Summer's Coming

A hundred cranes high overhead in a perfect V formation against the watery blue of the late afternoon sky - flying due north.

Vita barks at their wild cries.

I stand looking up, breathing in the cold damp air and think of summer.

Link:
Crane migration: information and place to record your observations

Contentment

Warm sunlight across the ploughed fields.

A small vanguard of cranes heading north.

A buttered piece of Tod's fresh-baked sour dough bread.

Making pie for supper from leftovers of yesterday's roast guinea fowl.

The kitchen French window open onto the terrace to let in the warmth.

Vita slowly pottering in and out, hoping for treats.

Vita's feeling better ...

... she barked, for the first time in eight days.

Five in the Morning

Vita pads slowly across the kitchen floor in the dark and noses my hand.

She lays at the bottom of my mattress and I stroke and massage her aching back and legs.

This is how she heals.

Poison!

On Friday evening our glorious, vibrant two year-old Airedale terrier Vita nearly died from eating the poison metaldehyde found in slug pellets.

She came into the kitchen as we were having supper and I noticed that her back legs were beginning to tremble. Within ten minutes she was thrashing on the floor.  As I struggled to find a local vet who would come out Tod was yelling “come on, she’s dying”.  I drove, breaking speed limits, as  he held her in his arms while her legs kicked so hard her claws tore through the fabric on the back seat of the car.  She was burning hot, her tongue lolled from her mouth, she gasped and panted and she poured saliva. Tod begged her to fight it and stay with us.

We sat in the car park at the vets waiting for him to arrive, terrified that every minute that passed increased the likelihood that she would die.  She lay thrashing on the surgery floor as the vet calmly pumped her with anaesthetic – the only way to stop the seizures that were racking her body.  He explained that her brain would go on firing but that with the anaesthetic her muscles would not respond. He also gave her a diuretic to push the poison out of her body as fast as possible. That night she stayed at the vets on a drip

Saturday we brought her home.  Our strong, energetic dog could hardly move.  She lay in her own urine, gasping for water, hardly able to raise her head to the bowl, her confused eyes half-closed. Her faeces were runny and black – a sign that they contained blood. I slept that night in the kitchen with her, every two hours giving her water to help rehydrate her and get the poison out.  Sunday she was a little better, but still barely able to move, constantly soaking her bedding and turning her head away as we tried to persuade her to eat.  We kept the washing machine running all day as we changed her towels, trying to keep her dry and comfortable.

Yesterday, at dawn, she was so weak I thought we were going to lose her. Then Tod carried her out onto the lawn and I watched in amazement as her tail went up and her nose went down.  We applauded as she did her first wee standing upright and, like Bambi, front legs splayed, back legs bent and rickety, she made her first wobbly tentative steps.  Breakfast was joyous as she wolfed down a small portion of chicken and vegetables.

She is still weak and her legs are everywhere. Short distances leave her panting and she's inclined to sit down abruptly.  But she’s alive! And getting stronger.  This evening she positively ran a few steps as Tod let her out in the dark before supper and he had to grab a torch to go after her - such joy!

We will have blood tests done in a couple of weeks to see what (if any) long-term damage has been done to her liver and kidneys and she will be supported in every way possible to help her heal.

We were fortunate.  Metaldehyde / slug pellet poisoning can leave a dog blind.  Her bright eyes watch us from where she lays on her mat in the kitchen.  If it had been strychnine / mole poison or warfarin / rat poison, she would now be dead.  If she had not come to us immediately and had instead lain down outside, she could have died.  Metaldehyde kills in four hours from ingestion.

We have been naïve and careless.  We are totally organic and have no poisons around our house or garden, but we let her roam.  She is the best of terriers and (for a terrier) remarkably obedient. She comes when she’s called so she is not fenced in.  She strays into our neighbouring farmers’ fields hunting small rodents.

On Thursday in the field next to us our neighbour had a hopper behind a tractor as he trundled backwards and forwards over the young green shoots of his winter wheat.  On Friday about six in the evening I saw Vita on the edge of his field doing what terriers do best, digging, and thought nothing of it.  By eight in the evening she was dying.  I had assumed the hopper contained fertiliser, in fact it was pesticide to kill the slugs.

We have learnt the hard way.  We will now fence her in and will have her on a lead as we cross our neighbours’ fields to protect her from poison so powerful that it takes no more than a mouthful to bring a young, active dog to death’s door. A poison that is being spread now (and every spring) across fields filled with the young seedlings of food that we, in turn, will eat. 

It has been a hard and bitter lesson - but we also have the joy of a dog who is still alive. 

The smallest of mice ...

... darted from behind the television cables and disappeared under the base of the standard lamp.

So tiny and light it will dance across the traps I have set unharmed.

Secretly I am glad.

Washing a yellow pepper ...

... I hold a piece of Spanish sunlight in my hand.

Antidote to Blue Monday

Some worthy organisation has identified one of the Mondays in January as being the most depressing day of the year, brought on by excess during the Christmas period and January sales followed by dire weather, penury and failure to maintain New Year resolutions.  Some think the date this year was Monday this week, others that it is next week.

Well, I can recommend planting a hedge as an excellent antidote.

Doing something with what was Serge's field and is now ours feels like an elephant task.  It's a huge sweep of mud and weeds and random self-seeded crops.  But gradually Tod has been mowing it and parts are now mainly grass and it begins to have the possibility that, one day, it will be parkland. So the elephant task begins to look more do-able and I've allowed myself to imagine where I might plant trees and hedges.

Garden centres in France are expensive.  We have an excellent one near us, but I was looking at the prices of their hedging plants and small trees and reckoned I could afford about ten or at most twenty plants if I chose the cheapest - not nearly enough for the field.  But then I was tidying up all the different websites that I'd book-marked and forgotten about and hadn't looked at in years and came across a French on-line gardening site link. And suddenly, I had the option of relatively cheap bare rooted hedging plants.

Ninety-seven small healthy twiggy plants with good fat root balls were delivered last week - a whole mix of country hedge plants: nut trees, spindle, blackthorn,  holly, hornbeam, rowan and more. And thanks to the weather gods it's mild enough and the ground is warm enough for me to plant them.  I've laid the strip of matting and started planting one small bush every metre.  If this is too sparse, we've plenty of brambles, dogwood and elder going spare that we can use as infill.  Vita sits in the bright sun and watches me work and occasionally wanders off to investigate intriguing smells in the surrounding farmland.

The hedge will run parallel with but not too close to the ditch on the far side of our field. I've left a wide strip of grass between the hedge and the ditch - about four metres wide - to allow Tod, Serge and the man who clears the ditches with his digger to easily manoeuvre their tractors.

Ninety-seven plants felt like lots.  In fact they will only reach about half way along the field boundary.  For the moment that will have to do.  The next order from the on-line company will be for young black poplars.   Every large French garden has to have its line of slim tall poplars throwing long shadows across the grass in the late afternoon sun.

PS:  meant to post this earlier.  The on-line company is Planfor.  They have a well-designed site.  One reason I like it so much: they have an English version as well as French. I went from English, via Latin to the French name. So Spindle is Euonymus europaeus in Latin which leads me to Fusain d'Europe in French. Really helpful.