Blynken and Nod Rat Themselves Out

Blynken and Nod were permitted to play outside in our yard without supervision for a little while yesterday evening- we were expecting company for dinner, everybody else had a job to do that they had to get done and get done soon, and it was just easier for them to be outside.  

They wanted to pick flowers (they always do, and they have been told several times recently to leave my tall spring flowers ALONE- I do not have that many of them).  The FYG reviewed the yard boundaries and took them to a big patch of violets and told them they could pick those flowers and dandelions, and that was all.

About ten minutes later they came in proudly waving five of my beautiful red tulips in their sweaty hands.  I only had six tulips.  To add insult to injury, they had plucked my precious tulips towards the top, meaning the longest stem was about four inches, and two of them were about an inch.

To further exacerbate my lacerated feelings, they hadn't stolen my tulips for me, no, they wanted to give them to their mother when she comes back to pick them up later this week*. 

However, their giddy glee quickly turned to dismay when they learned that by picking my tulips, the only tulips in my yard, they had inadvertently but unquestionably proclaimed their complete disregard for not just one, but both rules they had been given.

My tulips were blooming sweetly outside our front gate, about three feet beyond the line which the boys knew they were not supposed to cross- in a spot where formerly they could be seen from the road so as to cheer passers-by.  

The expressions on the boys' faces when we pointed out that we knew precisely where the tulips grew- particularly the older and quite bright Blynken, were a delightfully comic succession of dismay, guilt, attempted bluster, faux innocence, and glum acceptance that they were in deep, deep flower fertilizer because in showing off their stolen loot they had basically just confessed:

"HEY, LOOK AT US!!  WE DID WHAT YOU TOLD US NOT TO DO AND WE WENT WHERE YOU TOLD US NOT TO GO ABOUT FIVE MINUTES AFTER YOU TOLD US NOT TO DO THOSE THINGS BUT WE DO NOT THINK YOU WILL NOTICE  THAT WE ARE DISOBEDIENT WRETCHED LITTLE FLOWER-THIEVES BECAUSE, BESIDES, AREN'T WE CUTE?!!"

Not THAT cute, my little buckaroos.

*Um, sorry, no.  I have my limits.  Those limits may be ridiculously petty, silly, and small, but there they are.  These are my tulips, you budding little commie cuties, and you do not get to steal my flowers to give to somebody else.  We will have no involuntary redistribution of the floral wealth here.  So there. :-P

This post linked at Friday Fails because letting those little boys play outside without supervision was a total FAIL for my flowers.  Oh- and the next day Blynken went outside to play with The Boy, and I said, "No picking flowers today."  "But we can pick flowers," he said, in a convenient and miraculous moment of perfect memory recovery.  "The FYG said we could pick the purple and yellow flowers and she showed us where they grow, so we can pick those."


"Nope," I said.  "That was yesterday.  She told you that, but you did not want to listen to her, so you chose to do something else.  You left the yard on purpose, picked the wrong flowers on purpose, tried to make us think you did do that, and so no flowers at all today."


"Oh." He said.


I think he hoped I wouldn't remember.

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