Warning; Gross!

This is the plane tree at Tsip, resplendent in its winter nudity. A little ramp runs up and down over its roots behind the trunk and this is used to get Bobcats on and off their transporting trucks.

It stands to reason that our diet over the last several days has been unusually meat-rich. Without going into detail we have been using up those parts best not frozen, the kind of stuff that one might find rather more readily in a rural farmhouse kitchen than a swanky London restaurant. So for some light relief I decided to make fasolakia. I went out to the shed where we keep the freezer to fetch a goodly portion of home-grown French beans and Oh My God!! The stench! This is where the pelt is hanging and it was not smelling good at all. Not only that but there was a huge juicy bluebottle standing on the pelt staring at me gloating. Its legs were wide apart and it had its hands over its knees in classic goalkeeper pose. “Betcha can't find all the eggs I've laid!” it seemed to say. I emptied half a can of fly-spray in there and spent some time drilling tiny holes in mothballs and threading them together into necklaces using fishing line in the hope that this will suffice. I fear it won't. I fear that a maggoty pelt will shortly be jettisoned into the sea somewhere, but meanwhile, it looks just how I imagine Lady Gaga's Christmas tree would look.