Our badgers' loos...

... across our lane from the copse where we think they live (3 dark spots on the right) seem to be in constant use.

There are several holes that could be badger setts within 500M of La Bastide.  Each year we see signs of them when our big cherry tree starts dropping the fruit we can't reach, but this is the first year we've known that they moved in close to us.

Yet in 13 years we've only once seen a badger (trundling past our front-door). On the rare occasions we return home late, we see lots of owls and are occasionally held up by nightjars that land on the road in front of us and can take some moving, but never badgers.

I guess that as badgers are not a protected species in mainland Europe as they are in England there may be fewer of them.

Maybe the badgers appreciate the fact that we don't allow hunters to cross our land, so feel safer with us, like the partridges and turtle-doves which seem to survive OK. And the bloomin' rabbits of course which get evermore numerous. I could never get get their numbers down when I had a small stud in Suffolk, so I'm not going to try here in La France Profonde.

Why don't British folk do much walking any more?

One of the biggest changes in clients' behaviour I've noticed since we opened our gites 13 years ago (apart from the inability of people to get through their day without clinging to a phone) is how rarely people, especially the young, leave La Bastide on foot nowadays.

There are four paths out of our property, offering plenty of scope for circular walks of varying lengths, some along hill-tops with views as far as the Pyrenees 100km away visibility permitting. On this particular track it takes only 45 minutes to reach the bar-restaurant in the next village. Have a 3 course lunch for €10 and walk it and the beers off on the saunter home!

Are people now so urbanised that their legs are no longer happy supporting their bodies? Are they as nervous of walking in the safe countryside as we are of walking in London after dark? Why don't children go off exploring the woods on their own?

There are a few exceptions of course, particularly a Yorkshire grandfather here last month who went for a 20km run three times a week (2 hours and 2 litres of water).

So if your legs will carry you for an hour or two, think of coming to stay in the Tarn, especially in late May/early June or September, when it's cooler.

There's something about acacia trees...

that birds love, especially young ones.

Around 6pm we turn our sun-loungers and glasses of wine towards the acacias just behind us to watch the groups of young birds work their way along through these trees before turning round and working their way back again.

They are mostly tree creepers, great tits, blue tits and acrobatic long-tailed tits. As last year, not as many as there were before the exceptionally cold spell here two winters ago. We feel certain the drop in bird numbers stems from that, as it's only the year-round birds that are down. Migratory birds are as numerous as ever - never seen as many bee-eaters as this summer.

Summer finally arrived?

Even down here, we've had a disappointing Spring. In March it was as if Summer had arrived early but then the Jetstream started to do whatever it shouldn't and the sun went all coy. At long last normal conditions have been resumed and Nature is trying to catch up (generally been about 3 weeks behind schedule). 

Wild life has been quiet as well - swallows and bee-eaters were late to arrive and the partridges nesting in the verge of our lane have had a damp time of it. Crows have been bad-tempered - I watched three of them attacking a kestrel in mid-flight, constantly swooping down on their victim to peck at it; made me think of a WWII dog-fight.

Only now are the butterflies appearing more profusely in our little valley, which normally has thousands of them. (A group of lepidopterists who stayed with us a few years back found 106 species in the area, 57 of them around our property.) But today they're as busy as the bees around the lavenders - not that you would think that from my picture taken with the 21stC equivalent of a Kodak Box-Brownie. As soon as I try to get closer to them they're away to the next bush.

Just read that the weather forecast for the rest of the summer is highly optimistic - perhaps that will encourage the folk who stayed at home in May & June to come over for a break in September...

Time to reach for my sun-lounger, glass of rosé and John le Carré and go out and keep our cocker Diva company.

Pass Jos the ear-plugs.

They're back. They're rehearsing. They're 'our' nightingales.

As every year, they'll be nesting in the overgrown heap of elder, old man's beard and other creepers just five meters from our ever-open bedroom window (but 100m from our gites).

They start singing in late dusk, but when we turn off our bedside lights, they turn up the volume and Jos grits her teeth for a disturbed early night....

Bloomin' Spring....

got chilly in The Tarn after a good start, but a few bright warm days and Nature's pent-up energy has been released. The blossom has never been as stunning as now.

A less technophobe than me would have taken a video clip to capture the sound of the bees working the blossom.

And we'll have to start being busy b's too, getting the properties ready for the season, which looks like being as good as the pre-credit-crunch times, due more to the diabolical UK weather than Dave and George's efforts to convince us that good times are round the corner. It's an ill wind ........

Hibernation over already?

We don't get much of a real winter in the Tarn, although we usually have one shortish sharp snap in January/early February (-14C last year to plumbers' delight), but this year we've been let off lightly (so far...). Only 30th January and SWMBO is pruning the vines in a sunny 18C.

Unlike Dave & Georgie's, our green shoots are real and the birds' behaviour around us suggests they think Spring is on the way. We hope they're right as our house has an electric central heating system and whilst French governments make sure that EDF cannot increase headline kwH and standing charge prices, they have allowed the list of  'Contributions' (French Newspeak for Taxes) that appear in very small type at the bottom of the bill to grow so much in past couple of years that together with VAT, they now account for over 30% of our bill. But still much cheaper than oil of course.

Jos' main past-time is quilting to which she's become addicted. You can't stay in any of our gites without seeing a quilt or three.