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Frog O'Clock

Frog O'Clock

I recently found out that my daughter and her boyfriend's mother both share the same intense dislike of frogs (we did wonder if Sigmund Freud would have anything to say on the matter).

My best friend when I was growing up was frog phobic. I remember a long and happy game we played by his grandad's pond with a dart tied to a piece of string planning to harpoon a particularly fine specimen that seemed to mock his irrational fear with every blink of its bulging amphibious eyes. The game ended abruptly when finally plucking up the courage to throw the dart, my friend ran in screaming, convinced that he had made a direct hit. He hadn't even got close but it was definitely Game Over.

We have two ponds in our garden and both are home to a number of frogs. Despite some casualties over the cold winters, the populations continue to thrive. This pleases me and my little boy who loves to look at the "flogs and flish" but is not such good news for my daughter.

Even worse news was a spectacle that I witnessed one evening as the sun was setting  - a time we now think of as "Frog O'Clock".

We have recently fenced off one of our ponds to make it safer for the little ones to play in the garden. The back of the pond is unfenced as a raised rockery area already provided a barrier.

I would never presume to understand the behaviour of another species or to judge their intelligence but it was hard not to think that the frogs in my pond were, to put it bluntly, a bit daft. As they left the water in the cool of the evening (perhaps in search of some tasty morsel), instead of taking the unimpeded rockery route, they opted to access the garden through the mesh fence. When they failed to make progress through it, they began to try climbing over it. Credit goes to the more tenacious of our soft bodied friends who made it about a foot up the mesh before falling backwards onto the rocks below.

Part of my daughter's dislike of frogs is rooted in their apparent vulnerability - their almost jelly like appearance. This idea was reinforced when one of my large Golden Orfe (now sadly deceased) bit off more than he could chew, so to speak, when it tried to swallow an adult frog. It eventually spat it out but not before the whole head area of the unfortunate frog had become the stuff of nightmares.

It was painful to see the mesh climbing frogs falling in ungainly heaps onto hard rocks (and almost certainly painful from a frog perspective). They recovered enough to have another go... and another. I was willing them to realise that this was never going to work. All they had to do was jump back into the pond, swim across to the other side and exit through the frog friendly terrain. Alternatively, hop round the edge of the pond to the point where the fence ends and away you go. As I stood watching, not one of the desperate creatures had their light bulb moment.

It was grotesquely fascinating but eventually, as it got darker and colder, I went inside and left them to it .

I did feel a bit guilty about putting the fence in their way but a few inconvenienced frogs is nothing compared with the risk of one of my children falling in the pond. Nature always finds a way. They'll work it out, hopefully before one or more of them becomes frog pulp.

If my daughter has the misfortune to find herself in the vicinity of the pond at Frog O'clock, it could be enough to upgrade her 'dislike' into full blown Batrachophobia. If she ever runs screaming into the house, much as my dart-harpoon throwing friend did so many years ago, I will have a pretty good idea why!

Tadpoles in a Jar

With it being Spring Equinox today, it was lovely to see so many signs of the season, including glorious spring sunshine.

I was heartened to see that despite the difficulties endured by the frog population over recent winters, there was still plenty of frogspawn in my pond. I'm not usually one to interfere with nature but I have such fond childhood memories of expeditions to the Chalvey brook with my jam jar to collect frogspawn. I still find  the metamorphosis that begins with a tiny black dot in its protective jelly, completely fascinating.

It was my husband who suggested that our Addy was the perfect age to witness this magical transformation first hand and I didn't take much persuading.

My daughter Taylor does actually have an irrational fear of frogs so the jar of frogspawn that suddenly appeared in our porch did push her to the limit of where she is comfortable. I'm not sure how she will cope as things develop and the wiggly swimmers start to grow legs for jumping. We shall cross that particular bridge later!

I was really happy today to see a little fish bowl for sale at my local Sue Ryder charity shop. It had gravel in the bottom already and for £1.95 I thought it would make a much more suitable home for our amphibious house guests.

I don't know who is more excited about our nature project, me or Addy. (One thing I definitely do know, it isn't Taylor!)

My Top 5 Photographs of 2011 - Listography

One of the things I love about blogging is the focus it gives me to take photographs that I might otherwise not have thought about taking. 

This week's Listography topic gave me the opportunity to look back over a year of blog photos and select five of my favourites. It wasn't easy to pick just five but here goes...

1. The photograph of a poor frog frozen into my pond during the cold spell in January 2011 received a lot of attention and remains one of my highest viewed posts. Most people agreed with me that it was a tragic reminder of the fragility of life. My eldest daughter, however, said - "Ha ha - a frog ice cube"

 2. I love this photograph of my two little ones in a hotel bed, totally engrossed in an electronic game that is still a favourite toy. They both look so tiny back in January when it was taken - what a difference a year makes. Although at the time I thought it ruined the picture, now I really love the bruise on my daughter's forehead that tells the story of a moment of ill-concieved adventurousness that ended in a nasty bump.

3.  I don't think this photograph is technically any good but I do remember so vividly, with fondness,  standing out in the cold evening with equipment not quite up to the task, not really knowing what I was doing and trying to capture the magical 'Supermoon' of 19th March, 2011.

4. This is the most recent of the photographs for my Top 5. I took it from my hotel window at Butlins, Bognor Regis where I was attending the Tots 100 Christmas party. The flock of seagulls circling the strangely lovely roof of the Skyline Pavilion against the winter sky was a dramatic sight.

5. Without a doubt, this is my absolute favourite photograph of 2011. It is a picture I took during my husband's vasectomy. I had originally only intended to snap my husband sat nervously in the waiting room but I am so glad that I found the courage to ask the Doctor if he would object to me photographing the actual procedure. Far from objecting, he enthusiastically 'posed' for the shot. My husband wasn't able to look at the picture for quite some time and even now it makes him feel a little peculiar but I love it.

Spring Cleaning

The sunshine streaming through the living room window really highlighted how grubby my sofas were so I dug out the leather cleaner and got to work.

For the three year old, my cleaning efforts simply turned the living room into a big soft play area.

 If only Spring Cleaning was this much fun for me!!

The Gallery - Week 42 - Mother Nature

This photograph, taken today (from a very precarious perch), shows a sight that has become all too familiar to me this winter - a beautiful frog, frozen solid in the ice in my pond. I am sure that the frog population will survive the cruel temperatures - nature finds a way -  but it fills  me with huge sadness to see this example of the fragility of life.

Mother Nature - both cruel and fragile