Tag Archives: Tadpole

Life in the Yard

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Mallard duck visiting the pond.

Life continues to be abundant in the yard. We’ve had visits by a duck couple, who land on the pond, sometimes walk around the yard looking for food, and then take off again. When I was cleaning up old plants from the pond, I discovered strings of toad spawn, and now we have toad tadpoles swimming around.

I am suspicious that the three bullfrogs who’ve taken up residence might be eating them sometimes, but so far the tadpoles continue to survive. We’ll see.

I don’t seem to have much energy this year, so projects in the yard are moving slow. We finished stacking our firewood, and I cleaned up weeds and refreshed the wood chips around the fire circle. I resonated with something that was mentioned on television at the Chelsea flower show in Britain–gardening is often a lesson in failures. The cherry tree has some problem that causes spots on the leaves and cherries and I don’t think we’ll get any cherries despite our earlier blossoms. Probably the black cherry aphids, but I don’t have the energy to sort it out. So I am appreciating the plants that seem to take care of themselves.

The irises by our deck are thriving this year, so happy and abundant. That sort of makes up for the lack of blue Siberian irises in our front patch–hardly any at all this year. The plants seem to move around, and I am not sure why the blue ones are not doing well. Happily, our neighbor’s are doing great, and I see them out our kitchen window.

Meanwhile, the wild strawberries were blossoming and spreading everywhere, which is great–good food for birds and bugs. It is an excellent native ground cover. That makes me happy.

Frogs and tadpoles in the pond

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Green frog, with green head and brown body, perched on gray stone facing the pond water.
Green frog on stone at the edge of the pond.

The green frogs are back in the pond. I saw one about a week ago, but yesterday I managed to get a photo. As I got near, another frog dove down to the bottom–so there are two. Once again it is lovely to sit by the pond quietly, watching them sit quietly. And we now have the added pleasure of hundred of little tadpoles. I stopped scooping out algae to avoid scooping out the babies, so the pond isn’t so “pretty” to human view, but the frogs, tadpoles and honey bees seem to really like the algae. The frogs like to hide under it, the bees land on it to drink, and apparently it is good food for the tadpoles.

I was also happy to receive three new plants of sweet flag–or kiwhoswasq, as I learned in Passamaquoddy class. That means “muskrat root”, since apparently muskrats eat it, and it is also a useful medicinal root. It should do well in the pond, and multiply itself there. It doesn’t look like much yet, so I will wait to post photos. Meanwhile the ferns are coming back on their own.

Green ferns in water with algae on surface.

Finally, one more picture of the frog, after it jumped down to the water, sitting on a white rock, surrounded by the tadpoles. They are all over the pond now, especially around the edges.

Green frog with brown stripey body, sitting on white rock in water, with tiny dark tadpoles swimming nearby.

Babies in the Garden

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Slightly behind a white crossbeam is a parent robin with two little babies with open beaks in a nest.
Two baby robins with open mouths waiting on parent.

I’ve waited to post about the baby robins because I didn’t want to presume anything or jinx it. But it seems after the mama robin laid three eggs in the nest on our back porch beam, we now have two babies who have feathers and are poking their heads up to be fed. They don’t make a sound, and most of the time they are hiding deep in the nest while the mom and dad go about getting food, or just sitting on top of them resting. When the parents were gone for a bit today, I snatched this “selfie” with my phone over the nest. We mostly try to leave them be and not make a lot of noise on the porch.

Two baby robins, a mass of brown and white feathers with beaks and eyes, barely distinguishable from brown nest.

While not as photogenic, I also discovered we have tiny tiny tadpoles in the pond. I was lifting some algae with my net, and uncovered a whole group of them. Here is a close-up, but just imagine them about 1/4 inch from head to tail. Apparently they eat algae, so they must be happy where they are. Hurray! I would guess they are tree frog tadpoles, since the tree frogs have been singing, but I couldn’t find any confirmation of that in online searching–we’ll have to wait until they get a bit bigger.

Tiny black tadpoles in green algae in the pond.
Tiny black tadpoles in algae in the pond.

Finally, I planted some kale and lettuce and broccoli seedlings this morning, after adding more compost to raised bed, then using chopped leaves as a mulch. I put netting over them to deter animal neighbors–it doesn’t keep away cabbage moths, but seems to work for groundhogs and squirrels and such. Plant babies finally in the ground!

Rectangle wooden raised bed with frame and black netting over it, planted with small kale and lettuce.