Jelly or Jell-o?

Fruit flavoured gelatin - 'jelly' in British English - Jello in some other parts of the world - but whatever you call it, it's not famous for its tensile strength. Nailing it to a tree is going to involve a bit of jiggery-pokery, whatever that means.

Most jelly in the UK is sold in concentrated, rubbery blocks - this one weighs 128g and is sufficient to make up about a pint of ordinary set jelly dessert.

Grammes and pints, eh? Yes. That's exactly how it works here.

Normal procedure would be to cut up the block into pieces, dissolve/melt it into a quarter pint of boiling water, then make up to a full pint with cold water, before pouring into a mould or bowl and leaving to set.

But normal procedure isn't going to work here - the resulting set jelly would just be too flaccid and fragile - so I just made it up with about 100ml of boiling water and poured it into a small bowl.

The jelly was then left to set in the fridge overnight.

The following day, the jelly had set to a firm, resilient block - turned out here, ready to go...

So here I am - nailing jelly to a tree!

There it is then: Nailing Jelly To A Tree - not really all that difficult after all.

For the record, the tree was unharmed by this action - I used smooth masonry nails and they were only tapped about half a centimetre into the outer bark layer. The local woodpeckers do worse. I hugged the tree better afterwards.