Piglet plants a haycorn

The small boy has amassed an extensive acorn collection, and can recognise an oak tree from its leaves. It may be no coincidence that one of his favoured companions of the moment is a soft toy Piglet, whose favourite food - according to A.A. Milne - is haycorns (a mispronunciation of acorns).

I suggested that Piglet might like to plant some acorns to see if we could grow an oak tree, which might in turn produce more acorns. Piglet, and his accomplice thought this was a good idea, so we went outside to plant them.

The small boy informed me that his conkers and sycamore seeds also needed planting. Piglet supervised whilst we planted three acorns, three conkers and three sycamore seeds in a large pot. I suspect none will grow, but I hope something germinates in the Spring! Whilst planting, the small boy had a nice chat with Piglet about how big trees grow from little seeds.

Piglet supervises the planting

Whilst locating some sycamore seeds to plant (apparently he had heard my helicopter explanation the other day, even though I thought he wasn't listening, as he wanted to find seeds that look like helicopter rotors...) we came across three seeds together rather than a pair. I hadn't noticed this before, and Google suggests it is fairly unusual. He played with them for quite a while, spinning and dropping them.

Sycamore seeds

We also came across two snails, a small one and a large one. I was asked to come up with names beginning with S, and hence we ended up with Sheila and Stuart the snails. He had a gentle poke of their eye stalks (which retracted before re-emerging a few seconds later) and observed that Sheila produced slime as she slithered along. He recalled how Princess Pearl and Gadabout go to collect slime to make medicine for the King in the Julia Donaldson book (Zog and the Flying Doctors) and proceeded to pretend to make me medicine from the slime (yuk!).  We then carefully put Stuart and Sheila down near each other to recover from their encounter with a toddler, and watched as Sheila climbed up and over Stuart's spiral shell before heading off in a different direction.  We drew some chalk spirals as he seemed interested in the shape, and then it was time for lunch.

Sheila and Stuart the snails

I am reliably informed that Piglet enjoyed his excursion into the garden and his encounter with the snails...