Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Centipede, birds return, daffodil scents

I like putting a name to things so the garden wildlife book I found the other day came in useful when, while digging, I bumped into a creature which I have been familiar with all my life - a centipede. But which one? My book defines it as Geophilus carpophagus. It is reddish brown and has 45 - 55 pairs of legs. I get more pleasure from looking it up than watching it wriggling back into the soil.

This morning I was missing the backbirds and robins which kept me company in the vegetable garden last year. Had the marmalade cat scared them off? No sooner had I had thought the thought, than a robin and a male and female blackbird arrived on the fence together. Were they the same birds as last year? The robin certainly wasn't, being younger and sleeker, though it still put its head on one side when it looked at me. That, I guess, is in the nature of the bird. The blackbirds might have been the same, but there are so many of them around, and I can't tell one from the other.

A beautiful thing is the scent of the freshly picked daffodils arranged in a vase in the hall.

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