferns that we found are better known these days as garden plants. It's a real privilege to see them in the wild.

An ancient walled path along one edge of the ridge.

All through the woodland there are violets growing under the trees. There are at least three different species and it was a good opportunity to compare very similar species such as the Early Dog Violet and the Common Dog Violet. I was jolly glad I spent the winter updating Loire Valley Nature and was up to speed with how to identify violets to species level.

Common Dog Violet (with pale, thick, notched spur, if you are interested)

Early Dog Violet Viola reichenbachiana
(with dark pointed spur and 'rabbit ear' top petals)

We didn't spend the whole time botanising either. In amongst the dead fallen leaves of winter and the spring wild flowers there were several oil beetles. I got some excellent French practice in by telling the group about oil beetles. Naturally, on these occasions, half my vocabulary and a good deal of my grammar and syntax mysteriously disappears.

Oil beetles are part of a family that contain a poison called cantharidin. This toxin is the active ingredient in aphrodisiac mixtures that predate viagra. They work, but it is all too easy to take a lethal dose. The beetle eats toxic plants to accumulate the poison in its body - in this case members of the buttercup family, especially Wood Anemone. While we were observing an oil beetle it started to ooze orange liquid from its knees, a sign it was getting a bit stressed and attempting to warn us off by producing the poison. Thanks to Tim photographing a couple a few days earlier and needing a species ID, I had been reading up on oil beetles only the day before the outing and knew lots of detail about these unusual and increasingly uncommon creatures.

A male Violet Oil Beetle Meloe violaceus...

...and his food plant Wood Anemone Anemone nemorosa

A newish housing development of maybe 20 homes nestles at the base of the limestone outcrop. The houses seem to be occupied by couples in their 30s with school aged children. The way the houses have been integrated into the landscape is rather well done, with a combination of suburban neighbourhood and house in the woods achieved. I thought it looked like a pretty good place to grow up. I hope they know how special their limestone woods are.

Susan

Bread and cheese

One of our local goat dairies, Limousin freres, makes a special springtime cheese. It's a harder, smoother textured cheese in the style of a tome (often spelt tomme), and quite unlike the usual creamy chalk of the Ste-Maure-de-Touraine logs they make year round. Production of the tome starts in early April and continues for 6 weeks. By June it will all be gone.

Naturally I am buying it while I can. I also bought some gorgeous Spanish tomatoes from another market stall (still too early for local tomatoes) and made a loaf of bread to go with the cheese.

The bread is a pain de mie style loaf ie soft and crustless. The recipe is here.

Susan

Moss Heaven at the Lavoir

Le ruisseau de Truyes with its stone vault cover and profusion of aquatic plantlife. The larger plant in the foreground, looking a bit like a fern, is Fools Watercress Apium nodiflorum - it's not poisonous like many of its lookalike umbellifer cousins, but it's also not related to Watercress (part of the cabbage family) and doesn't taste of anything.
The botanical outing on 1 April was primarily to look at mosses. Our first stop was the ruisseau de Truyes, a stream that runs down the side of a lane behind the church. It must come from a source up on the hill where the chateau sits overlooking the church. The water is absolutely crystal clear and on a sunny day creates a beautiful sparkling background to a host of mosses, liverworts and aquatic plants.

Marie-Claude dangles over the edge to pluck a little sample of moss. Most mosses you have to look at under magnification to identify to species level, so samples are necessary.
The stream is covered in a vault of rough stones for part of its length, then open with the sloping platforms of the lavoir (public laundry) at the side, before broadening into a shallow pool which is home to a dozen or so mallards (all clearly expecting treats).

The very common liverwort Lunularia cruciata.

Everyone got down to business, spotting mosses, lichens, liverworts and some interesting plants. On this short length of wall along the stream there are 6 species of moss and a liverwort, as well as Common Cornsalad and Fools Watercress. Our moss expert was Corinne, a stalwart of the club, and I was very interested that her recommended field guide was in English, published by the British Bryological Society and available online or in print. Typical of European naturalists, most of the group knew enough English (and probably German and Italian) to work their way through a technical key to identify a species. This is not like being fluent in these languages, but because the technical words tend to be the same, you only need to learn a limited vocabulary to understand most of the key. Good keys these days are well illustrated too and this helps a lot. One of the other women, who had a copy of the book, said to me that she actually finds it easier to use than most French guides. Her comment was that British field guides get the tone and level of technical language just right so that everyone can understand them, whereas French guides either vulgarise (ie only use common names and dumb the information down, to the frustration of serious amateurs) or are so academic as to be unuseable by these same serious amateurs.

Loic risks wet feet to take a closer look at a plant on the wall. His left leg (street side) is between two concrete washing slopes, I assume once used to slap and soap up the laundry. Marie-Claude is over on the left with her nose against the wall looking at lichens (her special interest).
So...now I know slightly more about mosses and have been introduced to a fantastic resource should I wish to identify mosses on my own in the future.

A Mallard drake bobs on the clear shallow water.

Susan

Outblinged

Hoooray! Normal service has resumed, with Célestine making her weekly visits to Chenonceau. Normally (with one or two - or three - exceptions) we are the most stylish people in the car park.

A Célestine, in her natural environment

On Wednesday we mave have been out-blinged.

What impressed our clients is that I identified this car as a Delahaye as I was driving past the car park I don't park in. What won't impress the owner of this car is when he tries to remove a billion sticky handprints from the people off the coaches it was parked near - which is why I don't park there any more.

It's a 1948 Delahaye 135SM with bodywork by Guilloré. And it's nice...

Simon

Truyes

Truyes is a small town on the north bank of the Indre River, about 20 km from Tours. The Indre Valley is one of the most picturesque in the district, with many attractively situated mills and beautiful riverside drives. Balzac spent a lot of time in the valley further down stream, around Saché, and it features numerous times as the setting in his novels.

I'm not quite sure what this is - garage? cellar? Anyway, it appears to be part of the Chateau de Bel Air complex and I liked its Mediterranean style garden with the big Stone Pine.
The population of Truyes is around 2000 people, but like many towns along this river it forms a larger urban area by being directly across the river from the town of Cormery. They have separate administrations, but you simply cross the bridge over the Indre and you have crossed from one to the other. The towns grew up because this is the site of an ancient ford, but remained separate because the rivers often served as territorial boundaries in the medieval past.

The 12th century church of Saint Martin in Truyes with its 15th century 5 storey belltower, one of several medieval churches, chapels and abbeys in the paired towns of Truyes and Cormery. Niall and Antoinette wrote one of their erudite posts about the abbey at Cormery on Chez Charnizay recently.
Truyes isn't somewhere you will find in many tourist guides, but it is attractive enough for all that. I suspect a lot of people miss Truyes because it is not obvious from the main road how much of the village, including the real centre, is off to the east. You could easily spend the day wandering about Cormery and Truyes, popping in for an artisan beer at the brasserie in Cormery and walking along the ancient pilgrim path around Truyes. If you visit at the right time in August the Fete de Cochon will be in full swing too.

The 20th century chateau of Bel Air, now owned by the commune (so I assume it is the salle des fetes - village hall).
I didn't get much of a chance to look around or to find out a lot about Truyes when I visited for a botanical outing, but I thought the area around the Eglise Saint Martin was lovely.

Susan

All Action Heroes at Work

Fire brigade vehicles parked in our backyard.

Immediately after lunch yesterday (ie at 5 past 2) three fire brigade vehicles came roaring up the driveway and parked in front of our garage. The firemen got out and started heading down the street. 'Qu'est-ce que se passe ? Y a-t-il un probleme ?' 'Hello Madam, no, there isn't a problem. We are on a training exercise. Are the trucks OK there?'

The brass above the visor on his helmet is the last vestige of the 19th century fireman's helmets. The modern ones say 'Sapeurs Pompiers Indre et Loire'.
They were happy for me to take photos and so I followed them down the street to Patrice's paint workshop. Like last year they had set a smoke bomb off in the paint store and were 'rescuing' someone.

Racing to deal with a problem with the connection at the fire truck, too big to get down the lane and parked at the end.

Getting ready to enter the building.

Job done and it's off to pack up the hoses and stow the kit on the fire truck.

Susan

French for Motors

Having been In France for a while, and having hung around mechanical types for a bit, I thought I would pass on some words I have learnt:

First thing to know is le démarreur: the starter, is different to le starter, which is the choke. This is important in Célestine, because the choke knob and the starter knob look the same except for the fact that the choke says S and the starter says D. Confusing, what.

Then we come to the timing chain/belt. This is commonly referred to as la distribution, which is different to la distributeur (although both can sometimes be la distributeur). Thus it pays to check whether the mechanic is talking about one (courroie distribution, very expensive) or the other (tête de distributeur, less expensive, but modern cars don't usually have one) before agreeing with him. If you have a problem with your tête de distributeur, (spark timing) it is a problem of alimentation. If you have a problem with your courroie distribution it usually means a new engine.

A random and very lovely engine from Retromobile.
I have no idea what it's from, but I want one.
(further research says it's a Bugatti Type 28 Torpedo 1922)

Another good word is bougies, which are spark plugs (unless you're very English or from the 1930's and call them sparking plugs). Bougies translates as candles, which are usually translated into French as chandelles, except that chandelles are what some people call headlight bulbs.

Another Retromobile engine. No prizes for this one.

The other word I have learned is roue de secours - spare wheel, or literally "the wheel of help". This is a lot easier than talking about having a trou in your pneu.

Trust me on that last one...

Simon

Violet Fritillary butterfly - a photo series

To learn more about this lovely butterfly, please go to the species account post on Loire Valley Nature. This is always the first of the Fritillary butterflies to be on the wing, and we should be seeing it here any day now.

Susan

Wildlife Watching in April in the Touraine du Sud

Today I am off on an outing with the local field naturalists club, l'Association de botanique et de mycologie de Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine. We are visiting a little valley near Truyes (north of Loches) to study mosses and have a general botanise. I am the only non-French member of the club, but so long as I can remember to say all the scientific names with a French accent, we will get on just fine. I know next to nothing about mosses though, so it will be quite challenging keeping up. I imagine that everyone will be bemoaning how dry it is and worried about the effect on the orchids and other special plants of the area. Our first outing where we are likely to see orchids in flower is later in the month, to les Puys du Chinonais. I will also be off sometime during the month to do my first butterfly survey for the year.

More generally, things to look out for are:

Orchids - the spider orchids, Lady Orchids and Early Purple Orchids will be the first to flower. The Monkey Orchids won't be far behind, and even though we had an exceptionally cold spell in winter this frost tender species would still have been dormant at the time and unaffected. The current dry spell is another matter though.

Green-winged Orchids flower in old vineyards in April.

Other Wildflowers - look out for the intense blues - Long-leaved Lungwort, Purple Gromwell and Common Columbine. Most years you could add Sweet Violets and Grape Hyacinth to this list but they have been flowering for much of the previous month already. The violets will continue but the Grape Hyacinths are coming to an end. Another very striking spring flower that has started early in places is the Greater Star of Bethelehem, pure white stars with a green midrib running down the underside of each petal, on every roadside bank.

Butterflies - the first generation of blue butterflies such as the Provencal Short-tailed Blue and the Common Blue will be out and about, looking for places to lay their eggs and produce the autumn generation that will overwinter as caterpillars. The first Fritillary species to be on the wing is normally the Violet Fritillary, found anywhere there are wild violets growing to feed their caterpillars. However, I am hearing reports that some Fritillary butterfly species caterpillars have not survived the winter well. Certainly there has been a disturbing lack of Glanville Fritillary caterpillars scooting across the potager and hanging about in the Ribwort Plantain this year. There were communal nests amongst the plantain at the beginning of winter, but I found no survivors in March.

Skipper butterflies like this Dingy Skipper can be
seen sucking moisture from damp earth in April.

Beetles - it's big bomber chafer time in April, with Rose Chafers and Cockchafers lumbering about or munching their way through the stamens on your roses and paeonies.

April is the month you start finding moths in the street, exhausted by their night of dancing attendance on the street lights. This one is a Lunar Marbled Brown I encountered last year.

Flies - yes, Flies! Some of the most attractive of the craneflies, Ctenophora and Nephrotoma, will appear, resting on vegetation with their absurdly long legs dangling all over the place. The adults are completely harmless and whilst the leatherjacket larvae might eat plant roots, they also provide a significant source of nourishment for farmland birds. Prepare to be surrounded by the curiously misnamed March flies in April too - species in this family such as the Saint Mark's Fly emerge traditionally around the Saint's Day (otherwise known as Anzac Day...). And of course there is everybody's little fuzzy friend, the Dark-edged Beefly, who has already been with us in good numbers this year from mid-March.

Other Insects - the Field Crickets emerged from their burrows to sit in the sun in March, but this month they will start calling attention to themselves, literally, with their chirruping in warm weather.

You will see 50 gazillion Gendarme Bugs in pairs, trios, dozens, over the summer, but this lookalike cousin is a different, solitary species called an Assassin Bug, also out and about on buggy business in April.

Happy wildlife watching. I've got no idea what the weather is going to be like - let's hope it rains a bit, but sunny days are always nice too.

Susan