A pair of Toucans have taken up residence at the farm, where we spent new year.   Early morning they would be in the sweetest mango trees, calling to each other in their distinctive croaky voices.  There is a wire basket on a long bamboo cane that we use to scoop the fruits for ourselves but it's no less unwieldy than the Toucan's oversize beak and I'm sorry to say I sent good old and short-sighted Ze onto the roof to grab a bucket-load for my mango chutney before the birds got them all.

As far as the fruits of the garden, 2013 bodes well: The lychee tree, unlike some years, is in a generous mood.  Truly nothing better on a hot day than a tangled armful of knobbly pink fruits on the vine, fresh from the tree.  Peeling off the papery skin and then slurping at the slippery, sweet, fragrantly juicy flesh.  Best eaten outside, so you can throw the seeds and skins into the jungle, and then wash the stickiness away by plunging in the pool.  Tough life.

Papaya as always, limes too, and truck-loads of bananas of various girths, picked green before our hungry feathered friends got to them.  We stuffed all this fruit into our tiny car, the kids periodically yelping as huge displaced ants crawled over them.

Now we're back in Rio I have to figure out what to do with all the fruits before they rot and succumb to a whirling swarm of fruit flies!