Dr. Livingstone I presume?

I was about to come across Dr. Livingstone any moment. Or else the cast of a popular UK TV reality show ending in “get me out of here!” The bamboo behind me was up to about 12 feet tall. Bamboo does have many uses - as supports for beans, peas, vines, young trees, as building material for compost heaps, furniture, great for starting a fire even when wet, the latest alternative textile fibre, much better and environmentally friendly than cotton, the leaves make a great mulch to suppress weeds – but boy is it invasive! These towering monsters were only cut down less than a year ago. I’m thinking we should get ourselves a panda bear. They eat this stuff don’t they? That way we can probably charge people to come and see it, which would also improve our finances. And bear sh… manure probably makes good compost. Anyone know of a well stocked pet shop where we can buy a panda? Or some equivalent to the “Battersea Panda Home”?

The weather has brightened up again today, but it has got cold. The distant mountains of the Apennines are now definitively covered by snow. We have now covered our lemon and kumquat for the winter as they are not frost-hardy.