children, rucksacks, and shopping trolleys all gone

by the way I went back into the woods and went back the way I'd been - nobody to be seen! no children, no shopping trolleys. No Waldkindergarten.

I'm thinking maybe, maybe, I was too early in the morning this time.

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that there was a hellacious thunder and rainstorm the night before, maybe they really do have a rain plan that involves the children being inside?!

We'll never know. But I can report that "kindergarten" starts even earlier than I said: young curly blonde niece Fanny is starting kindergarten on August 10th, and she only turns 2 next Friday. (And the timing is only because she's a June baby and they happen to start up anew in August; she could be starting then even if she was a July or even August baby, I'm pretty sure.)

And I also wonder if anyone else was noticing the whole "woods/garden" dichotomy in the Waldkindergarten concept - i.e. the garden is planned, planted, manmade, cultivated; the woods is theoretically wild? So they take the whole kindergarten concept where you are gardening with your kinders and planting them in neat little rows and civilizing them, and then I guess they are saying no, no, we do want to civilize them but we need a little wildering in the civilizing too so we are going to put them in neat little childer rows but out in the woods thank you so much!

?