Posted on by loveleyjoy

VINE WEEVILS

It is everyone’s dream to retire to France, buy a little house in the country with enough land to grow fruit and vegetables. But what if you find your little ‘pied à terre’ is infested with the worst kind of pests imaginable?

It has happened to me. It was my niece that first said, “You’ve got vine-weevils”. She pointed out the leaves on a fuchsia that should have had smooth edges but had little indents eaten evenly along the sides.

Before you can defeat your enemy you have to know your enemy and what its tactics are. Some research on the Internet revealed that ‘otiorhynchus sulcatus’ are nocturnal creatures that live in leaf mould and lay eggs around the stems of the plant, which hatch into white grubs with orangey heads in the spring. The grubs feed off the roots, weakening the plant, and emerge a year later as adult vine-weevils.

I had just planted raspberry canes and discovered that vine-weevils are particularly partial to asters, cyclamens, geraniums, honeysuckle, roses, primroses…….   (the list continued) and raspberries! ‘Charançon’ is their French name, but another is

 “poinconneur des lilas” which translated is ‘hole-puncher of lilacs’- not very good news at all!

More research on the Internet was required!  I learned that it’s very difficult to see or catch an adult weevils as when they are disturbed, they fall to the ground and scurry away. OK, dirty tactics need cunning responses. I placed flowerpot bases all around the stems of the plants. When I got up in the night to go to the toilet (I’m that sort of age!) I would also wage war! 

When I woke up, I boiled the kettle, carried it out to the garden, gently filled up the flowerpot bases and then gave the raspberry bushes a shake. Hey presto, several of my enemies jumped off and fell into my dishes of very hot water and scalded themselves to death!! The moment was one of pure, triumphant bliss, regardless of the fact that my neighbours might see me and wonder what I was doing in the garden with a kettle, in my dressing gown at 3 o’clock in the morning! Les anglaises sont très étrange! 

The enemy had indeed been the, yet unseen, vine-weevil – black apple pip sized body, elongated and 3 pairs of legs. Triumph eventually dimmed to despair when I realized that my only method of defeating the marauders was to continue to get up in the early hours of the morning

But God is good and inspiration comes to those who pray! Suppose the vine weevils didn’t just jump off plants when disturbed, but are lazy by nature and fall off instead of climbing down?

My theory was proved right by the presence of several drowned vine-weevils in the dishes of water I had left under the plants. With the aid of lengths of guttering strategically placed I managed to drown quite a few. One day I found that one humble 3-foot length of guttering had caught 11 vine weevils overnight! This may not sound much but they can lay between 500-1600 eggs a piece.

My joy turned to further despair when I noticed that my neighbour’s huge privet hedge that ran down one side of my garden was infested with vine-weevils and also the lilac that belonged to the other neighbour! With horror I realized that although I could possibly win the war in my own garden, I couldn’t defeat the enemies of the entire neighbourhood.

I found a charming little story on the Internet that showed that even in the 1587 French villagers were having the same problems as me. The residents of Saint-Julien-de-Maurienne were having their vines ravaged by a horde of ‘amblevins’ as they are called in Savoyard dialect. The local judge ordered a court case against them. But to represent the weevils fairly an advocate was appointed on their behalf. The local people offered the vine-weevils a patch of pasture away from the vineyards where they could munch away to their hearts content. Their lawyer argued that the area was infertile and didn’t at all suit his clients. We don’t know the end of the story, but perhaps the villagers were trying out the new legal process of allowing a Devil’s advocate, a system that was established in the same year as the story took place.

When the Normans invaded England the first thing they did was to build motte and bailey castles. The bailey or palisade was probably to keep the English out, but I am sure that the water ditch was there to protect their small parcels of land from the possibility of invading vine-weevils. Even if my theory is not true, the next house I look for will have a moat!

Posted on by loveleyjoy

BUYING WORMS

Schoolbook French does not equip you for the situations that you actually meet when you live in France. For instance – buying worms!

I am a keen organic gardener. I compost all our waste but when our bins are full I have two wormeries. Vegetable peelings will turn to compost if digested by special red worms. I discovered that Pêche Mondial (World of Fishing) sells the right sort. They can be found in the refrigerator right at the back of the shop. It’s quite daunting going into this store as I am usually the only woman to be seen.

Shop assistants are always ever so helpful in France and always arrive at your side to offer aid. Hence the first encounter with the sales person there (always nice young men) led to the following exchange.

Me, “I am looking for some earth worms”. Him,” Would you like, small, medium or large?” Never before have I needed to consider the benefits of small or large worms! But on reflection, I said, ” Small, because they will grow”. Up to this point I had been an average customer, but now I was someone who did not use the worms for fishing but kept them for some reason! Why do I have to offer additional information?                                

Three weeks ago I went back to buy more worms because the cold winter had killed mine. I marched to the depths (au fond) of the shop, but the refrigerator was completely empty. “Haven’t you got any worms,” I had to ask an assistant? “No, next week,” was his reply. The next week I was back but they had had problems with the suppliers and it would be “une quinzaine“, the French for a fortnight. By now all the young men in the shop know me because in the winter they don’t have many customers so the lady with the worm problems is the sole focus of their attention.

This week I went back and, yes, they had worms and I quickly paid my 1,50 euros and took them home. I opened the pot and “quelle horreur” all my worms were dead! Perhaps live worms are not necessary for a fisherman but for me they are vital. Oh, no! Now, I have not only to buy worms, I have to take them back to the shop and ask for them to be exchanged! It can’t be done tomorrow, as they might think I killed them through neglect! It must be done immediately! What is French for “Excuse me, but the worms you sold me earlier today are all dead?” Your average French textbook does not deal with such emergencies.

 So back I hurry to the shop. Again there is no one else there and the three young men are all surprised to see me. ” Ils sont tous mort”, I say as I offer up the tub of worms, and then I have to hide my embarrassment by trying to make a joke. “C’est difficile de faire………….. and here I mime blowing air into a dead worm. Two young men remain blank but the third understands this crazy English woman.” Bouche à bouche” he mutters to his mates. Yes, I was miming artificial respiration! Why do I do it?

So, one guy takes my dead worms and goes to the back of the shop and comes back with a replacement pot, these are “en pleine forme” he says. So I exit with my “fighting fit” box of worms.

I hope all you French teachers out there will use my experiences to teach your pupils the REALLY useful phrases necessary to cope with French life, for instance, buying worms!

Posted on by loveleyjoy

WORLD WATER DAY

As a family that has never owned a tumble drier, I like to think that we have added hundreds of gallons of water back into the environment due to the evaporation from our weekly washing.

My best tips for saving water are as follows:-

If you are fortunate to have a bath with shower attached you can save enormous amounts. Keep the plug in the bath and use the ‘dirty’ water to flush the toilet. The lifting of full buckets is excellent for exercising arm muscles too.

Always have a washing-up bowl in the sink. Begin by swilling out dishes with a little of the soapy water and tipping it down the drain. The water in the bowl stays clean and does not need frequent changing.

We have a bathtub which I tell visitors is my ‘lavoir’. Until as late as the 1950’s some rural French housewives still needed to take their laundry to a communal washhouse – un lavoir. My bath is used for washing pillows, duvets and winter woolies which drip dry in the garden in the summer sun. Plants do not seem to mind a little soap judging from the size of my blackcurrants and blackberries last year. Looking at experiments online, plants were affected negatively, but they were in pots. I don’t use recycled water on pot plants.

A rain-water recuperation system collects water through the winter and provides many litres for use during summer droughts.

Invest in a steamer. Several different vegetables can be cooked at the same time over one pan of boiling water. Steaming is much better at preserving the vitamins. Whereas, boiled vegetables lose their goodness into the water that is then thrown away!

Boiling a kettle full of cold water is more economical, as a water saving method, than running a tap until the water is hot.

French people drink bottled water in preference to tap water. Even children will refuse a glass of tap water. Yet those bottles once opened, are often discarded if not used immediately. Old lead ‘ plomb’ water pipes used to be common, but their use was forbidden in 1995. Lead plumbing (from the word ‘plomb’) had to be replaced by 2013. French people could save the underground water supplies by investing in a glass jug and drinking tap water at meal times.

Our household consumption of water is usually so low that when we had a student staying with us for a few months, we received a letter from the water company asking us to check to see if we had developed a leak somewhere in our pipes!