A Tree Of Two Halves

There's a cherry tree in a garden on my in-laws' street which has a top half that lags several weeks behind its bottom half. When the lower branches were blossoming the upper branches were bare- and I assumed it was dying. Now the bottom branches are in leaf and the upper branches are blossoming. I've never seen anything like it before.

Bad Times Just Around The Corner

The Euro is foundering. The guys in charge are preparing to cut Greece loose like a broken spar. I've no idea what the next few years are going to be like for us Europeans, but I think they'll be interesting (in the Chinese sense).

Yesterday Francois Hollande's inauguration parade was rained on and his plane (on its way to Berlin and a confab with Angela Merkel) got struck by lightning. It must be nice not to believe in omens...