Goldenrod thought to herself.
So much better â¦
BANG! CLACK! WHACK! She was shaken from her grumpy thoughts by the rooftop sounds of her father, a scientist who had taken a week off to pursue one of his favorite pastimes: fixing rain gutters.
And from downstairs came the beeps and wails of Birchâs video game.
It seemed like everyone in the world was having a great time ⦠except Goldenrod.
But then again, wallowing is not a good trait for a Legendary Adventurer to have
, she thought. In fact, she was almost certain that Meriwether Lewis would never have wallowed had he ever been eleven years old and grounded.
Goldenrod took out a pencil and a fresh sheet of grid paper and, looking out the window again, started to sketch a map of her motherâs garden. Chrysanthemums next to the rosebushes next to the magnolia tree. A ring ofsoon-to-be-blooming goldenrods surrounding it allâa ring that her mother had to take very special care of because her daughterâs namesake flowers were the kind that would absolutely run rampant and take over the whole garden if they werenât carefully monitored.
Suddenly, as Goldenrod squinted out at the flowers, one of those brilliant a-ha ideas hit her as sharply as the sunâs rays. What if her project for the summer was to make a map of Pilmilton? Not just any map, though. The most accurate map in the world. Every house, every tree, every shrub. Okay, so maybe it wouldnât be as grand or as long an expedition as the one Lewis and Clark went on, and maybe she would discover nothing new at all. But then again ⦠maybe she would. And then she could take the best map and sketches of any new specimens she discovered and mail them to Charla. That way, she could still be like her longdistance Clark. Yes!
For the first time in days, Goldenrod felt filled with a sense of purpose.
On Tuesday, Goldenrod got her backpack ready. She packed:
⢠a flashlight with extra batteries (those always seemed to come in handy in books or movies when anyone was going on an adventure)
⢠three fresh notebooks, one lined for notetaking,one unlined for sketches, and a third filled with grid paper for the map
⢠three sharpened pencils
⢠a pencil sharpener
⢠her pocket-sized atlas
⢠a ruler
⢠a measuring tape
⢠a clean and empty jelly jar (in case she ever needed to collect any specimens)
⢠a pair of tweezers (for the exact same reason)
⢠an old, rather dull pair of her motherâs gardening shears
⢠a set of green and brown face paints that she had saved from last Halloween
⢠a lunch box for which she was planning many different kinds of sandwiches
⢠her compass, of course
⢠a roll of duct tape (she had yet to find any use for this tape herself, but she had heard her father go on and on about its indispensability)
⢠and a very small, very dirty sock that probably used to be yellow. This was a sock she had worn as a baby and which, for some reason, she found comforting to carry around.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent thinking about how to get her mother to let her step foot outside of the fourbarriers that she had never been allowed to leave by herself before. The perfect mile-long and mile-wide square was marked on each end by the park playground, Pilmilton Woods, Joseph McKinneyâs house, and the Pilmilton Science Museum on the corner of Sutton and Main. Knowing her mother, getting permission to explore outside of that area wasnât going to be easy.
By Friday, Goldenrod was standing outside and watching her father happily bang away on the roof. She was making sure that he didnât fall. This was called spotting and it was pretty boring, but Goldenrod had volunteered to do it because she figured that having Dad on her side when she talked to Mom would be crucial in her Barrier-Breaking Plan.
So there she stood in the front yard, her cheap daisy kiddie sunglasses (the only pair
So much better â¦
BANG! CLACK! WHACK! She was shaken from her grumpy thoughts by the rooftop sounds of her father, a scientist who had taken a week off to pursue one of his favorite pastimes: fixing rain gutters.
And from downstairs came the beeps and wails of Birchâs video game.
It seemed like everyone in the world was having a great time ⦠except Goldenrod.
But then again, wallowing is not a good trait for a Legendary Adventurer to have
, she thought. In fact, she was almost certain that Meriwether Lewis would never have wallowed had he ever been eleven years old and grounded.
Goldenrod took out a pencil and a fresh sheet of grid paper and, looking out the window again, started to sketch a map of her motherâs garden. Chrysanthemums next to the rosebushes next to the magnolia tree. A ring ofsoon-to-be-blooming goldenrods surrounding it allâa ring that her mother had to take very special care of because her daughterâs namesake flowers were the kind that would absolutely run rampant and take over the whole garden if they werenât carefully monitored.
Suddenly, as Goldenrod squinted out at the flowers, one of those brilliant a-ha ideas hit her as sharply as the sunâs rays. What if her project for the summer was to make a map of Pilmilton? Not just any map, though. The most accurate map in the world. Every house, every tree, every shrub. Okay, so maybe it wouldnât be as grand or as long an expedition as the one Lewis and Clark went on, and maybe she would discover nothing new at all. But then again ⦠maybe she would. And then she could take the best map and sketches of any new specimens she discovered and mail them to Charla. That way, she could still be like her longdistance Clark. Yes!
For the first time in days, Goldenrod felt filled with a sense of purpose.
On Tuesday, Goldenrod got her backpack ready. She packed:
⢠a flashlight with extra batteries (those always seemed to come in handy in books or movies when anyone was going on an adventure)
⢠three fresh notebooks, one lined for notetaking,one unlined for sketches, and a third filled with grid paper for the map
⢠three sharpened pencils
⢠a pencil sharpener
⢠her pocket-sized atlas
⢠a ruler
⢠a measuring tape
⢠a clean and empty jelly jar (in case she ever needed to collect any specimens)
⢠a pair of tweezers (for the exact same reason)
⢠an old, rather dull pair of her motherâs gardening shears
⢠a set of green and brown face paints that she had saved from last Halloween
⢠a lunch box for which she was planning many different kinds of sandwiches
⢠her compass, of course
⢠a roll of duct tape (she had yet to find any use for this tape herself, but she had heard her father go on and on about its indispensability)
⢠and a very small, very dirty sock that probably used to be yellow. This was a sock she had worn as a baby and which, for some reason, she found comforting to carry around.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent thinking about how to get her mother to let her step foot outside of the fourbarriers that she had never been allowed to leave by herself before. The perfect mile-long and mile-wide square was marked on each end by the park playground, Pilmilton Woods, Joseph McKinneyâs house, and the Pilmilton Science Museum on the corner of Sutton and Main. Knowing her mother, getting permission to explore outside of that area wasnât going to be easy.
By Friday, Goldenrod was standing outside and watching her father happily bang away on the roof. She was making sure that he didnât fall. This was called spotting and it was pretty boring, but Goldenrod had volunteered to do it because she figured that having Dad on her side when she talked to Mom would be crucial in her Barrier-Breaking Plan.
So there she stood in the front yard, her cheap daisy kiddie sunglasses (the only pair
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