RIP Clinton

It's been a sad few days. Lots of rain and on Tuesday when we went to close the chickens up, three were missing. Trisha was gone and I soon found Clinton and Maggie's decapitated bodies. A fox attack. It's heartbreaking.

On Thursday I took the rest of the kitchen apart. We can't live with trapping four or five mice a day. My efforts seemed to make no difference, but this morning I spotted another hole almost at ceiling level behind a wall cupboard. Today the mice have stopped thank god!

During a walk this afternoon I spotted four foxes in the amphitheatre field! The grey vixen we see sometimes on the camera trap has three cubs, already indistinguishable from adults. It explains the killings earlier in the week, she's probably teaching them to hunt. We ll have to keep our last couple of hens and any new chickens locked in the run until October unless I get a chance to reduce the fox numbers.

First scarf underway.

 

Bamboo

The Maurice brassard bamboo thread I ordered an eon ago finally showed up, so time to get another warp on the loom.  Three different scarves in Bateman boulevard.

Summer

Spent the last few days trying to increase the barriers against rodent entry and trying to find their ways in....without much success. I dismantled the kitchen cupboards and worktops to get at the stone wall behind it, blocked up tiny holes in the old stone wall under the stairs (almost impossible to reach), pulled down and then rebuilt the ceiling over our bed. Everywhere is much cleaner...and maybe the mouse numbers are slightly reduced...or am I kidding myself?

Oh well summer is here and it is beautiful.

 

Mouse apocalypse

This year the mouse population is exploding in the Ariège. We 've hardly had any mice for the last 3-4 years but this year it's bonkers. We're catching 3-4 mice every night and the cats are adding to the total. I keep trying to find and block possible entry points, but they keep on coming. At night they are in the kitchen, the utility room, the roof.....chewy on the wood, the insulation. Outside they are everywhere!

Trois Seigneurs

After some rainy weeks summer has finally arrived with hot and humid weather.

Tristan and Agi were up for a walk, so Trois Seigneurs seemed like it would be a good introduction to this side of the Couserans. We went in the clockwise direction starting from the Port de Lers and the ridge before descending to the Etang d'Arbu.

Tristan and Agi's lurchers made easy work of the rocky sections and loved the snow...the youngest had never seen it before!

The weather behaved, with far reaching views.  The heat built throughout the day and it was good to cool off in the Etang.

Below the Etang the scotch broom was in full flower and vivid yellow and perfume were overpowering.

 It turned out to be a long, hot, but enjoyable day with some new walking companions.

Steps

A lot of the bigger posts and beams from inside the barn were put aside to make these steps through the drystone retaining wall. Susie and I put them in yesterday and then another half tonne of concrete to finish them off.

We need another three or four steps to reach the upper garden, but they'll have to wait until I take the roof off the barn and have more beams to recycle.