Pollywogs

Max enjoyed the view of the pond while Pam and I ate donuts and drank coffee.

Last week Max and I joined friends for a walk at Pandapas Pond. It's a nice thing we do from time to time. We'd both like to go for walks around the pond more often. We should probably try to set up a regular schedule. Maybe every second Friday, if the weather cooperates. I know Max would be totally onboard with that.

It was a beautiful spring day with blue skies and sunshine, though a bit chilly at the beginning of our walk. I was glad Pam suggested we each bring our own coffee and she very kindly brought delicious donuts from Carol Lee's. If you've been to Carol Lee Donuts in Blacksburg, you know those donuts are the best. We walked about a third of the way around the pond before stopping at a convenient picnic table to enjoy our coffee and donuts.

Before arriving at the picnic table, we crossed the wooden footbridge at the upper end of the pond. One glance into the pond water near the bridge and, "Wow! Look at all those tadpoles!" or pollywogs as they are sometimes called. I remember my dad would use that word occasionally. Both tadpole and pollywog are funny words, aren't they?

The water was teeming with the little squiggly black blobs. Their thin tails were propelling them in every direction creating what appeared to be a string of black clouds near the edge of the pond. This is, as you probably know, the larvae stage of amphibians.

I'm not sure if we actually talked briefly about how it seemed like every year of elementary school someone would bring in a jar of tadpoles or if I just thought it in my mind. It was fun and exciting to watch the tadpoles grow legs and transform into frogs. As I remembered watching the process, both at school and also along the edges of Grandpa's pond, I wondered if kids today have a similar experience. My guess was, 'no they do not'. There's probably some rule against having tadpoles in the classroom due to a risk of salmonella poisoning. I suppose it could also be a lack of interest on the teacher's part due to hyper-focus on SOLs or simply not wanting to fool with the mess and distraction the tadpoles might be.

I texted a niece and a nephew to see if they'd ever had a big glass jar of tadpoles in a classroom. As I suspected, neither had. It's sort of a shame, isn't it? Or am I being overly sentimental about the hands-on experiences kids used to have in science class?

We followed a couple Canadian Geese back to the parking lot. Max wanted to make friends, but I assured him the geese would not be of the same mind.

We saw some pretty Indian paintbrush along the path.

It was nice being in God's beautiful creation for a couple hours. There were lots of fishermen there enjoying the morning. I hope they caught some beauties. Two ladies were saddling their horses for a trail ride as we were finishing up our visit in the parking lot. Pam offered water to one of the horses and apologized that we'd eaten all the donuts. The owner of the horse said, "That's a shame. We like donuts."

Who doesn't like donuts?

Enjoy your day!

Let's keep looking up. God is not finished with any of us yet. His plans are perfect, His ways are right, and we can trust Him!