Very cloudy here but the rain finally stopped about 5 pm yesterday. The flooding in the front garden is receding so the wellies can now be put away.
Gorgeous day in Albi, spring has arrived…..
Unfortunately not !
Saw the first processionary catepillars of the season, the early est yet since ive been here . Bad news for dogs apparently.
We have loads in some parts of the forestry around here. They can be bad news for people as well. I tend to avoid the areas where they are around here whilst they are out.
Well, after 3 days of almost constant rain today is dry. However after today we’re forecast to have rain again for the next seven days 
although there will be some breaks. I’m off to Bristol in a few hours where it’s not just a lot drier, but warmer.
And humans. Local gardener lost an eye from their hairs.
That’s awful, Sue, poor gardener.
We’ve always kept our dogs away from them but our neighbour has a pine tree that he allowed to become infested with a couple of dozen nests and the caterpillars were coming into our garden. I think maybe someone had a word with him because he got some men in last year. It hasn’t done the tree any good at all and it looked quite ill after the men pruned it.
It’s dangerous to prune and leave the hairs lying around, unless the branches (and caterpillars) are burnt immediately. Our local park has special pouches attached to the trees each winter to trap the descending caterpillars and they also use pheromone traps against the moths. These treatments are not cheap. A friend used to shoot the nests with an air rifle, saying that the holes through the nest meant the caterpillars died from the cold (no idea if it worked). A more recent approach is to shoot paintballs filled with pheromones at the nests.
They need to be taken seriously. Southern Europe has pine processionary caterpillars, northern has oak processionaries. Watch out for them in pine plantations, especially round camp sites in Spain.
The men put the prunings onto a trailer and took them away. We all stayed inside while they were working, to avoid any hairs that were flying around.
Risky!
I know but we didn’t have a say in it. 
I realise that. But worth mentioning here because not everyone is aware of the danger, especially if recent arrivals to France. Friends of ours admitted when they first arrived they use to “play” with the caterpillars, using a stick to make them wind round and round in a circle. I was in Collioure one March and walked up through a park with our dog. There were workmen replacing flagstones surrounded by dead caterpillars, not realising even when they are dead the hairs can do harm. I turned round with our dog and left the park.
We have black butterflies here that hatch from inside the palm trees leaving them just skins flopped over as they destroy them from the inside out.
I reported a large amount of processionary caterpillar nests (hundreds) in forestry to the Maire for that commune and he wasn’t interested. He said everyone knew about them.
Quite - after the frost the Morbihan is flooding
I’m in one of the “orange” bits - fortunately the risk from l’Oust is small as we’re about 70m vertically above the river but like @hairbear something a bit odd happens to my front gravel patch which saturates completely. Dig down a few inches and it is all very sandy so I am not clear what the exact dynamic is but I think my cellar pump will be working overtime while I’m not there.
Meteo France seems to suggest two weeks solid rain.
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Saw it on the news last night, those poor souls in Camors and further over in Quimperlé are really getting and so soon after the last time. My family in Nashville are on red danger alert for the arctic snow dump due tonight. The supermarkets have been stripped bare, no oil heaters anywhere to buy and folks warned that if they take a vehicle out and the forecasted snow or deep ice layer causes them to get stuck they will not be rescued by the emergency services as four wheel drive vehicles won’t escape the problems either. Its already -12°C since beg of the week and this is a temperate state which is usually humid and near to the Gulf.
Well the rain has returned here since mid morning so more flooding and the gués are still closed anyway all the way down to the beach meaning a long drive round for many. Daughter said it was snowing in Nashville a couple of hours ago when she got up so they will be fed up.
It is gloriously sunny here, has been all day but a little on the chilly side for both our walks. Sun just beginning to dip behind the horizon now but I still don’t need heating on in this south facing kitchen. 
So we have a new Mediterranean episode within days of the last one, it’s mad.
OH travelled back from Narbonne on a road that reopened a few days ago and said that it was covered in water. Plod were there and the Mini in front of OH was turned away and sent on a different route.
I can see that road being closed again by tomorrow.
Yes, at home the garden is flooded again. I’m in Bristol at the moment and it’s ****ing it down here as well and has been the whole time I’ve been here 
Spare a thought for my family in Nashville who had to sit and listen to the trees exploding in their garden and then crashing to the ground everywhere taking the power lines down, the fencing and the roof of the hay store. They sent a photo in the night of the thickness of ice covering everything outside and it was 1.5 inches. They can’t get emergency services as they can’t get vehicles out or take calls either and the shops were stripped bare of gennies and oil heaters so luckily a neighbour came to their rescue with both yesterday. It’s currently -11 in what is normally a humid mediterranean climate apart from the Smokies. Even a trash bandit appeared for the first time searching for food and they have put out corn daily for the herds of deer that roam the neighbourhood properties. Makes me laugh when you see the UK in panic mode for a dusting of snow or ice, they have no idea.
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