Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Bugles & granfergrigs



The first bugle flowers opened on May Day, a fitting welcome for summer (if one takes the seasons as starting on the cross quarter days).

The Metre also seems to have been invaded by the common pill woodlouse, Armadillidium vulgare ('granfergrigs' as we used to call them when I was a child in Somerset). There were six or eight yesterday and this is usually the scarcest of the six species I have so far found in M3. For several to appear at once implies that they go round together like the Seven Samurai. As the picture above shows, A. vulgare always rolls up into a perfect sphere with all its bits tucked in.

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