1. The bramble flowers strike me as unusually large this year -- almost like dog roses that have been through the wash too many times and come out faded and crumpled.
2. Coaxing a bee out of the window with a piece of card. Bees never seem frantic or annoyed -- they just keep trying, systematically, to find the way out.
3. As I test my son on his French, I think that his neat, cramped handwriting is very much his own -- nothing like mine; nothing like Nick's.