Shrimp, Birds and Stones

Yesterday, me and my mother went to the lake in the nature sanctuary. I stayed in the water for two hours. I made a lot of friends. The best one was the shrimp, which stayed in my hand and let me feed it. It stayed with me for about a half hour. It would follow me around and eat plankton off dead plants which were floating around in the water.

I also cleaned up the lake to help my other friends, the clams. You see, there are clams on the bottom of the lake, but when people walk in the water, they might crush the clams. So I searched the bottom of the lake and picked up the clams and put them in the reeds instead, because no one ever walks in the reeds. I also made friends with a fish, whom I am pretty sure was a baby pike.

Oh and I did something brave! Me and my mother swam out to the white waterlilies. I love white waterlilies, but I'm a little bit afraid of swimming among waterlilies, as their stealks and pads tend to scarily brush your leg! But it's less scary when you're swimming with your mom and she says she's not afraid of waterlilies at all. I'm not really afraid of them either, I just have this instinct from my childhood, that it's scary to swim where things brush your legs.

There was this cool bird circling the lake. I remember how it looked. It was pretty big. It was brown on its back and white on its underside. It had some dark spots on the underside of its wings and a thick dark line near the wingtip, on the underside, but not exactly at the wingtip. I cannot exactly recall if its belly was just white or if it was spotted. The bird kept diving down to fish, I guess.

After I was done swimming, I got dressed and started walking home. I stopped a lot along the way to try and identify some flowers, but I found out there are a lot of flower species that are basically identical, so it was pretty difficult. I guess it doesn't matter so much to know exactly what variation of the flower it is, but I do like to try and find an identity for them! Which, by the way, I still haven't managed to do, concerning the bird!

When I got home, I tried to photograph an apple. Should be an easy task for a photographer, but it was so hard to really show the beautiful color of the apple. It was pale yellow, with burgundy brown-red uneven stripes on it. It was so beautiful. I think someone ended up eating it or baking a pie with it or something, but I don't know who got the honor of eating that beautiful apple.

Today, I went out to get an acorn for a magic spell, but then I noticed there really aren't any acorns around, must be the wrong season for acorns I guess. My fat cat Tifa followed me. I saw another cat, which looked a lot like another cat I know, so I figured they must be siblings or something. I cuddled and played with that cat, but my cat got kinda jealous, I think.

There were no acorns, but there were little tiny trees spurting up everywhere, those tiny tiny ones that are like maybe 4 inches - a foot, more or less. The little baby trees that usually get cut off by the lawnmower before they get to be big trees. I figured I could dig up one of the smallest ones and plant it at home. I tried, but it was hard to dig with my nails in the ground. There were so many roots everywhere, I didn't want to damage them.

I couldn't get the little tree up that I tried, but instead I could get two other little trees up. Unfortunately, on one tree I didn't get the root, but on one, luckily, I got a small part of the root, so I put it in a little bottle of water in my room. I will see if it grows! I considered giving it a name, maybe like Ayodele or something nice like that, but then I decided that just calling it "the tree" or "baby" would suffice.

I still needed an acorn, so I asked my mother for the plastic bag in which my stones and pine cones are. Then I found she had made the idiotic move of pouring them out in the garden and over the pet cemetery! Stupid! I said I hadn't properly gone through the stones yet, to decide which ones go indoors and which ones go outdoors. I just hope she's not gonna go as dumb as her father.

My mom said she had forgotten that and figured the stones were safe in the pet cemetery, but the thing is, children walk by there and can take my lovely little stones! My mom said she felt so sorry she could throw up. She said she wanted to give me a stone, to make up for her mistake. She said it was black and white and oval.

She couldn't find it and said that maybe she had already given it to me earlier, so I took out my gem box and asked, "was it a gem?" and she said "no, it was just a beautiful pebble." And so I said it was probably in the garden or at the pet cemetery, as I had put all my non-gem stones in that bag which she had poured out all over the land.

And so she plucked up my stones, washed them and let me go through them all. Most of my precious babies, I told my mom to put in the garden. Some tiny ones, I put in a glass jar. The pine cones, I think, can be put anywhere in nature, they tend to rot anyway. There are still a few little stones which I am not sure where they are. My tiny flint stones and the cute black one my sister gave me. Maybe they're still in my room somewhere, at least the flintstones might be.

And now my mom says she wants me to have a piece of her jewelry instead. I said "I already have all your antique jewelry in my room", but she's like "But I want to give you a piece of jewelry". You see, my mom lets me keep my favorites of her jewelry in my room. I especially like the oldest ones and the ones with precious stones.

I Have The Loveliest Friends

Today I went out to look for my friend Cleo. He's outdoors most of the time and always affectionate. I don't know the people who own him, I've never even seen them, but I know him and I know where he lives. First I looked around where I usually find him, but he wasn't there. Then I looked into his garden and there he lay resting. I called for him a little, "Cleo, come here, kitty!" and after a while he ran up to the fence and climbed up and I lifted him out.

We sometimes sat on a rock together and sometimes on the ground. Sometimes I carried him around in my arms and sometimes I just sat and looked at him, while he rolled around in the grass. He is a big, white cat with beautiful soft fur and a little pink nose. He is mostly nice, but sometimes he starts biting me, but he's easy to fend off, it's as simple as to put him down on the ground or walk two steps away from him and he gets that you're not in the mood for cat wrestling. Then he's cuddly and affectionate again.

Suddenly, I saw a beautiful, smiling face in a window. My little friend was waving at me and I waved back. I told her I was just out playing with the white cat and she suggested we play tomorrow. I said maybe, if we're both outdoors and not busy. It was her bedtime and I said maybe she should go to bed. She asked if I wasn't going home, but I said I might stay out and play with the cat a while.

She's only four but she asks the wisest questions. "Why are you playing?", "I like playing with this cat." "Why are you playing with the cat?", "He's a nice cat." I said goodnight to my friend and we waved again. I lifted up the cat and I made him wave a little too. He's a pretty calm cat, so he doesn't really mind if you make him wave a little.

June, So Far

On the first of June, me and my mom spent some time in the garden. She was blowing bubbles, when I decided to play with water balloons. At first, I just threw them up in the air and caught them, but then I started to on purpose let them fall on my head, splashing me. One balloon was leaking, so I held it over my head and pretended like it was a shower - It was actually a pretty good shower. Then my mom said that maybe I could shower in the garden and I thought that was a great idea. I put on my bathing suit and I played with some more water balloons. Then I rubbed my skin in with my soap and my hair in with my shampoo. Then my mother poured a big bucket of warm water over me. Then another bucket. It was actually really nice. Temperature was just perfect!

On the second of June, my mom told me "There's a toad living under the garden steps." I lifted out all the bags of soil and whatnot and looked under the steps. When I saw the toad, I put my arm in there and pulled it out. Sure enough, a male toad, dry and covered in spider web, but in perfect health. We couldn't let the toad live in our garden, because the cats might chase it. I at first suggested that I just release it in the forest, but then I remembered that lots of people walk their dogs there. Besides, there aren't any lakes or water streams near our village, so it's only wet enough when it rains. I suggested we take the toad to the nature sanctuary and my mother agreed. The nature sanctuary is a great place for toads and it's actually a very popular place for toads, they usually hatch there. Perhaps this toad was hatched there and wanted to find a new place - But, wherever it was from and wherever it was going, the best place for a toad to be is the nature sanctuary and surely not our backyard. Since all the family members with a driver's licence are in America at the moment, we had to walk to the nature sanctuary. My mom prepared the portable terrarium after my instructions. Terrarium bark at the bottom, sprayed with water and a water bowl with shallow water. I decided to name the toad Lars-Arne and I put him in the terrarium and off we went. My mom packed my bathing suit just in case I would want to have my first swim of the year. It was a long walk, but when we were finally in the nature sanctuary, it was yet another long walk, because I wanted to find just the right spot to release the toad. When we finally got up to the pond, where I'd seen tadpoles some years ago, I went a little bit into the forest, crouched down on the mud and held my hand out. The toad carefully skipped away and lay itself in the shade of a log on the mud. I had, of course, been really careful with the toad while carrying it in the terrarium and the toad was in perfect health and lively as ever when I released it. Then we went to the rocks, where we usually swim. I put on my bathing suit and got in the water. I probably spent twenty minutes in there!

The third of June, we went to the nature sanctuary again. This time we visited the place opposite the rocks, on the other side of the lake. It's kind of rocky, but you can walk in, there are reeds and waterlilies there and lots of bugs and fish and sometimes some sea birds. I saw a small snake, however when it saw me, it got a bit scared and started swimming in the other direction. It actually dove and swam along the bottom! It was a newly hatched garter snake with lovely yellow markings. Me and my mom were bathing for quite a while, the water was so warm. After a while we got out of the water and got dressed. I went into the cow pasture for a while, but the cows seemed a bit shy. I tried holding grass in my hands and slowly approaching them. One cow with huge horns actually slowly walked up to me - It was a little bit scary, I prefer the ones without horns. It just licked the grass in my hands once (It was long grass, it didn't lick my hands) and then it just forgot about it and started shaking flies away. Some of the cows went knee-deep into the lake to drink water. It was quite a pretty sight!

I wonder what I'm gonna do today.