Salad Days

We've been having some wonderful weather recently. Eve and I have had picnics for lunch and dinner for two days straight. We've laid on our backs looking at the clouds (and bald eagles!). The peas we planted are shooting up. Hooray for May!

We went garage-saling today with the wagon. Eve got a tub full of plastic dinosaurs. I imagine that these dinosaurs, if they previously belonged to a typical boy, are in culture shock. Their days will no longer include mortal battles between the tyrannosauri and the triceratopses (sorry, Uncle Alan). They have been assigned into familial roles (Mommy, Daddy, Big Sister, Brand-new Baby, etc). And they had better get used to eating "sand salad" (a mixture of sand and leaves), which Eve prepares lovingly for them in large amounts.

What can I say? She's a girl.

We saw a swarm of ants on the sidewalk (**shudder**) and she thought they were having a party. She decided that some of them might want to go swimming in her watering can. I won't allow her to mistreat worms, but I did let her play with the ants (partially because I couldn't actually watch her pick them up (**double shudder**)).

Eve found a tulip petal, and set it on the front steps to save it. When we came out the next day, a few ants were crawling on it. I asked her if they were having another ant party. She said, "No, they're just pollinating it."

I tell her all sorts of sciency stuff, because, well, I think it's interesting. We talked about electric eels earlier this week. But clearly, she thinks I make most of it up out of my crazy head. As we were enjoying our picnic dinner this evening, I killed a mosquito that was buzzing around us. Eve expressed a little interest, so I launched into one of my lectures, with all sorts of interesting factoids, like how they find you by smelling the CO2 in your breath, and that baby mosquitoes are wriggly worm-like things that live in stagnant water, and so on. Eve, eager to join in on the crazy mosquito story, added, "Yeah! And the big sister mosquitoes will give you a shock right on your head if you are stinky!" And we laughed (what else can you do?), because it makes as much sense as the stuff I was saying.

We also giggled at a crow today, who sat on our roof and dropped a nut in our gutter, then cawed loudly (probably wondering where his nut went), then flapped away. Eve felt sorry for him once I explained that he probably wanted to crack the nut open and eat it, so she left a little sand salad out for him.