The biannual pond cleaning has always captured the kid's imaginations, as evidenced by Justin's timeless philosophical question "Why is water?" This year's cleaning again elicited fun and hijinks, but unfortunately it was literally too messy for pictures.
The kids were engrossed by this process from the moment I reached into the water and hauled out our back breaking pots of water lillies. The kids are grossed out by the alien looking stems themselves, but an aggressive outbreak of green string algae sent them over the top. By their reactions to watching me remove all the mess with my bare hands, I'm mildly shocked that they will allow me near them, shower with antibacterial soap or no. They were thoroughly disgusted by scoop after scoop of brownish-black pond muck, plant roots, rocks and all the fallen oak leaves.
Justin, who swears that a "creature" lives in our pond, scanned the surface nervously and excitedly while talking a mile a minute. He couldn't decide whether to run away or get in front of me for a closer view. Norah and Justin did both as soon as I asked "Does anyone want to see dragonfly babies?" They instantly forgot about their aversion to yucky things and squatted beside me, nearly knocking me into the pond, as they jockeyed to position their faces as close to the critters as possible while I told them the Cliff's notes version of the life cycle. Since dragonflies are beneficial insects and eat mosquitoes, which the kids hate worse than craneflies, we suddenly were on a mission to rescue all of the nymphs in each net full of debris. I was amazed that they never tired of this undertaking and every new nymph drew as much excitement as the first as they crawled about. We lost count somewhere after rescue number 12.
With all of the home nature lessons it's either going to become a lifelong treasure for them, or they will get straight A's in biology despite hating it. Time will tell.
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