Transportation by Bubbles

Yesterday I discovered that I am never going to be able to one-up God when it comes to creativity. You see, back in high school for art class we had to come up with an imaginary animal and draw a sketch of it. I came up with this fluffy bird/insect creature that is the size of a tennis ball, eats pussy willows (which is where it gets its soft fluffyness from), and propels itself through the air by bubble-power. That's right: bubbles shooting out of its rear cause it to fly.

Creative right?

Not so much, as I just found out. I was reading the new National Geographic that arrived in the mail the other day (thanks for the subscription Papa T!) and discovered that there are such creatures that move using bubbles! I didn't come up with anything new at all. God totally came up with the idea before me. Admittedly, the bubble-powered creature is not at all as cute and fluffy as mine is, but I mean, c'mon, its real mode of transportation is by bubbles. Just like my fantasy animal. How cool is that?

Actually, I should say, "How gross is that?" because the animal happens to be this snail that lives deep in the ocean. Its bubbles are made out of mucus and it creates this big bubble-raft which it then glides across, since it can't exactly swim. See a picture here.

I am rather chagrined though, because when I went for a walk with mom I noticed the pussy willows had already puffed out and gone to seed! So I missed their small, silky soft stage and I didn't get to say our pussy willow poem. Normally, they wouldn't have gone to seed for another couple weeks. But then again, having warm weather come early is not a bad trade off. Not at all. I picked a bouquet of daffodils on the 20th, which is the earliest I have ever done so! Apparently they are in pretty high demand, though, because as I walked back down the road toward the house, my neighbor practically molested me he wanted them so bad. Okay, so I guess him asking "do you want to give those to me?" doesn't count as molestation but I do get rather protective of my flowers.

We are also getting our garden all prepared. Dad plowed a 75X100 foot rectangle out in the four acre field, just across the upper driveway. It is intimidatingly big. I don't think we've had one that big (or near as big) since we sold the cows. But I think we'll need every bit of space, and I definitely will be busy this summer (but hooray that I won't be busy with summer classes!).

Besides a bigger garden, we've got to give the chickens a bigger coop, seeing as the chicken family tripled in size. So today after church we came home and cleaned out the woodshed, which we will convert into a (hotel size) coop in lieu of buying all the supplies it would take to build one. That was an interesting experience. We now have piles of sundry (hey look Mom! When I pronounced that word in my head I used the long E sound instead of an I!) tools, machines, sleds, boxes, bottles, wheels, stove parts, and tires etc. in the driveway awaiting relocation. The coolest things we found were the hubcaps to the old Ford truck, and a mama mouse with her 5 babies, which are now safe in a hollow log deep in the forest (Isaac: *holding mama mouse by the neck*Shall I get this over with quickly? Me: *squeal* NO!! I shall put them in the woods and they SHALL LIVE!!!!).

After that, we had an impromptu gun-shooting session. From our cleaning, we had found this big cardboard frame, so Isaac and I taped some heavy-duty paper over it, and then I spray painted (very badly, I might add) a target on it. So we took turns shooting my .410 and also the .44.

And I've got to go because I am sneezing my head off and I need some tea, or something. I thought this was allergies at first, but it is definitely a head cold. However, it's like the first cold I've had in about 6 months, so I'm saying the 5,000 IUs of vitamin D a day definitely help!