catkins, daffodils, i player

Hazel catkins. Once in my green and salad days I met a girl at a party who said that her name was Catkin Hazel. I may have dreamed it or she may have been pulling my leg. But whenever I see lambs tails at this time of year I think of Catkin Hazel and hope that she was real.

It's daffodil time again. This year there are new drifts of them in the Grove because, last year there were one or two bulb-planting exercises in which local children were involved. The brazen trumpets are back with a vengeance and there can be no regrets.

By chance on the ever resourceful BBC web site, I discover that BBC i Player allows you to play back TV features, even films, for a week after their first appearance. (I knew about the facility with radio programmes, but not with TV). The quality is astonishing. This afternoon, I find myself watching yesterday's episode of Nature's Great Events on the computer screen, and hearing the mellifluous voice of David Attenborough from unaccustomed speakers. The sight of water spreading over the Okavango wetland in the usually parched Kalahari Desert, and the animals, particularly the stoic elephants responding to the flood, is moving like an opera or ballet, or an epic poem.