Already!

I hadn't expected my butterfly year to start this soon – my English one, that is: Wellington abounded, as ever, in Monarchs and Yellow Admirals – but, walking down the road just now, I glanced into a garden and there, on a laurel hedge, was a basking Peacock, wings spread wide, soaking up what energy it could from the weak winter sun. A gloriously unexpected sight on a day when frost had been on the ground just hours earlier.