Never Trust a Smiling Cat!

OR that's the saying, anyway.

Perhaps Minnie is smiling because strawberries, corn, carrots, and two pumpkins were harvested this morning. A post-harvest "snapshot."



The plants in the foreground at the end of the long rows are just decorative. I found that my old eyes were having trouble telling which plant was which if they weren't in harvest mode. So the fake plants simulate row markers. Minerva is next to the strawberries and the watermelons are around the scarecrow.

Romancing the Crown

AT first, we were both so busy accumulating KinzCash that every time we did our daily mining, we sold the gems we found back to Arte in the Curio Shop.

But after awhile (and with the addition of KinzCash added via cards, not to mention James' W25,000 win on the Wheel of WOW), we both decided to accumulate the thirty gems needed for something called "a Crown of Wonder."

Each day you are allowed to go into one of the mines—Muzzle Mouth, Barking Mad, Flea Floater, Howling Horse, and Buried Bones—to have three chances at chipping away at a likely-looking rock, hoping a gem lurks underneath. More often than not, you find slag, but if you are lucky, a glint of color appears. I hunted around for some hints, but only read that you should not tap on the rocks that glint and then glint again immediately; rocks that glint and then do not glint again for some seconds are more likely to have a gem behind them. For the most part, that seems to work, although I am already in repeats with found gems.

Once you find the gem, you can keep it or sell it to Arte. Prices depend on how rare the gem is, how many of them Arte supposedly has, and, sometimes, totally on Arte's whim. We got a big laugh one day when James came up with a red gem and Arte exclaimed, "Oh, no, not another one!" and offered him W5 for it!

Some Virtual Dirt Under My Fingernails

ONE OF THE decorations they sold for your Webkinz yard were vegetables. You could buy pumpkins, corn, tomatoes and cabbages and make it look as if you were growing a garden. We joked "Wouldn't it be nice if you could actually raise vegetables in your yard and feed them to your pets?"

Lo and behold, ask and ye shall receive.

About two weeks ago they introduced "seed packets" in the W Shop: cabbages, tomatoes, strawberries, corn, carrots and watermelons. When you dragged them into your yard, they were miraculously planted. They must be checked every day by clicking on one of the plots. A menu pops up and the first thing you do is inspect each plot. Most of the time it tells you the plot needs water; you then click on the water button and must tip a "watering can" over each of your plots. On some crops you also must rake them. In a prescribed number of days, you can "harvest" your crops and use them to feed your Webkinz, and the plot is replanted so the entire sequence can start again.

If you neglect your plants and they die, you must use the "dig" tool to dig up the dead plants; only then are new seeds replanted for you.

Now this is my type of gardening: no bugs, no dirt, no worms, and especially no sun giving me a migraine.

Bathtime!

EVERY time a Webkinz bathes...

...an angel gets its wings?

Well, no, but it ups its health points.

For sheer silliness, give your Webkinz a bath. Float the rubber ducky in the water, scrub the shampoo on its head, and add lots and lots of bubble bath. Both you and the Webkinz will giggle.



I wish Willow was this happy when we got done bathing her!