Earthworms

Twice a year, almost everybody who's anybody in the home furnishings world flocks to the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., to display and view the very latest in furniture and accessories for the home. It's the place to discover trends and bright new stars, to divine what the hot colors will be, to see what manufacturers expect consumers to go for. Here are some highlights from last month's show: The British are invading again, but this time they're not trashing the furniture, they're selling it. Probably the most notable collection is from a newcomer to these shores, though not to the business: Harrod's, London's famous department store, through Highland House, with 55 pieces based on the store's 150-year-old archives.

LONDON -- In usually damp, gray England, where complaining about the weather is a national pastime, the sky is blue, it's warm, and it hasn't really rained all summer.Naturally, everyone is miserable.The temperature in most of the country has been well into the 80s most days this month, which does not sound stifling except to people whose offices are not always air conditioned and whose homes and cars almost never are."You try sitting in a hot cab all day, mate," one London taxi driver snapped the other day when asked why all his compatriots were so grouchy.

FEEDING TIME AT Piney Run Park Nature Center is a busy time for naturalist Elaine Sweitzer. She prepares meals for snakes, birds of prey, toads, frogs, snapping turtles, honeybees and fish. All these species are kept in various habitats around the nature center. Sweitzer enjoys feeding the animals, but has to prepare some very unusual meals. Some of the snakes eat mice (stored frozen and thawed for meal time). The toads and frogs like live crickets. The garter snakes like live goldfish to prey upon.

DOWNE, England -- Charles Darwin's house is rotting away.There is wood worm in the study where he wrote "Origin of Species." His laboratory is a ruined pile of bricks. His beloved sand walk, used for exercise and thought, is muddy and #F overgrown.Does anyone care?A race is under way to raise $4.8 million and save the residence Darwin called Down House, his home from 1842 until his death in 1882. Scientists are speaking out to attract public attention to the cause. London's Natural History Museum is seeking to extract millions from the proceeds of Britain's National Lottery.

What's for dinner? Storks eat insects, earthworms, plants and fish. Special Delivery ... The stork is a very large bird with long legs, a large straight bill, and broad wings. Storks prefer warm climates and live in savannahs fields and wetlands. They fly with their neck outstretched and rely on wind currents. The stork feeds by sight and touch.

Learn how to leave a "no trace" campsite, plant and prune a tree, enlist earthworms in composting or understand your septic system at a Carroll County environmental festival today.Activities at Earthworks '98, the county government's first environmental festival, will range from face painting and a chance to sample "dirt pudding" -- chocolate pudding, chocolate cookie crumbs and gummy worms -- to programs on native plants, water conservation and assessing the health of a stream by studying its insect life.

They're slimy, wiggly and eat garbage. Children love them, and so do gardeners. They're worms, squirmy little composters that turn table scraps into rich fertilizer.This week, kindergartner Scotty Horigan got a close look at these industrious critters -- maybe a little too close for his taste."They feel squiggly, like spit," said the Ellicott City 6-year-old, gingerly dropping a bunch of dirt-covered worms into a cut-off plastic soda bottle to make his very own home composter as part of a program sponsored by state and county agricultural officials.

In between all the fun - making sun prints of leaves, digging in the soil and searching for earthworms - there was learning going on. The second-graders at the Waldorf School in North Baltimore were learning about science and the environment. And their teachers - eighth-graders with special needs at nearby Dr. Roland N. Patterson Senior Academy - were learning how to be leaders. "I love working with the kids with stuff," said Leviticus Wilburn, 14, at the schools' last hands-on activity Thursday.

They came Wednesday to raise a stink, worried that spreading sludge on farmland will contaminate the food supply, kill earthworms and turn Carroll into a dumping ground for waste."