The birds and the bees (and the fishes)

Wow, it has been exactly a month since I last posted. I apologize for that. Or, is it presumptuous of me to apologize for not posting, as if you readers have somehow been inconvenienced by my lack of blabbery?

My posting hiatus was due to both being very busy, with Spring Break in Florida and then catching up from that excursion, and not having a topic that compelled me to post. I'm a big believer in only writing when I have something to say, rather than when the calendar pressures me to do so.

Having said that, today we had a terrific impromptu Big Science Saturday (BSS, and yes, I know it's Sunday today). BSS had also been on a bit of a hiatus the last couple of weeks as Ryan and I had been working on his science fair project. His project was really fun; he successfully trained a roly poly to go through a maze. But it warmed my heart this morning when Maddox said that he missed having BSS and wanted to restart them.

We decided to ride our bikes to the nearby gliderport at the Boulder County Airport. It's a great place to watch the gliders take off and land, and you can wander among them and occasionally the boys even get to sit in them.

On the way, we rode by a pond and heard some splashing in some trees. I glanced down and some some activity right by the waters edge. We stopped our bikes to check it out, and it was a bunch of fish, probably carp, spawning (if that's the right word). They were paired off, and making a large commotion in the very shallow water at the pond's edge. We were able to walk up and watch the action from about 6 feet away.

It was a wonderful nature moment that doesn't happen often enough in the city environment. Because Boulder has large public open spaces surrounding the city, we have more than most, including seeing a coyote last week and the ubiquitous prairie dogs, but this was pretty special.

I was worried, though, that we would have to explain the whole birds and bees thing, but the boys seemed satisfied to know that the fish were "making babies." Dodged that bullet for now ...