Sue, the director of Neko's school, former science teacher, and long-time family friend and I have been working on some print materials together. In a correspondence late last night she said I needed to come to school and take a trip down to the pond to see something. Apparently, something memorable happened the other day when Neko and her kindergarten class visited the pond during science, but I needed a visual to understand.
We had a bunch of errands to run, but I decided that none of them were mission critical, and we had time for a walk. Plus, we're having magical fall weather, so there's really no excuse to be inside.
After school had dismissed, we made sure all three kids had shoes and made our way down to the pond. Sue and Neko made me look at the ground while they put me in position. When they finally let me look up, I was facing a sea of plants (the name escapes me at the moment). The picture doesn't even begin to capture these magnificent things. One of the leaves is on Neko's head in the second photo for scale, but they're larger than dinner plates.
So here are all these leaves, cupping upward toward the sky. Apparently while they were collecting specimens from the pond, Neko looked up and declared, "It's a finale!"
And she's so right. All those huge leaves, trumpeting up toward the clouds, rivaled the end of any musical on Broadway. I almost expected the conductor to peek his head out of the pit and the orchestra to chime in with the wave of a baton.