We are under siege from the hoards of grasshoppers and have taken to sleeping in our downstairs back bedroom. One particular type of brown hopper are crawling up our house walls and disappearing into the roof. They are then crawling through cracks in between the wooden logs upstairs and appearing all over our mezzanine floor where we usually sleep, heading for the warmth during the evenings when it turns colder. There is no way I can sleep there at the moment, especially after Friday night when I heard one thud onto my pillow! There are actually less hoppers this year due to the torrential rail we experienced during June, last year’s plague being due to the drought but we never had such a problem last year with them coming into the roof. I told Chris that if we had not been fortunate enough to have our extra bedrooms, I would have made him rent a small apartment somewhere in the valley for me to sleep in! I’m not normally of a nervous disposition but even I draw the line at having hoppers crawling over my face in the middle of the night. I spent the weekend strimming the slope in front of the patio and this caused a whole army of hoppers to converge on the chalet.
Today we went on a murdering spree. We don’t like killing them but enough is enough. Our terrace ended up looking like the killing fields after I swept them out of the eaves and Chris splattered them with a flip-flop on their arrival onto the patio. The ones caught in the house go to a watery grave down the toilet. We discovered their route up and have covered parts of the wood with double sided tape which they walk on and then get stuck. We think, however, that this grasshopper invasion must be an unusual phenomenon as when we moved in here this time 2 years ago, there was absolutely no evidence of their having been any in the house at all. Plenty of dead flies but not a grasshopper in sight. I suppose this is one disadvantage to living in the middle of an Alpine meadow!
After having caught at least 20 hoppers upstairs last night we finally went to bed after midnight. I expected to get up this morning and find the whole of our upstairs covered but there wasn’t one in sight – how weird was that. I suppose they crawled back when it turned colder in the middle of the night. I was also surprised I didn’t suffer from nightmares too.
Kevin and Antoinette are here on holiday with Antoinette’s son Colin and his friend. The youngsters are enjoying mountain biking down the mountain, white water rafting and climbing in the adventure park and costing Antoinette a small fortune. I was invited to go climbing with them today but as they couldn’t get out of town till 6 this evening due to the [tag-tec]Tour de France[/tag-tec] bike ride coming through tomorrow, I postponed it until next week after the boys have returned home, leaving Antoinette and Kevin a week to themselves. We spent some of the weekend following the Tour live on the television and it’s getting quite exciting as it nears the Serre Chevalier.
Friday 13th July
I arrived back from the UK on Wednesday to glorious sunshine, altho’ Chris tells me there has been some heavy rain as well in my absence. The grasshoppers seem to like the heat, however, and are invading us once again. Even tho’ we are keeping all doors closed (luckily we now have netting on two of our upstairs windows) they still get in somehow. I think we carry them in on our clothes or they just jump through the open gap at the right moment. Farmer Coco cut the hay in the fields last week, so there is not much left for them to eat so hopefully they will soon die off.
My vegetables have grown well in the two weeks I have been gone, the covers doing their job well, although some quite large holes have appeared. Today I bought a new cover to tide us over until the hoppers peter out. I noticed at the garden centre that one can buy something to kill off everything, from lerots to ants, but not a single thing for grasshoppers.
Chris was busy in my absence with his reconditioned [tag-tec]Corgi cars[/tag-tec] and has now had lots of interest from punters on e-bay after putting one up for sale as a trial. In fact, one customer has requested a special commission of a Colmans Mustard Mini.
Chris had a fright in the week. When Farmer Coco cut the field, all animal and insect life ran for their lives including a snake which Chris just spotted slithering into the garage. It hid behind my garden tools and he had a job getting it into a box before taking it across the road and depositing it a good deal away from our house. Chris told me it was quite scary, especially as the snake, which we assume was an adder, was hissing at him and obviously none too pleased at being caught. What a good thing he saw it go into the garage when he did or there might have been a nasty accident.
My trip back to the UK included [tag-tec]a visit to Nice[/tag-tec] with my girlfriends to celebrate a 50th birthday. Most people thought I was mad coming back to England only to fly back to France but flying was much less expensive than it would have been to drive and also much quicker. I was pleasantly surprised by Nice finding I liked it very much. We did a bus tour one day which took us round all the historical places and taught us its history. We also visited [tag-tec]Monaco[/tag-tec] and saw the palace, F1 course and the casino in Monte Carlo. Another day we took the train to Cannes where we spent the day on the sandy beach as the one at Nice is all pebbles. The water was surprisingly chilly, having not yet warmed up this year presumably due to the inclement weather. But we had excellent weather and I was glad I had taken my parasol with me. Evenings were spent in the lively old town where we sampled good food and wine before heading back to Hotel Splendid where we stayed for 4 nights.
Tomorrow I fly back to England for a couple of weeks, so I’ve been busy getting ready and packing.
We spent some of yesterday trying to sort out my vegetable patch as Chris may not be able to do the watering for me whilst I am away because of his foot. Holes have appeared in the “voile” and as we lifted it off we found quite a few [tag-tec]grasshoppers[/tag-tec] underneath. Had they eaten their way in, or out I wondered. Luckily not too much damage to my vegetables had occurred but we covered it up again with a new cover and used the older one to cover my lettuce, which are now too big for their improvised plastic fruit containers. We then laid the hose pipe, which feeds from the canal, alongside the patch and drilled holes along its length. This works well as a continuous source of watering and will also deter the hoppers who hate the wet. Not that I need to worry this evening as we have a heavy rainstorm with thunder and lightning. This comes after a week of lovely weather. Perhaps it’s come down from England where it’s been torrential over the weekend and delayed the start of Wimbledon this afternoon.
