Now that the kissing is done

There is something about Mistletoe. A parasite, or more accurately, saprophyte, on a range of trees and shrubs, it relies on its host for water and minerals while producing sugars in the sunlight like any other plant.

It is a traditional plant of Christmas and few homes would be without a sprig for kissing under! It seems a sign of our pleasure-seeking age that the tradition of removing a berry after each kiss has been overlooked in favour of a more liberal interpretation. In ancient times it had more serious (if less fun!) mystical purposes and there is currently much research into its cancer-curing properties.

You cannot go to your local garden centre to buy a living Mistletoe plant for the garden so the only option is to grow your own – unless Nature has done it for you. Berries are best kept in a cool place after picking but ideally are used fresh in February. The perfect host plant is an old Apple tree, but it grows well on Poplars, Limes, Hawthorn, Willow and locally, on the Robinia that invades the woods here abouts.

Now that we live in France we cannot help but notice how much more plentiful Mistletoe is in mainland Europe. While in the UK it has great value as cut seasonal foliage, landowners in France are generally delighted to see it removed from their trees. Of course, English retailers will tell you that the French version is of poorer quality.

I have grown Mistletoe several times, leaving little plants on trees all over the country, after the gardeners at Windsor Castle showed me how. The berries are simply smeared into a crack in the bark on the shady side of an appropriate tree. Germination, if it happens at all, will be fairly rapid, but real growth has to wait a full year. Our current garden now has a small clump developing in a Hawthorn .

Don’t expect to be harvesting crops to sell at the traditional November market in Tenbury Wells anytime soon, but do enjoy this traditional plant in your own garden if you can.

Mistletoe

 

Something for nothing: mushrooms, plants and more

Just when we had given up finding anything other than Field Mushrooms, the continued mild, damp weather has produced a flush of Boletes of all types. Two days ago we were looking at a property for a client near Montrichard and stopped for a walk in the woods with the dog. This trip produced a pair of Orangé or  Leccinum versipelle, L. aurantiacum  or perhaps L. quercinum, as we found them under Oak rather than Poplar. We eat them later with a chicken stew dish: wonderful!

Orangé mushrooms

Today we were out in the woods at Chabris and came across a huge area covered with Ceps and other Boletus. We came back with kilos of the things which, at Euro 30 a kg in the market makes our little walk seem like a profitable venture. Chantal has spent the morning cooking, freezing and drying our haul and I am very much looking forward to dinner tonight.

A selection of Boletes

Ceps and other Boletus on the kitchen table

Out in the garden another free find; I had rescued some wild Cyclamen from in front of a JCB digging a trench for a new water main and, on another occasion, a plant from the woods where felling had just started.  Checking on their progress this morning I remarked again on how different the two white flowering plants were when I spotted Cyclamen leaves pocking through brambles and weeds near our Sequoia tree. It seems we have our own patch of wild Cyclamen in addition to the two I have introduced. It will be fascinating to see how they perform in the next few years.

I have started to plant out cuttings I have rooted in our nursery corner. The first of these came from the local school garden: Artemisia Powis Castle. I like the silver leaves, the scent and the way that leaves added to Vodka turn the drink bright green. I’ll bet they didn’t tell the kids that! 

 

Food for Free

Nature is bountiful at this time of the year, here in central France. We never fail to return from walking the dog without something in our pockets and at the moment, we are mostly collecting Walnuts.

 There are still plenty of Hazel nuts around and as we become accustomed to the area we are beginning to work out which trees are not picketed, where to find the largest nuts and which trees are the most productive. This morning we returned with a basket full of nuts and half a dozen ceps, our favourite edible mushrooms.

Cyclamen growing wild in the Robinia woods

Locals are often very generous when they know you are interested. With a new kitchen recently fitted we have been testing out the equipment by jam and chutney making. Not having fruit of our own, people have been giving us bags of peaches, plums apples, pears and quince. Each of them receives a pot of jam from us in return. As I speak, Chantal is cracking walnuts ready to bake a cake this afternoon.

Colchicum - autumn crocus - growing wild in central France

Autumn flowers are also much in evidence now that the weather is cooling, the day length reducing and the rains returning.

Where once the ground was speckled with orchids there are now wild Cyclamen, Colchicums and, an exciting find, Saffron Crocus.

 
Here on the edge of the Touraine the grape harvest is all in, picked last week when it was warm and sunny. Mostly the crop was machine harvested but, talking to local growers, they are increasingly hand picking to improve quality. We are great fans of the local white but are still to be convinced that the red is worth the effort to get to know.

We are still recovering from yesterday. We had a business meeting in Valancay at 11 am and on arrival in the town the temperature was 17 degrees C. An hour later it was thermometer on the car dashboard read 21 and by the time we reached home it was 25. 

The atmosphere was strange and people in the town reacted to it. Out walking in the afternoon we had hardly got to the end of the road when someone stopped us to show off his new motorbike and offered us drinks to celebrate. Staggering off to continue our exercise we were stopped a few yards on to chat with an elderly lady who was in tears recalling her dogs and admiring ours.

In the park a man had his head in his hands but beamed when the dog wandered over and gave him a lick. Prior to that we had been sitting on the beach watching the river, when our decorator came over to sit with us for a while. A strange day ended with a huge thunder storm, with a bright red sky and a game of scrabble.

Perhaps someone had drugged the water but according to the weather man a hurricane had moved up the Atlantic dragging hot African air up through France. Who needs alcohol with weather like this!

 

First wild Orchid of the year

I’ve been away: a quick visit back to the UK to see a client whose garden construction is about to start, followed by a trip down to the South of France and two gardens to look at.

In the mean time the season is moving on and we were very excited to find our first wild Orchid in the woodland park near the swimming pool in Chabris.

Wild orchid: the first of many in the countryside around Chabris

Leaf detail of today’s orchid

Cercis chinensis Avondale

Impressive training of the Judus Tree

There is so much in flower around the town at the moment, including Cercis silaquastrum, the Judus tree, which is popular as a provider of light shade and spring colour. In the UK it flowers for Chelsea Flower Show,(I’ll always remember my amazement at seeing my first one in Battersea Park, were we had parked to walk over the bridge to the show).

I like to plant something different so I brought over from the UK a plant of Cercis chinensis Avondale. At the moment it sits in its pot outside the door to the gite, where we can see it closely and compare it to the common species growing nearby.  On a trip out to the DIY shop today we spotted this unusual pruning of C. silaquastrum which we were most impressed with.