An incredible busy Day and I found two Dollars

When we left the island last October we had just finished building a shed (some people call it a shop…) but had filled it up with all the stuff we used to store in our large cargo trailer. Needless to say I couldn’t find anything or even think of doing some work in there. So today was the day things changed. Before work commences the man is thinking We had the old 10ft. kitchen counter in our car garage and that I had planned to move into the shed to make it a nice work area. BUT in order to get that done we had to move a lot of stuff out of the shed, and the counter had to be emptied of all the junk which had accumulated inside and on top. Once the counter was cleared I took measures and cut it into two halves. One side about 15 inches longer than the other. I figured to put the two halves into an L-shaped corner bench. After the preliminary work we were ready to move the parts through the doorway and place them into their new position. The two halves fit nicely together and after putting the drawers back in we began finding handy spots to hang the various tools. We had now gotten a lot more room in the garage and Bea has now her own space for all her garden tools. Spades, shovels and rakes are hanging nicely on the wall, and an old bookcase gives room for seeds and the smaller garden remedies. Of course an action like this also results in finding a lot of stuff which goes right into the garbage container. It DOESN’T make any sense to keep 5 empty paint cans for the off-hand chance that we could possibly have a use for it 5 years down the road. But that’s exactly what happens way too often. When everything came back to order and the lawn was cleared of all the items we had piled up there, it was time to let Molly get to her walk. She’d been all around us all day, making sure we wouldn’t forget her in any way. How could we? So I loaded her into the Fat Lady and off we went to the beach. While Molly was sniffing around on her own, I kept my eyes trained to the ground. It is quite amazing what we sometimes can find while beachcombing. And sure enough, this time I found two Dollars!  S A N D  D O L L A R S What is a Sand Dollar? I had to look up Wikipedia to get a good explanation. The only thing I knew was that it was an animal like a shell, but let’s see what is written at Wikipedia: Sand dollars, like all members of the order Clypeasteroida, possess a rigid skeleton known as a test. The test consists of calcium carbonate plates arranged in a fivefold radial pattern. In living individuals the test is covered by a skin of velvet-textured spines; these spines are in turn covered with very small hairs (cilia). Coordinated movements of the spines enable sand dollars to move across the seabed. The velvety spines of live sand dollars appear in a variety of colours—green, blue, violet, purple—depending on the species. The tests of dead individuals are often found on beaches, the textured skin missing and the skeleton bleached white by sunlight. The bodies of adult sand dollars, like those of other echinoids, display radial symmetry. The petal-like pattern in sand dollars consists of five paired rows of pores. The pores are perforations in the endoskeleton through which podia for gas exchange project from the body. The mouth of the sand dollar is located on the bottom of its body at the center of the petal-like pattern. Unlike other urchins, the bodies of sand dollars also display secondary front-to-back bilateral symmetry. The anus of sand dollars is located at the back rather than at the top as in most urchins, with many more bilateral features appearing in some species. These result from the adaptation of sand dollars, in the course of their evolution, from creatures that originally lived their lives on top of the seabed to creatures that burrow beneath it. The Common Sand Dollar, is widespread in ocean waters of the Northern Hemisphere, from the intertidal zone to considerable depths. It can be found in temperate and tropical zones.      Looks like we learned something again today. Thanks for reading this stuff!