The first thing one notices is how everything is gray or green. Puddles shine their reflections of the sky, a sadly admiring mirror. Moon-pale mushrooms glow wetly in the grass, some as big as saucers. Mottled and moist, the sycamores are studded with snails. A crabapple tree has littered a circle of unripe fruit, scattering largess to the slugs. Pale purple thistle heads crown the meadow edges. Clouds tower, a sky duvet, backlit by high behind sunshine. The spongy ground is swollen, everything’s damp and mossy.
I grabbed a half-hour window of opportunity, taking a brisk walk through a wet-washed world, a pause between downpours. Blurred grayness on the horizon signals more rain. The forecast next week is all wet, no end in sight.
Karin’s backwards birthday party was a smash success. We hailed each arrival with a hearty “Goodbye!” and about half the kids had their clothes on backwards. The traditional order of a typical party was stood on its head and we began with a candy fishpond, moving on to cake and graduating with hotdogs, before “Engineer Lundström” began his experiment theater, an encore performance from Martin’s birthday last December. Anders, in safety goggles, gardening gloves and a red-and-navy-striped apron, captivated his audience by making a wave machine, forcing a milk carton to blow smoke rings before turning it into a water microscope, persuading a floating egg to sink*, and ending with a viscuosity experiment involving a 3-layered glass of water, oil and turpentine, through which the kids learned that cheerios stay on the top of the turpentine, while almonds drop through it to stay on top of the oil and rice fall slowly through each layer to the bottom.
After the experiment theater curtain came down, the kids played musical chairs and another circle game and FINALLY as the parents began arriving, Karin got to open her presents. A doog emit saw dah yb lla!
*It was a rigged experiment, as the egg was floating due to the ridiculous amount of salt Anders had added to the pitcher beforehand. 🙂