Quite appeeling

My silver birch tree is slowly moulting its outer bark to reveal pristine new shiny bark underneath.  It's rather good seeing the tree renew itself and shed the old skin.

I did the 'big shop' today.  There will only be the two of us at Christmas but somehow we always seem to have enough food to cater for a large family.  We are having a small goose for Christmas dinner  but most of the accompaniments will be pretty traditional.  The exception will be the Prunes in Armagnac (courtesy of the superb Delia Smith Christmas book) and while I was out shopping W started to prepare those.  The goose arrived yesterday and is sitting in the outside fridge so I think we can pretty much hunker down and enjoy the season now!