Saturday, April 15, 2006

Springtime Yard Fun

It's probably all to the best that living things in the front yard don't have a way of wondering why human children do to them the strange things they do.

A worm is contentedly wriggling about in the soil. Daddy's edger turns it up, he calls the titches to come see, and it's friendship at first sight. The elder titch scoops it up with her sand shovel, carries it off and places it on a church bulletin, and balances it carefully, to take inside and show Mommy. After being told that it can't come inside, and that it needs to stay moist, she brings it back outside. With that praiseworthy but vaguely disquieting intensity small children bring to their self-imposed little tasks, she carries it to the front stoop, spreads out some dirt from her bucket, places the worm thereupon, and carefully spritzes it with water from Mommy's squirt atomizer.

A wild strawberry is growing in a patch in the lawn. The titches discover them, but are told that they should not eat them. Soooo.... The titches picked a handful, went and got some water balloons they had earlier made out of latex gloves, asked me to untie them, dropped the strawberries inside, asked me to tie them back up, and scampered off to show Mommy their new toys.

Water balloons out of latex gloves are fairly obvious. But who except a small child would think of putting strawberries in them? Such are the workings of childhood wonder.

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