Country diary: A slow worm slowly warms in the palm of my hand | Amy-Jane Beer

Welburn, North Yorkshire: She’s the first I’ve seen of the year, sleepy at first, then animating into a living sculptureAfter the disarming warmth of early April, a few cold nights serve as a reset, and when I go out to collect the milk there is still a chill in the shade and the celandines are tightly closed. The sun is falling full on one of the sheets of corrugated metal I lay out in spring as warming refugia for cold-blooded creatures.I peek beneath to see the first sleepy s