Nick and Caroline came visiting today, bearing a gift of fresh eggs from their own Buff Orpintons. Vasari wrote in his ‘Lives of the Artists’  that the Florentine Piero de Cosimo (1462 – 1522) lived largely on hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared 50 at a time while boiling glue for use in his (egg) tempera artworks. Vasari wrote that he lived “more like a beast than a man” and was not inclined to clean his studio. I hope to be more rigorous with the broom and also manage a more varied diet, but I do share Piero’s love of landscape and quest for knowledge of flora and of animal life.