DLCI 2021 Magazines - June
June
2021
CARPE DIEM in Bergerac…and everywhere!
Sent in by Yveline Ulrich
NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE PRESIDENT
Last Friday felt like a turning point! A group of DLCI members met at Serres et Montguyard and, led by Liz Berks, we were able to discover some wonderful wild orchids. Jane Stumpfle has kindly written a report on the day (you can read it later in the newsletter) but I would like to thank Liz for all her organisation and preparation. We were so lucky to have a guide with her knowledge. Of course, as well as looking at the orchids, there was a great deal of chatter! It felt good!
More dates for your diary – how long is it since I’ve been able to say that?!
Friday 11 June at 9.30am in Lalinde: Helder Machado, Pat’s husband, has planned a walk of 8km around Lalinde (full details later). Hector is looking forward to it already!
Friday 18 June from 6pm – 8pm: Apéro Evening at June Davies’ home in Mazières-Naresse, about 2km outside Villeréal on the Issigeac road. The last time we held this event it was very successful and you are all most welcome. It will be an informal and convivial way to see people we haven’t seen for ages and we are hoping for good weather so that we will be able to mingle inside and outside June’s beautiful home. So that we have an idea of numbers, please let Teresa Tildesley know by 11 June (teresa.tildesley@orange.fr) if you would like to come. Husbands/partners are invited and we ask for a donation of 10 euros per person to cover costs and a donation to DLCI charity funds. We hope to see many of you there.
Despite our lack of opportunity to fundraise during the Covid crisis, we are nevertheless in a position to be able to make a significant donation to three charities this year. This is where you come in – we need you to nominate charities you think deserve our support, and I suspect there must be many who need it this year.
There are three categories: adult, child and animal. You can nominate a charity in any or all of these categories but the charity must be officially registered with a registration number and be in the DLCI region, ie, Nouvelle Aquitaine (Dordogne, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne). Please email Fee Bowtell, Secretary, at feebowtell@gmail.com giving your reasons for nominating your chosen charity and the name of your seconder, if you have one.
Last year’s winners are NOT eligible and I remind you that they were: Hôpital Aide Domicile (adult), Nos Enfants Différents (child) and SPA Bergerac (animal). Fee should receive your nominations by 31 July 2021 at the latest. If you prefer to write to Fee, her address is Dove Cottage, Guinet, 24610 Minzac.
We are planning to hold the AGM in September, as we did in 2020, and I must prompt you to send your membership renewal of 25 euros in good time since only paid-up members are allowed to attend the AGM and nominate and vote for committee members and charities. Thank you to those who have already renewed. Here is a reminder of the bank details if you wish to pay by bank transfer:
Dordogne Ladies Club
IBAN: FR64 2004 1010 0108 1834 1V02 211 Swift code: PSSTFRPPBOR
Don’t forget to add your name and ‘Membership Renewal’ as the reference, and if your bank requires an address it is Place Jules Ferry, Bergerac 24100. If you prefer to pay by cheque, it should be made out to DLCI and sent to Rosemary Copley, Membership Secretary, La Closerie de la Beyne, Naussannes 24440.
Please check out the DLCI website at www.dlci.info for up to date news on all our events, as well as the Member of the Month and book club information.
Membership numbers have remained at a pleasing level despite the past difficult months and we would like to extend a warm welcome to our new members. We are very much looking forward to meeting you in person in the near future.
Best wishes
Kathy
COMMITTEE NEWS
This month, two of our longer serving committee members have stepped down having come to the end of their tenure as defined by our statutes. In fact, June Davies has done far more than her allotted time and has kindly stayed on the committee as Treasurer in the absence of anyone else willing to take on the position. I am very appreciative of her commitment, pragmatism and experience and have often sought her wise advice. We are fortunate that Pat Machado has generously offered to take on the role of Treasurer along with that of Webmaster. There will be a gradual handover before Pat officially takes on the position of Treasurer from September.
Pascale Bizet has also made a huge contribution to the DLCI committee and we will miss her energy, enthusiasm and ‘can do’ attitude. Pascale is intending to remain involved with the Bergerac group and I am sure we will continue to see both June and Pascale at DLCI events.
Several of the committee are coming to the end of their official tenure, including me – however, in the interests of stability after such a difficult year I am prepared to stay on as President at least until the AGM unless there are any objections. If any member feels like getting more involved in the Club, please let me know. We are a very friendly group and you are more than welcome to attend a meeting to see what we do.
Kathy
JUNE BIRTHDAYS
Judy Barker
Christel Haverkamp
Sheila Harrell
Teresa Tildesley
Gail Turk
Evelyn Barnardi
Alison Bentley-Ball
Angela McKay
Ann Mary Stanton-Wugerse
Elizabth Avery
Christina Hagstrom
GARDENING IN FRANCE
BY CHRISTINE LEES
Gardening with nature
Now that the spring/summer seems to have arrived at last, we can spend more time outside without dodging rain showers and carry on with planting out tender vegetable plants, non-hardy flowering plants in pots and window boxes, deadheading roses and dealing with the perennial problem of weeds.
I have just as many problems in my garden as the next person, but I have found that gardening without using chemicals brings its own rewards. I can be confident that I'm not harming any wildlife in the garden and perhaps helping to make life easier for small creatures.
I remember years ago hearing somebody say that they had used a spray against greenfly on their roses and then found a nest of dead baby bluetits. I can honestly say that I have never used a spray against greenfly and never had a problem with them - I think as I have many bird feeders in my garden the natural balance of nature takes over. I have always had problems with blackfly on broad beans but I have found that taking the tops off once the pods have started to form, and using an organic spray, when necessary, (which stops the blackfly from breathing but does not harm other insects or birds) stops most of the problem.
I use fleece and fine mesh over vegetables to keep pigeons and cabbage white butterflies off brassica plants, and to keep lettuces and spinach plants moist in the hot weather or to protect from cold and frost in winter. I also plant larger vegetable plants through black plastic to help keep weeds down, it does not look very attractive at first but the plants soon spread over it. You could use grass cuttings or compost instead. If using netting remember to keep it tight over hoops to avoid trapping birds.
I use organic (iron based) slug pellets where necessary, in small quantities around young vegetable plants as they kill slugs and snails but not the animals that eat them.
I must admit that I have a fairly relaxed attitude to lawns, and although I do get a lot of molehills, given the large size of the garden I have learnt to live with them. The soil from molehills makes good potting compost.
Spreading a mulch around your shrubs and other plants in borders helps to keep weeds down, and preserves moisture. This could be a packaged mulch of bark chippings from the garden centre, fallen leaves in autumn or leaf mould, or garden compost. In my front garden the area of rose beds where I had run out of mulch always gets a lot more weeds, whereas in the mulched areas there are fewer weeds and they are easy to pull out. If you have bindweed in your borders, try winding it around a cane (topped with a cork to protect your eyes) and then when there is a mass of bindweed just remove it with the cane.
Finally I will put in a plea for having a wildlife pond, or any pond, in your garden. This will help birds, animals, and insects, and you will also have frogs and toads which will eat the slugs in your garden.
Do take time to sit in your garden and enjoy it - it shouldn't be all about work.
DOMAINE DE COLOMBAT
BY CARELLE SHERWOOD
The garden is looking very colorful after all the rain, and now we are allowed up to 9 guests plus the host, it is making it more worthwhile for the Open Garden scheme to support this worthy cause, for children suffering from cancer.
You can find all the information at www.opengardens.eu for our garden you just enter Mussidan, and
St. Etienne de Puycorbier, comes up, with Domaine de Colombat and lots of photos and directions. To arrange a Rendezvous-vous please email me at carellesherwood@aol.com
DORDOGNE LADIES BOOK CLUB
Dear Book Club members,
This months book passage kindly shared by Sue Morrison
From the book 'Estoril' by Dejan Tiago-Stankowic. It is set in a grand hotel 'Palacio' in Portugal, during WWII, and follows the encounters of a small Jewish boy, smuggled out of France by his parents, with spies, ex-Kings and Refugees.
When he had run out of questions, the manager again had to face the same unpleasant decisions. Sensing his discomfort the boy spoke unprompted for the first time.
'Don't worry, Sir. My parents will come. They always keep their promises.'
'Of course they do,' the manager agreed, nodding his head. He did not have the heart to tell the boy that the only possible decision he could take was to turn him away. The hotel was neither equipped nor qualified to take care of unaccompanied children. This was a commercial enterprise and there was no place for sentimentality.
But the strange boy pressed on.
'Don't worry. I have enough money to pay. I have around twenty-five thousand dollars. I have pounds too. And Swissfrancs. And I also have cut diamonds. See, here they are, in the lining,' he said touching the hem of his rekel as if wanting to make sure that they were still there. 'The money is in my suitcase.'
'What suitcase? Where is it?' asked the manager.
'I left it by the door. Shall I go and fetch it? I am sorry, I'll never leave it like that again.'
Suddenly the manager was not sure what he should do. He was not angry: he simply had a feeling of trepidation and a guilty conscience. How had the boy even survived? What was he to do with him? The room that had been reserved was waiting for him, but what if his parents got held up on the way? What if they never arrived? Given the value of the money the boy was carrying with him, all problems were soluble. Or were they? No, they certainly would not send him to an orphanage. He had enough money to go to a good boarding school in Switzerland or America.
To join the Book Club or for more information please email: Patricia.a.fielding@gmail.com
Once you join you will receive a copy of our book list and have access to our Facebook page
Just for fun
Best wishes and take care.
Patricia Machado
Sue Morrison
ORCHID WALK (21 May 2021)
BY JANE STUMPFLE
Well done all those who braved the dire forecast for all day rain and came out regardless for the orchid walk. In fact we were very lucky as although it was cloudy and cool the weather held dry for the duration of the walk among the orchids and for our lunch. It was perfect orchid weather according to Liz and a great opportunity to meet friends and chat safely in the fresh air after such a long time in isolation.
After meeting up in Serres to collect superb picnic lunch boxes from Le Petit Café we doubled up to avoid too many cars and after a short drive began our walk meandering through a beautiful natural garden with managed oak woodland, stopping to admire and learn the names of at least 8 different orchids. The French lady landowner had helpfully marked each species with coloured stakes and mowed a meandering path though the long grass to guide us through. So in small groups we wandered at our own pace finding many more of each orchid species and other wild flowers dotted around in the grassy meadow. Some were the common ones like the pyramid orchid and some I had never seen before. Liz is so knowlegeable we learned much more than the names and how to recognize species variations, but also how orchids grow and propagate themselves.
Goat Orchid
Lizard Orchid
Woodcock Orchid (ophyris bécasse)
Bee Orchid (ophyris abeille)
Greater Butterfly Orchid (platanthera variant)
Bog Orchid (anacamptis philofaxifolia)
Another short walk across a road then took
us up into a nearby field where Liz and the French farmer showed us a rarer bog orchid, not usually found growing in this area. Some rare species can be lost when fields are merged and plowed for crops but hopefully not this one.
Returning to Serres to pick up cars and after a drive through the back roads we had a further opportunity to chat whilst lunching at small tables in an airy barn. A big thank you for the trouble taken to arrange this barn with seating, tablecloths and vases of garden flowers - so much better than sitting on damp grass in a field!
In all this was a lovely day to lift our spirits and give us new memories so I will end with a big thank you to all those involved in arranging everything so beautifully.
POETRY CORNER
The origins of this months poem Adlestrop lie in an event that took place on 24 June 1914, while English poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was on the Oxford to Worcester express train. The train made an unscheduled stop at Adlestrop (formerly Titlestrop) in Gloucestershire, a tiny village in the Cotswolds.
Thomas took the opportunity to fill his notebook with his observations of the place – he was a prolific keeper of nature journals – before the train started up again.
Thomas had taken up poetry relatively late in life, having tried his hand at being a reviewer and critic. It was the American poet Robert Frost who encouraged Thomas to give poetry a go. Frost, who saw something in the largely unknown Thomas, then in his mid-thirties, said wittily that Thomas’s problem was that he ‘was suffering from a life of subordination to his inferiors.’ Indeed, Edward Thomas was on his way to Robert Frost’s home near Ledbury on that momentous day ‘in late June’ when his train made that unexpected stop at Adlestrop.
One of the other reasons for the poem’s popularity lies in the date on which that unscheduled stop occurred. 24 June 1914 is just six weeks before the outbreak of WWI. After that, as Philip Larkin put it, ‘Never such innocence again.’ Like Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester‘, ‘Adlestrop’ describes the England of sunny innocence before August 1914, when the First World War would change everything.
The train, symbol of modernity and movement, stops and allows Thomas, too, to stop, pause, contemplate, observe, and admire the surroundings. The increasingly busy and fast-moving world suddenly slows right down to allow a brief moment – ‘that minute’ – to enjoy nature and stillness, peace and beauty. This is, suddenly, a world of stillness and slowness again, not the bustling modern world: ‘No one left and no one came / On the bare platform.’
The War would change poetry, too, with the style and world-view of the Georgian poets (with whom Thomas was associated) soon being challenged by modernists like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Thomas himself would be killed in the War in 1917, before ‘Adlestrop’ was published.
ADLESTROP
Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
MEMBER’S PHOTOS
‘Mother Nature is the best gardener of all. I could never have gotten these foxgloves to grow (let alone bloom) on the wall. They come back even better each year!’
Sent in by Bonnie Brower
PETS CORNER
My first birthday!
Kathy’s Hector
PHOTO REQUEST
We would love to include more of your photos inluding those for Pets Corner in the next Newsletter. Simply email me lin.green100@gmail.com (no later than 27th June) with the photo and where it is. They will be published in the next months newsletter.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
FRIDAY 11th JUNE – LALUNDE WALK
Helder Machado will lead the walk which will start at 9.30am. The 8 km circular route follows the canal out of Lalinde then uphill along scenic paths before returning.
Please meet in the car park behind the mairie and check Facebook on the day as a message will be added at 8am if it is necessary to cancel due to inclement weather. Suitable footwear is recommended
Donations to the DLCI on the day please.
FRIDAY 18th JUNE – APERO EVENING
Friday 18 June from 6pm – 8pm: Apéro Evening at June Davies’ home in Mazières-Naresse, about 2km outside Villeréal on the Issigeac road. Please let Teresa Tildesley know by 11 June (teresa.tildesley@orange.fr) if you would like to come. Husbands/partners are invited and we ask for a donation of 10 euros per person to cover costs and a donation to DLCI charity funds
OTHER NEWS
Dana Manier (one of our members) has a fabulous exhibition on the 5th and 6th June at Saint – Aulaye. I’m sure she would appreciate our support
JOB VACANCY
Vacancy for a teacher in Bergerac, preferably a nurse or another healthcare related profession.
A Nursing School will be opening in Bergerac in September. It is a joint venture between John Bost and Bagatelle Nursing School (in Bordeaux).
I am the coordinator for English for Nurses in Bordeaux and I am looking for a teacher in Bergerac, preferably a nurse, or another healthcare related profession.
It is for about 14 classes over the school year. For the first year it will be only First Year Students.I will train you, our program is well developed and structured.
If you are interested, please contact me, Pascale Degorce pascaledegorce@gmail.com
