Beware of the blob

It's been bucketing down here at Chez Szondy and as I was walking through the garden yesterday I came across these blobs of clear jelly all over the front lawn. Partly out of curiosity and mainly out of fear that these were the vanguard of an alien invasion force, I inspected the watery little interlopers more closely.

At first I thought that the dogs had somehow got their hands on a cold pack and torn it to shreds, but I couldn't find any fragments of plastic bags and the dogs weren't acting the slightest bit guilty (I can always tell when Little Ann has got into the rubbish or raided the bread bin, because she's nowhere to be found). I soon ruled out the jelly falling from the trees or being thrown from the road. I was about to get in the car and flee for the hills before the onslaught of the Martians when I realised that all the jelly was sitting on the thinned-out lawn patches that I'd reseeded last week. A compartment opened in that lumber room I call a brain and recalled a tidbit of information I'd skimmed across.

Five minutes later, a quick googling and I had the answer. It seems that the grass seed that I'd planted not only included fertilizer, but something called polyacrylamide gel, better known as "water crystals." They're a kind of polymer crystal that absorb an insane amount of water and basically act as little canteens for the grass seeds. Very clever, that.

Of course, I could be wrong. In which case, I'm living the first ten minutes of a Hammer sci fi epic.