Conkers and Crane Flies

What is a conker? A conker is the seed of a horse chestnut tree-they are hard brown nuts surrounded by a prickly casing. Actually they look almost identical to a buckeye. An old playground game here is for kids to thread a strong string thru the middle of the conker and hit an opponents conker. When one's conker is destroyed, the game is over. Kaitlyn's class had an experiment to see what you could do to conkers to make a killer conker. Between these and the acorns, we have a very crunchy walk to school.

Now onto the crane flies...the kids here call them daddy long legs, we know them more as mosquito catchers. They are more annoying than anything. When we walk to and from school thru the green they fly around you in swarms. Forget leaving the windows or doors open in the evening because then you spend 20 minutes trying to catch the dozen that have made it indoors. At least when winter sets in I will only have spiders to deal with and hopefully the bug poison cousin Leif led me to will make the house impenetrable.