And who are you? Said he.
Don't puzzle me, said I.
Laurence Sterne
It is late. Lucy, my saviour with a shotgun, has gone home. She really is, I am discovering, a most delightful companion: good-humoured, capable, kind. How lucky I was to meet her. And I owe it all to a wolf. Hm.
Where was I? Yes… it's late. Lucy has gone and the barbecue is cooling down. Glimmers of light still flicker in the garden, stars shine and I am here transfixed… watching spiders.
An hour ago while clearing up, I came upon this little mass of spiders' eggs just on the point of hatching. Out they came and off they went, amazing specks of curious and puzzled life, hundreds of 'em. And the breeze caught some and blew them around. Others got no further than the flower pot they emerged in. And now here's one of them, ascending step by step (times eight!) the stem of a rose, overhanging my deckchair, overhanging my head. A rose is not a simple flower, you know. Its convolutions are remarkable, like Russian dolls (a rose in a rose in a rose). And up and up and into it, at last the tiny spiderling proceeds. Its near-invisible legs negotiating the hairy surface of a petal. Over the ragged edge of the rose and out of sight. Its investigations, you might say, have just begun. What will it find?